2025 Industry Interference Alert #004!
The Tobacco Industry Interference Digital Watch Initiative (TIIDWI) is dedicated to identifying and countering media narratives that align with tobacco industry interests. Our mission includes scrutinizing content that promotes industry-favored concepts like “harm reduction” and undermines effective public health measures such as the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
Harm Reduction or Market Expansion: A closer Look at Recent Claims On X
A week ago, Vital Strategies posted on X about the lifesaving potential of harm reduction strategies in addressing the overdose crisis. Their tweet rightly celebrated health-centered interventions for substance use, which garnered support from public health professionals. However, it also sparked a wave of orchestrated responses from tobacco industry sympathizers, who sought to hijack this conversation by demanding the same legitimacy for “tobacco harm reduction”—a term increasingly weaponized to market alternative nicotine products like vapes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches.
Deconstructing Dale Staten’s Claims
One of the first to respond was Dale Staten, who claimed:
“There are high-risk nicotine products (combustible cigarettes) and low-risk nicotine products (nicotine gum). Moving from high risk to low risk is indeed harm reduction by definition. There have been meta-analyses on this.”
While he tries to frame this argument as evidence-based, Staten conveniently ignores the growing body of research that shows serious health risks associated with e-cigarettes and vapes, especially for youth and non-smokers. For example, studies like Bals et al., 2019 (European Respiratory Society) and Glantz & Bareham, 2018 (NEJM) emphasize the cardiovascular and respiratory harms of vaping, including increased blood pressure and heart rate due to nicotine’s addictive properties.
The U.S. Surgeon General has also warned about the rising epidemic of youth vaping and the role of flavored products in recruitment, not cessation (Surgeon General Advisory, 2018).
Vapes Are Not Harmless: A Public Health Red Flag
While some tobacco control experts once explored harm reduction as a possible cessation tool, the tobacco industry’s involvement fundamentally taints this discussion. Unlike opioid harm reduction led by health professionals, tobacco harm reduction is driven by an industry with a track record of deception, manipulation, and aggressive marketing to children and young people.
Big Tobacco is not promoting vaping and ‘safe nicotine’ to improve public health—they are pivoting to sustain profits as cigarette sales decline. A report by WHO (2021) makes this clear:
“There is an irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests.”
The Danger of Former Allies Switching Sides
It is particularly alarming to see Dr. Ziauddin Islam, a former World Health Organization FCTC official, now writing LinkedIn posts like this one, defending tobacco harm reduction. While his response is articulate, it fails to address how the “harm reduction” narrative has been hijacked by corporations that are pushing unregulated and unproven nicotine products onto young and vulnerable populations. His support inadvertently normalizes a public health threat under the guise of innovation.
A Message to the Public: Don’t Be Fooled
This is a call to everyone—don’t fall for the false equivalency. Harm reduction in opioids, which includes medically approved treatments like methadone and naloxone, is not the same as using industry-peddled e-cigarettes and vapes that addict children, young people and confuse the public.
Nicotine is not safe. It is addictive, raises blood pressure, increases heart rate, and affects adolescent brain development. The industry’s “reduced harm” rhetoric is not about health—it is about survival of profits. When you hear “safer nicotine” or “vaping saves lives,” ask: Who’s funding this narrative? Who gains when a new generation gets hooked on nicotine? The public must see through the smokescreen. This is not public health. This is profit before people.
#TIIDWI2025 #WCTC2025 #ExposeTobacco
ODUOR KEVIN 