1/2 “If nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable & effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved. … @igas2.bsky.social @jmenezes.bsky.social @chancethegardener.bsky.social @jgitchell.bsky.social

1/1 Think of many new drug harm reduction interventions initially vigorously opposed, then cautiously introduced, then slowly expanded, then eventually huge benefits recognised & appreciated: methadone treatment; needle syringe programs; drug consumption rooms; pill testing; naloxone distribution

The Scientists Who Didn’t Get the Memo. @alexwodak.bsky.social @melissasweetdr.bsky.social @squigglyrick.bsky.social @drbfreeman.bsky.social @chancethegardener.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/09algor/...

Aussie Al Gore is one of the most elloquent writers out there on the subject of nicotine #HarmReduction. A super-controversial topic. The WHO literally calls it an "evil industry plot." 140 million adult ex-smokers worldwide disagree.

COMPARE COUNTRIES: Nicotine vapes are legal in the USA and Canada: US: teen use down 70% over past 5 years to 5.9% CA: teen down 60% over past 5 years to 5.8% Vapes are prescription-only in Australia: AU: Teen use is NOT dropping; still at 10%

This is a good update on the state of tobacco use in Canada, with surprisingly positive results. In 2024, 13% of Canadians were using tobacco, that's down from 29% in 2001. Good progress. Smoking among youth hit a record low in 2024: 2% among 12-17 year olds. www.canada.ca/en/health-ca...

🚨 New Zealand youth vaping has plummeted to 7.1% while teen smoking hits a historic low of 1.1%. 📉🇳🇿 Teen smoking is nearly extinct even as adult smokers switch to safer alternatives. Real-world data 1, Scaremongering 0 #SmokeFree #HarmReduction clearingtheair.eu/post/youth-v...

The FDA CLAIMS that it authorized 39 nicotine vapes. Is that true? No. Only 9 devices (plus pod and nicotine strength variants, menthol or cigarette flavor (artificial tobacco flavor). That's it. In the time it took them to do THAT, they authorized 100s of new deadly cigarette variants.

Prohibition never makes things magically go away. It drives them underground, into the hands of drug cartels who sell with no age-checks. Mexico's ban makes it EASIER for Mexican teens to buy e-cigarettes.

2️⃣Let’s talk e-cigarettes podcast In this podcast episode Jamie Hartmann-Boyce & Nicola Lindson discuss emerging evidence in e-cigarette research and discuss the living systematic review process. podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/lets-...

Upside-down world of Tobacco Control: World Health Organization applauds Australia for following its tobacco control recommendations and discouraging #HarmReduction. Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded non-profit gives a "Dirty Ashtray Award" to New Zealand for its "bad" tobacco control policies.

I have 2 goals: Reduce preventable DEATHS and reduce teen nicotine USE. I know these goals carry different moral weight (death is final; use changes). But these are my goals. I share CDC, NIH and peer-reviewed evidence to achieve that. e.g., Here is what's ACTUALLY happening in the USA:

Americans misinformed by #ClickBait media will be alarmed. But this decision will save tens of thousands of lives by helping people quit deadly cigarettes. Cigarettes kill half of all users. Hands-down top cause of non-communicable disease deaths (cancer, heart and lung disease).

Also, numerous academic (non-industry) studies show huge smoking cessation success among smokers who use nicotine vapes DAILY. Also, if you take your prescription meds daily as prescribed, they work better than if you only take them every now and then. Who knew? :-)

1975-2011: Average annual decline in US cigarette sales was ~2% per year. Then: 2011: 3% 2013: 4% 2015: 3.5% 2017: 5% 2019: 5% 2021: 8% 2023: 7.5% 2024: 9.2% Anyone want to guess why cigarette sales are now dropping faster than at any time in history? Approaching zero in <10 years... 1/2 ⬇️

A new era of protest songs is gaining momentum. (Is this REALLY Springsteen?)

