Cigarettes are very harmful, but smoking addiction is too difficult to quit, what can be done to save the lives of smokers?New Zealand, the world's "top student" in tobacco control, recently revealed the secret of success, and its latest research proves that e-cigarettes can effectively help smokers quit smoking, and providing e-cigarettes to smokers is more effective than increasing tobacco-related taxes.
New Zealand** has long recognized the harm reduction effects of e-cigarettes, and as early as 2018, it publicly supported its smokers to switch to e-cigarettes. In order to let the public know more about the positive impact of e-cigarettes, the New Zealand Health Promotion Agency has also set up a channel dedicated to popularizing the truth of e-cigarettes. According to the channel, the real harm of cigarettes comes from more than 4,000 harmful substances produced by tobacco combustion, and e-cigarettes do not contain the tobacco combustion process, which can reduce the harm of cigarettes by 95%.
Research shows that the prevalence of smoking in New Zealand (total number of cigarette users * 100%) has been declining year by year as the rate of e-cigarette use has risen. From 2016 to 2020, the rate of e-cigarette use in New Zealand increased from 009% to 35%, smoking rates from 142% down to 116%。In 2021, the prevalence of smoking in New Zealand fell below 10% for the first time (94%), between 2020 and 2021, more than 150,000 New Zealand smokers quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes.
The official website of the World Health Organization describes smoking cessation as "quitting tobacco", that is, quitting tobacco. In order to reduce tobacco consumption, many countries have increased tobacco taxes and increased tobacco products** to control tobacco, which was the main plan adopted by New Zealand in the early years. But even a doubling of New Zealand's tobacco tax would have had little effect. Moreover, the tax hike could not solve the problem of cigarettes harming the health of smokers, and New Zealand's public health environment was not significantly improved by the strong tobacco control policy at that time.
At the same time, the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in assisting smoking cessation has been confirmed by a large number of studies. High-quality evidence from international medical organizations such as Cochrane suggests that e-cigarettes can be used to quit smoking, and the effect is better than nicotine substitution**. New Zealand, which saw the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as an aid in quitting smoking, began to recommend e-cigarettes to smokers.
New Zealand data has proven that promoting e-cigarettes is more useful than raising tobacco taxes in reducing national smoking rates. Delon Human, a tobacco control expert and former secretary general of the World Medical Association, said. According to ** report, the number of e-cigarette stores in New Zealand far exceeds that of KFC and McDonald's stores, and more and more New Zealand smokers are switching to e-cigarettes to quit smoking and reduce harm.
Not only New Zealand, but also Sweden has achieved significant tobacco control results through the promotion of e-cigarettes. According to the 2023 report "The Swedish Experience: A Roadmap to a Smoke-Free Society", Sweden is about to reduce the smoking rate to less than 5% due to the promotion of harm-reducing products such as e-cigarettes, becoming the first "smoke-free" country in Europe and the world.
The World Health Organization confirms that Sweden has a 41% lower cancer incidence than other EU member states, and Sweden is also the country with the lowest incidence of lung cancer and the lowest mortality rate among men from smoking in Europe. "We want more public health agencies to see the data from Sweden and New Zealand. These examples show that providing e-cigarettes to smokers can save their lives. Delon Human said.