Tobacco Asia

20 tobaccoasia Issue 3, 2023 May / June Staff Report UK leads the way: Swap to stop The UK government affirmed once again its world-leading approach to public health when it announced last month it would be giving out vap- ing starter kits to one million smokers to encour- age them to "swap to stop." The program, the first of its kind in the world, will cost an estimated £45 million and will be rolled out nationwide over the next two years. Health minister Neil O'Brien said govern- ment policies aimed at driving smoking rates down below 5% by 2030 will focus on "helping people to quit" rather than imposing bans. This includes not raising the minimum age for the sale of cigarettes from 18 as recommended in a review led by Javed Khan last year, which called for the minimum age to be increased by one year, every year "until no one can buy a tobacco product in this country." Interestingly, a key recommenda- tion in Khan's report was support for vaping. The UK is one of the countries successfully implementing tobacco harm reduction (THR) ini- tiatives and policies. In 2015 Public Health Eng- land (PHE) reported findings from an indepen- dent expert review showing that vaping was about 95% less harmful than smoking conventional ciga- rettes. PHE actively encouraged vaping as a less harmful alternative to help smokers quit. In 2021, the number of smokers in the UK dropped to a record low at 13.3%, the lowest since 2011 when the annual population survey started recording smoking prevalence. The number of people using vapes was also the highest among current cigarette smokers at 25.3% and ex-smokers at 15%. The Swedish experience: E-cigs, HNB, and snus Sweden is another good example of successful THR implementation. While Sweden does use tobacco control methods such as banning smok- ing in certain places, it also accepts products such as vapes, heated tobacco, nicotine pouches, and, in particular, snus as less-harmful alternatives to combustible cigarettes. Rather than embracing a quit-or-die approach, Sweden used a combina- tion of tobacco control and THR strategies that resulted in the country's smoking rate dropping Going Creative not Calamitous in Harm Reduction Programs Creative tobacco harm reduction initiatives such as the UK's "swap to stop" program utilizes reduced-risk alternatives to provide smokers with choices rather than bans. …[utilizing] reduced-risk alternatives to provide smokers with choices rather than bans.

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