Organized by the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF), this virtual conference, now in its 11th year, highlighted new alternatives proposed by manufacturers to help consumers of traditional tobacco derivatives make the transition to other innovative and healthier products such as vaping products, heated tobacco products, modern oral products (MOPs) and other traditional smoke-free products.
The meeting was an opportunity to highlight the positive contribution of science in terms of providing neutral and verifiable data to help consumers make an informed decision and encourage the tobacco industry to turn to innovative solutions that could lead to permanent change.
To this end, Mr. Neil Mckeganey, director of the “Centre for Substance Use Research” at the University of Glasgow, announced the launch of a study entitled “The Big Vape Survey” which will be carried out in the United Kingdom with a sample of 30,000 smokers aged 18 and over, the aim being to examine the effectiveness of “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (ENDS) on supporting smoking cessation and reducing tobacco consumption.
This study, the results of which will be communicated to consumers, manufacturers and regulatory bodies, will help to better understand the impact of this technology on public health, he explained.
For his part, Mr. Riccardo Polosa, Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Catania (Italy), criticized the scientific research establishing a link between the electronic cigarette and the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and asthma, specifying that intermittent use is not the ideal way to evaluate a supposedly harmful effect of the electronic cigarette, especially since such studies exclude the smoking history of the cohort studied.
In the opinion of Professor Polosa, also founder of the Center of Excellence for Accelerating Risk Reduction (COEHAR), these results leave the consumer perplexed about the use or abandonment of these alternative solutions. In this sense, he recommended the adoption of a more rigorous scientific approach based on randomized controlled trials to achieve convincing results.
For his part, Mr. David Abrams, Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at New York University, reviewed several studies carried out on samples of adults and adolescents.
He cited a cross-sectional study of 1,297,362 American adolescents between 2011 and 2019 that showed an increase in e-cigarette use and a decrease in the prevalence of combustible cigarettes and smokeless tobacco during the same period compared to previous years. Abrams said the study provides conclusive evidence that e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking.
In the same vein, Mr. Mark Kehaya, Chairman of AMV Holdings, said that the majority of studies published recently support the idea that synthetic nicotine, in this case flavored cartridge e-cigarettes, promotes smoking cessation as well as addictive behaviors among smokers.
For Ms. Maria Gogova, vice president of Altria Client Services, the commercialization of non-combustible products must accelerate by expanding the range of choices available to the adult population to include new devices such as nicotine patches and vaping.
The participants in this international meeting also stressed the need to conduct comprehensive and multidisciplinary studies based on precise scientific data provided by toxicology centres in order to arrive at a regulatory framework based on scientific evidence and not on erroneous perceptions.
2024-09-21 05:39:24