Give People An Opportunity To Access Less Harmful Nicotine Products

According to stats released by the Burning Issue in their Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) 2020, 1.1 billion people smoke worldwide, a figure that has remained unchanged for two decades despite billions of dollars spent by governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) on tobacco control.

Of the 1.1 billion people who smoke worldwide, only 98 million are estimated to use safer nicotine products. Of those, 68 million are vapers, with the largest vaping populations in the US, China, the Russian Federation, the UK, France, Japan, Germany, and Mexico. This also implies that there are only nine safe nicotine product users for every 100 smokers globally, mainly in high-income countries.

20 million of the people globally are heated tobacco product (HTP) users; with most of them being in Japan, where cigarette sales have dropped by 32 percent since 2016 when HTP was launched. 10 million are US smokeless or sinus users.

“80 percent of the world’s smokers live in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), and eight million people die due to smoking-related diseases every year. The World Health Organization estimates that one billion people will die of smoking-related disease by 2100,” said the Issue.

When it comes to smoking, Kenya is no exception. According to Tobacco Tactics by the University of Bath, Kenya has the highest recorded smoking prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014 an estimated 11.6 percent of the adult population (2.5 million adults) used tobacco products, and ten percent of 13-15-year-olds (12.8 percent of boys and 6.7 percent girls).

By 2017, Euromonitor International estimated that the total smoking population had reached 3 million (2.7 million men and 1.3 million women), and while overall smoking prevalence had fallen slightly to 11 percent, the total number of smokers in the country continues to rise.

There is an urgent need to encourage Kenyan smokers to embrace less harmful nicotine products as compared to cigarettes according to Mr. Joseph Magero, the chairman of Campaign for Safer Alternative. Smoking is one of the most dangerous ways to consume nicotine.

“Today Kenya has more than 3 million smokers, with 8,000 of them dying every year from smoking-related diseases. England on the other hand has an ambitious plan to eradicate smoking by 2030 as their government tries to emulate Sweden in eradicating smoking altogether. They plan to do so by encouraging safer alternatives to cigarettes. The UK views e-cigarettes as important replacement therapy for smokers,” said Mr. Magero.

Mr. Magero says tobacco harm reduction supports people to quit smoking by using safer nicotine products (SNP) including vaping devices (e-cigarettes), heated tobacco products (HTP), and pasteurized oral snus, improving health and reducing deaths by enabling people to use nicotine without the smoke that causes disease.

He says despite the numerous efforts to get people to quit smoking cigarettes, there are still millions of Kenyans who chose to smoke, and the reality is that there are millions of smokers today that enjoy consuming nicotine, whether we approve of the method they chose (smoking) or not.

“You will be surprised to know that nicotine doesn’t cause smoking-related diseases, such as cancers and heart disease. Cigarette smoking and the many chemicals it exposes a person to, not nicotine itself, presents the highest risk,” said Mr. Magero.

Mr. Atakan Befrits, a Sweden-based Tobacco Harm Reduction policy advocacy, and product regulation expert say that “Kenya and Africa, in general, have a special opportunity when it comes to Tobacco Harm Reduction. Snus and tobacco-free nicotine pouches are currently legal in more than 90 percent of African countries, and this regulatory clean slate can be used to create sensible policies that help smokers make informed decisions and give smokers the opportunity to move away from cigarettes to these much safer products.”

It is not good to deny people a chance to save their lives. People have been spreading innuendos about products such as Lyft, which in a real sense, are safer than smoking.