A RENOWNED Filipino doctor said vapes and heated tobacco products can provide around 17 million Filipino smokers viable alternatives to cigarette smoking, the world’s leading cause of preventable death and diseases.
“We emphasized that the considerably less harmful products should not be taken off the shelves while the very much harmful product remains easily accessible and that the harm reduction potential of electronic vapor products should be maximized instead and regulated to minimize the risk to the youth and the non-smokers,” Dr. Lorenzo Mata Jr., president of advocacy group Quit For Good, said during the 4th Asia Harm Reduction Forum held virtually recently.
Quit for Good is a non-stock, non-profit organization that seeks to spread awareness about the grave consequences of smoking tobacco and creating solutions to the tobacco smoking epidemic.
Mata is a strong believer in tobacco harm reduction which is defined by the 2021 Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction report as “a range of pragmatic policies, regulations and actions which either reduce health risks by providing safer forms of products or substances or encourage less risky behaviors.”
Data show that combustible tobacco smoking kills more than 8 million people each year, with more than 7 million of those deaths the result of direct tobacco use and 1.2 million the effect of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
“More upsetting is the fact that 80 percent of the world’s one billion smokers live in low and middle- income countries like the Philippines,” Mata said.
He said one solution is the use of electronic vaping products that do not involve combustion. “Beyond any reasonable doubt, vaping is considerably less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Almost all the harm done by cigarettes arises from the smoke which is caused by combustion. Vaping does not produce smoke–only vapor,” he said.
“What happens in smoking combustible tobacco is a chemical change. What happens in vaping is a physical change,” he said. “In chemical change, this is brought about by extreme heat or combustion that causes oxidation of the original substance which then creates different chemical substances. The byproduct of oxidation is already totally different from the original substance. That is why from tobacco, it now comes out as smoke containing harmful substances where hundreds are toxic.”
