Research Articles

Sweden's Snus Success Story, as Country Nears "Smoke Free" Status (December 12, 2022)
The Swedish government has officially confirmed that smoking rates in the country have dropped to 5.6 percent, setting up the nation to become the first in Europe to reach "smoke free" status. The designation "smoke free," at least in the European Union and the United Kingdom, refers to smoking prevalence of less than 5 percent in a given population.

ARI Newsletter October 2022 (December 06, 2022)

Today the idea of ending combustible smoking is being discussed as a reality which we may see in the next one decade. Some of the countries have already deadlines for wiping out the cigarettes. As a step towards a smoke-free future, the world is talking about the concept of tobacco harm reduction or THR.

Decision to regularize HTPs divides opinions on tobacco control in Pakistan (December 04, 2022)

ISLAMABAD: The government's decision to regularize the alternative innovative tobacco products has generated a debate on how it would affect the tobacco control initiatives in Pakistan. The federal cabinet's committee on disposal of legislative cases in its meeting on 1 December 2022 decided to regularize the heated tobacco products. The government plans to amend the law on pictorial health warning to regularize the use of heated tobacco products.

ARI Newsletter September 2022 (October 31, 2022)

More than two-thirds of health professionals (70%) in Pakistan perceive nicotine as carcinogenic, according to a new study. The study - Knowledge towards Public Health Practitioners' Knowledge towards Nicotine and Other Cigarette Components on Various Human Diseases in Pakistan.

Mapping of Global Research on Electronic Cigarettes: A Bibliometric Analysis (October 10, 2020)

Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) use has increased rapidly in the past decades and has been widely studied by scholars worldwide, whereas the research topics and development trends in this field are still unclear. This study aimed to explore the landscape of research relating to e-cigarettes. The data outputted from the Web of Science Core Collection database was used for bibliometric analysis. Frequencies and percentages were used to describe the publications' characteristics.

ARI Newsletter August 2022 (September 13, 2022)

Ahsan Mustafa, 36, started smoking in 2007. He used to smoke 15 cigarettes a day. Six months back he found vaping as a possible solution to quit combustible smoking. "Vaping helped me in giving up smoking," Mustafa told Alternative Research Initiative (ARI), at a vape store in F-11 Markaz, Islamabad.

ARI Newsletter July 2022 (August 29, 2022)

Pakistan is facing a heavy burden of disease because of combustible smoking, with more than 25 million users of tobacco in the country. Some estimates say the number of tobacco users has reached 29 million. This was stated at a consultation with the journalists of Rawalpindi and Islamabad on tobacco use in Pakistan and how to end combustible smoking in a generation.

ARI Newsletter June 2022 (July 22, 2022)
A brutal culture war is raging on the role of harm reduction to hasten the end of smoking. But as the Twitterstorms rumble on, the evidence is mounting that safer nicotine products-vapes, pouches, snus and heated tobacco-are helping millions of people around the world switch away from combustible cigarettes and other risky tobacco use.

The Right to Health Means the Right to Tobacco Harm Reduction (June 27, 2022)

A brutal culture war is raging on the role of harm reduction to hasten the end of smoking. But as the Twitterstorms rumble on, the evidence is mounting that safer nicotine products-vapes, pouches, snus and heated tobacco-are helping millions of people around the world switch away from combustible cigarettes and other risky tobacco use.

ARI Newsletter April 2022 (May 18, 2022)
We are in May 2022. Again in Pakistan, we are hearing the demands of imposing higher taxes on tobacco use to discourse cigarette smoking. As the federal and provincial governments will be announcing budgets in June, the tobacco control activists are again making demands for increasing tax on tobacco.

Tobacco Harm Reduction Can Help Pakistan Successfully Fight Smoking Epidemic (April 25, 2022)
Over the last four years, ARI has been trying to find the answer to Pakistan's combustible smoking epidemic. This problem, despite all efforts to control tobacco use, is only increasing. We believe the answer is in making Tobacco harm reduction part of the national efforts to control smoking prevalence or in fact end combustible smoking.

Tobacco Company Reports for Full Year 2021 Demonstrate Inconsistent Progress (April 18, 2022)
The first Tobacco Transformation Index found that a small group of tobacco companies made public commitments to harm reduction, but none had shifted their focus enough to ensure the accelerated decline of cigarettes and other high-risk products.

From Coercion to Empowerment (April 18, 2022)
David Sweanor has played a global role in steering the World Health Organization, governments and nongovernmental organizations to use the most powerful interventions they have to end smoking. His focus on policy measures to reduce the carnage from cigarette smoking, including a leading role on excise taxes, marketing restrictions and smoke-free policies, has long included tobacco harm reduction (THR).