My talk today is about the consumer perspective of how public health is supposed to be working for our rights and the things that we need and how it is not happening.
Public health is the science and art of promoting health, preventing disease and prolonging life, through the organized efforts of society.
We as consumer advocates believe that the global public health organizations have failed us, not just us but everyone because we have all experienced harm from the tobacco pandemic.
When will tobacco harm reduction be treated equally, and held to the same respect as other harm reduction?
We all practice harm reduction every day, we don’t even think about it because it’s so ingrained in who we are and the lives that we lead yet when it comes to tobacco harm reduction, nope, that’s not acceptable.
How is it that harm reduction is embraced and celebrated in every other aspect of public health except for when it comes to tobacco?
Most of the people that are in tobacco control, public health, and the experts, entered their field for the same reason that we advocate, they have been impacted by the harm of tobacco.
Failure within the World Health Organization is a recurring theme.
The FCTC has failed and continues to fail the 8 million people who are going to die this year and the appeal of people that are going to die next year by not embracing tobacco harm reduction.
The missing strategy in WHO and FCTC policies is harm reduction.
The opposition is not grounded in 21st-century technological advances and is unduly influenced by vested interests who promote nicotine abstinence.
When the FCTC was written, that treaty was written, it was to prevent harm from tobacco, specifically combustion, somehow in the last four years the focus is gone not from tobacco but to nicotine.