FFS. If Pakistani MEN needed to buy these things every month they would not be seen as "luxury goods."

In plain English: If you quit smoking with nicotine patches or nicotine gum you are far more likely to relapse to deadly cigarettes than if you quit with nicotine vapes. This seems like something the 25 million Americans who smoke deadly cigarettes should know.

"Despite claims that vaping leads to youth smoking, we have seen no evidence of this ... In fact, the biggest gains in reducing smoking since [policies to regulate vaping came into place in] 2021 have been the younger age groups."

Right. But the field of tobacco control is now deeply divided. #HarmReduction skeptics ignore and downplay this good news. Journalists listen only to those harm reduction deniers, so the public remains largely unaware. Good news is not #ClickBait -worthy.

In the United States, among all adults, the age group with the steepest rate of smoking decline (by far) over the past decade is young adults, followed by those age 25-34. Same has happened in New Zealand.

It is commonly assumed that nicotine vape firms "target teens," and e-cigarettes are "popular with teens." OBJECTIVE REALITY: 44.6% drop in New Zealand teen vaping 2021-2025 60% drop in Canadian teen vaping 2019-2024 70% drop on US teen vaping 2019-2024 References below. 1/5 ⬇️⬇️⬇️

@algore09algor.bsky.social absolutely right here! Really important! Withholding safer option or more effective treatment is always 100% unethical & unjustifiable in medicine. @chancethegardener.bsky.social @jgitchell.bsky.social @sanho.bsky.social @igas2.bsky.social @ianamossyd.bsky.social

“Whole new generation addicted to nicotine" is a whopper of a lie. ...not just in USA! Wherever you look. Faster/higher rate of use of smoke free nicotine options, faster decline of smoking rate.

Several years ago, I created this Helpful Guide for Policymakers who want to protect the Billions of dollars their states receive every year from: 1) cigarette sin tax revenue; and... 2) the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. NOTE: This is a parody based on objective reality.

As you can see, electric car sales cannibalize combustion engine car sales. This is "Product Substitution." Oh...WAIT! No. Sorry. I got the labels wrong. This is actually a graph of the number of US adult nicotine vapers (green) vs. smokers (red). #FactCheck here: wwwn.cdc.gov/NHISDataQuer...

"Whole new generation addicted to nicotine" is a whopper of a lie. ...at least in the USA. Both the NIH MTF survey and the CDC National Youth Tobacco Survey show US teen nicotine "CURRENT USE" has dropped to a 50-year low. DAILY USE is near nil.

Can’t be stressed too much! Vaping now clearly world’s most effective quit smoking aid but also has huge reach. Combination means huge population impact. No wonder smoking declines rapidly if vaping rates increase!

Surveys show 80% of US physicans believe, incorrectly, that nicotine itself causes cancer, heart and lung disease. 4 out of 5 doctors are profoundly misinformed. That's bad, but it raises an interesting question: Who misinformed them? And why? www.cdc.gov/tobacco/camp...

I can order alcohol from UberEats. The courier comes to my door. Asks for my ID. Done deal. Alcohol kills 178,000 Americans every year. I cannot order #SaferNicotine alternatives that help people quit smoking. Why? Online sales are illegal. Smoking kills 490,000 every year. 😕

The "effectiveness" of any smoking cessation tool depends on 2 things: -"efficacy" (from clinical trials) - USE e.g., If a diabetes med is 100% "efficacious," but no one uses it, it is 0% "effective." Efficacy: www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.... USE: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

NEW HEALTH CANADA REPORT: Age 12-17 smoking has plummeted to <2% Age 12-17 vaping plummeted 60% from 2019-2024 Health Canada's goal was to reduce youth vaping from 15% to 10% by 2025. It's now 6%. Similar to US teen nicotine vaping: 5.9% (70% lower than 2019) www.canada.ca/en/health-ca...

