Swedish Match Divestment: Considerations for the Tobacco Transformation Index (January 14, 2022)

In September 2021, Swedish Match AB announced that it plans to spin off its cigar business and become an entirely "smokefree" company. The spin-off is targeted for completion by the second half of 2022. As Table 1 illustrates, cigars currently represent 28% of Swedish Match's revenue, with the remainder of its portfolio mostly comprising oral tobacco and nicotine products: snus, moist snuff, chewing tobacco, and non-tobacco nicotine pouches.

Patent Landscape Report (September 2021) (October 20, 2021)

This report was produced with the help of a grant from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, Inc. The contents, selection and presentation of facts, as well as any opinions expressed herein, are the sole responsibility of the authors and under no circumstances shall be regarded as reflecting the positions of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, Inc.

Assessing the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Cigarette Smokers and Use of Alternative Nicotine Delivery Systems in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study (September 27, 2021)

The component of smoking cessation is almost missing in Pakistan's existing tobacco control efforts and policies. There is a need to establish smoking cessation clinics in hospitals and create buy-in through mass awareness. This assistance should be backed with public advocacy on the negative effects of combustible smoking. Pakistan also needs to develop durable mechanisms to control illicit trade of cigarettes in order to restrict available options of buying cheap, illicit, or smuggled cigarettes. Tobacco law enforcement on smoking at public and private places should be more stringently pursued. There is a need to create an understanding about HRPs, backed by sensible regulation. Currently, the use of HRPs, mainly e-cigarettes, is unregulated and limited to the upper and middle classes. The unregulated use of HRPs in a regulatory vacuum may create space for abuse of HRPs in the form of fake products.

Newsletter September 2021 (September 22, 2021)

Few countries have embraced vaping with as much enthusiasm as the United Kingdom. It currently has three million regular vapers (six per cent of the adult population) and Public Health England's evidence reviews on e-cigarettes are cited around the world. In contrast to much of Europe and North America, public health professionals in Britain broadly regard the emergence of e-cigarettes as a welcome development that has signicantly reduced the smoking rate since they became popular a decade ago.

Vaping Works International Best Practices: United Kingdom, New Zealand, France and Canada (September 10, 2021)

The Property Rights Alliance congratulates Christopher Snowdon (Institute of Economic Affairs, the UK), Louis Houlbrooke (New Zealand Taxpayers' Union, New Zealand), Patrick Coquart (IREF, France), and Prof. Ian Irvine (Concordia University, Canada) on the contributed case studies on vaping from their respective countries to the white paper, "Vaping Works. International Best Practices: United Kingdom, New Zealand, France and Canada." These case studies analyze the policies implemented by governments on electronic cigarettes and combustible tobacco products for smoking cessation efforts in the UK, New Zealand, France and Canada.

POINT: e-Cigarette Use for Harm Reduction in Tobacco Use Disorder? Yes (September 10, 2021)

The case for e-cigarettes for harm reduction is straightforward. Almost all the harm caused by tobacco use arises from inhaling the products of combustion (smoke) of dried cured tobacco leaf. e-Cigarettes use electricity to heat a liquid to form an inhalable nicotine-bearing aerosol. There is no combustion involved; therefore, there are no products of combustion to inhale. This means the main harmful agents in tobacco smoke are either not present at detectable levels or are present at much lower concentrations than in cigarette smoke. A smoker who switches completely to e-cigarette use ("vaping") is therefore exposed to much lower levels of the toxicants that are the main causes of smoking-related disease.

Clinical Pharmacology of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS): Implications for Benefits and Risks in the Promotion of the Combusted Tobacco Endgame. (August 31, 2021)

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products are novel battery-operated devices that deliver nicotine without combustion of tobacco. Because cigarette smoking is sustained by nicotine addiction and the toxic combustion products are mainly responsible for the harmful effects of smoking, ENDS could be used to promote smoking cessation while exposing users to lower levels of toxicants compared with conventional cigarettes.

Newsletter August 2021 (August 12, 2021)

Despite 8 million annual smoking-related deaths, the World Health Organizations (WHO) seems to have decided that it doesn't have to deal with safer nicotine alternatives until 2023.

President Derek Yach's Statement on the WHO's Global Tobacco Epidemic Report (July 30, 2021)

"The WHO's tobacco control approach is fundamentally flawed. In 20 years, they have simply failed to make any meaningful progress to reduce tobacco consumption, with over 1bn tobacco users today and 8m people dying annually from tobacco-related illnesses."

Hierarchy of Harm Reduction Disagreement (July 27, 2021)

Before 2020, I knew very little about tobacco control. My knowledge did not go beyond what most people know - that cigarettes are bad for your health and could kill you. Subsequently, tobacco harm reduction was a foreign concept to me, although it made logical sense. I volunteered in Lesotho with the Peace Corps; the idea of harm reduction was often used when referring to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although I did not know much about tobacco control, I was aware that harm reduction had been proven to work in other fields of public health.