Research Articles

THR: A Historic Opportunity for Our Health & Our Planet (April 12, 2022)
World Health Day is celebrated annually on 7 April, which was the founding date of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948. Each year focuses on a specific health topic of concern to people all over the world.

ARI Newsletter March 2022 (April 11, 2022)
SUKKUR, March 31: Effective and affordable smoking cessation services along with tobacco harm reduction as part of national tobacco control efforts can help to reduce combustible smoking prevalence in Pakistan.

ARI Newsletter February 2022 (March 07, 2022)
Today Pakistan has nearly 29 million users of tobacco, up from 23.9 million estimated in 2014. Tobacco is consumed in 45.5% of the households, more in poor (48.8%) than in rich (37.9%) households. The majority of these users are smokers. More than two-thirds of the people (72.5%) who work indoors in Pakistan are exposed to secondhand smoke. Annually the economic cost of smoking for the country has been estimated at Rs 615.07 billion, which is 1.6% of GDP.

Pakistan: A challenge to quitting smoking (February 28, 2022)
Tobacco was not cultivated in Pakistan when the country gained freedom. It had to be imported to meet local demand. Tobacco manufacturing began on a trial basis in 1948. Prior to 1968, however, the standard of tobacco cultivation was poor, necessitating massive tobacco imports.

Smoking cessation: A challenge for Pakistan (February 16, 2022)
Globally, tobacco is a leading cause of over 8 million deaths each year and a substantial risk factor for developing illnesses, including lung, liver, oral, and throat cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and stroke. A major fraction of these deaths-roughly 7 million are caused by direct tobacco use, whereas 1.2 million are caused by secondhand smoke exposure.

ARI Newsletter January 2022 (February 05, 2022)
Globally, tobacco is a leading cause of over 8 million deaths each year and a substantial risk factor for developing illnesses, including lung, liver, oral, and throat cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, and stroke. A major fraction of these deaths-roughly 7 million are caused by direct tobacco use, whereas 1.2 million are caused by secondhand smoke exposure.

Impediments to tobacco harm reduction in LMICs (January 19, 2022)
The Foundation for a Smoke Free World (FSFW) has a goal to advance progress in smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction (THR) with a particular focus on LMICs. To better understand some of the challenges faced in these markets, FSFW commissioned Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP), a UK end-to-end innovation partner, to identify the barriers or impediments to adoption of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) in LMIC countries.

Flavor Ban Risks Lives, Warns Cardiologist (January 14, 2022)
Restrictions on flavors in vaping products would be a drastic setback in the battle to reduce the 48,000 Canadian lives lost every year to smoking, according to a new independent study released on Jan. 11.

Ten Underlying Reasons Behind Opposition to Vaping (January 14, 2022)
For decades, tobacco control and public health organizations have sought to stigmatize tobacco, nicotine, smoking and smokers. The invention of vaping, a far safer nicotine alternative which looks like smoking, is a threat to their strongly-held views and the traditional approach.

Remaining smokers in Norway don't really want to quit (January 14, 2022)
"The results of our study shows that it might be about time to better facilitate a transition from dangerous tobacco products to less harmful ones, such as e-cigarettes and snus (dry snuff)"' says tobacco researcher Karl Erik Lund at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH).

Swedish Match Divestment: Considerations for the Tobacco Transformation Index (January 14, 2022)
In September 2021, Swedish Match AB announced that it plans to spin off its cigar business and become an entirely "smokefree" company. The spin-off is targeted for completion by the second half of 2022. As Table 1 illustrates, cigars currently represent 28% of Swedish Match's revenue, with the remainder of its portfolio mostly comprising oral tobacco and nicotine products: snus, moist snuff, chewing tobacco, and non-tobacco nicotine pouches.

How have MEPs changed in their views about new nicotine products? (December 02, 2021)
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are due to vote on amendments to a report on Beating Cancer presented by the Special Committee on Beating Cancer (BECA) on 6th December 2021 which may set policy direction for the European Union over many years. Among the many areas in which the BECA has been active - including food, alcohol, and chemical materials - tobacco is one of the most important as it is identified as one of the areas which can contribute most significantly to reducing cancer rates. Within this, one of the main topics for debate will be the role played by new nicotine products and how their sale and use should be regulated.

Harm reduction holds the key to finally overcoming tobacco (November 21, 2021)
The issue of tobacco harm reduction (THR) is not new in Europe, but now it has received support from an unlikely direction: German dentists. Several doctors associated with the University of Leipzig Medical Center and clinics in Cologne are calling for the integration of tobacco harm reduction strategies into dental care, citing the immediate health benefits that can be derived from stopping the use of combustible tobacco products. One dentist has even begun keeping novel nicotine products in his clinic to show them to patients struggling to kick conventional cigarettes.