Research Articles

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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). Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail

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. Click for detail