What if, just hypothetically, all the coercive measures we impose to protect our angelic kids cause teens and young adults to switch to deadly cigarettes? Seriously. Has anyone *pushing* for these coercive laws ever met a teen? Were they never teens themselves? Honest questions.

The field of tobacco control is now riddled with #JunkScience. Researchers have very strong incentives to set out from the start to find (or invent) harms. In the United States, cannabis research suffered from the exact same problem back in the 20th century. That bias lasted 70 years...

A well deserved retraction of deeply flawed scientific paper. Amazed it took so long. So many other papers attacking tobacco harm reduction are deeply flawed @jgitchell.bsky.social @chancethegardener.bsky.social @algore09algor.bsky.social @ianamossyd.bsky.social @igas2.bsky.social

New report: safer nicotine alternatives eg vapes & oral nicotine pouches significantly improve smokers’ chances of quitting. See Argentina’s ⬆️ smoking rates vs Sweden’s success in ⬇️ smoking through regulated access to smoke-free alternatives such as vapes www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/vaping-...

Hypothetically: What if there are safer nicotine alternatives to the deadly cigarettes that kill 490,000 Americans every year, and 8 million worldwide? medium.com/@tchad49/whe... FYI: icotine patches and nicotine gum ARE #SaferNicotine alternatives. They're on the WHO "Essential Medicines List."

Social media is suddenly awash with posts from paid inflluencers and bots claiming, basically, "researchers just proved that e-cigarettes are lethal." None of their posts contain any link to evidence. HERE is evidence: Peer-reviewed academic (non-industry) studies... medium.com/@tchad49/whe...

Per capita cigarette consumption peaked US 1963 then ⬇️ 2% pa until recently started ⬇️ 10% pa, peaked globally 2011. Structural ⬇️ of smoking represents existential crisis for tobacco control. Enter mission creep to help tobacco control survive @jgitchell.bsky.social @chancethegardener.bsky.social

New way discovered in Canada to boost cigarette sales: ban vape flavours! Thanks tobacco control! @algore09algor.bsky.social @ianamossyd.bsky.social @igas2.bsky.social @jmenezes.bsky.social @drbfreeman.bsky.social @mikedaube.bsky.social @chancethegardener.bsky.social reason.org/commentary/c...

Did Twitter/"X" just go down? It's not working for me.

study from Queen Mary University of London, smokers who use both cigarettes and e-cigarettes at the same time known as dual use are reducing intake of harmful chemicals more likely to eventually quit smoking than those who continue to smoke only @alexwodak.bsky.social www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2...

Spent decades providing methadone/buprenorphine treatment for people struggling with street heroin problems. Many continue to use heroin for while but decreasing amounts while also working, better family life etc. Some criticised this cos abstinence didn’t happen immediately.Like dual use with vapes

Consider the logic and ethics of conducting a systematic evidence review that finds health benefits, and then recommending against the thing that causes those benefits...

Prohibiting 'flavored' nicotine vapes protects deadly cigarette sales and increases smoking, especially among young adults. FYI: I put 'flavored' in quotes because cigarette flavor is just as artificial as fruit flavor. Tobacco control calls tobacco flavor "unflavored." Which is is Orwellian.

MUST READ. Dr. Tyndall is one of the world's top experts in tobacco control.

filtermag.org/youth-vaping... @filtermag.bsky.social

It is strange that so few US journalists know this, much less inform the public: US teen use of illicit and legal adult drugs including alcohol and nicotine has dropped to an all-time low. Why are we not celebrating good news? Why are public health experts not dancing in the streets?

Very good point from @chancethegardener.bsky.social. The focus should be on what the real issue is and supporting people's health and wellbeing! 💜✊️✊🏿💚

Tobacco control focused on kicking tobacco companies in cohones as hard as possible. Reducing smoking related deaths only minor consideration. Blind to disruptive innovations replacing deadly cigarettes @jgitchell.bsky.social