Stories

What happens when the easiest product to punish is also one of the tools helping people leave cigarettes behind? The government’s vape crackdown may target real concerns, but the consequences will depend on whether it separates illegal youth sales from adult harm reduction. Make vaping harder to access, understand or trust, and some smokers may simply stay with cigarettes. Tough policy is not the same as effective policy.

Academic research can change the tobacco debate when it looks beyond assumptions and asks what is happening in people’s lives. Work from Manchester Metropolitan University adds to a growing body of evidence on nicotine use, harm reduction and the real-world factors that shape behaviour. That matters because policy built only on fear or ideology will miss the people it is meant to help. Better evidence gives public health a better chance of reducing smoking-related harm.

The forgotten smoker is not the one who refuses to listen. It is the person who has heard every warning, tried to quit, and still finds cigarettes hard to leave behind. Public health cannot stop at telling people what they already know; it must offer routes that are realistic enough to use. Safer nicotine alternatives matter because they may reach the people traditional tobacco control keeps missing.

Strange alliances often shape bad policy. In tobacco control, moral campaigners and commercial interests can end up pulling in the same direction when restrictions make legal, safer alternatives harder to access. The result is a paradox: policies presented as public health protection may leave the cigarette market stronger. Following the incentives matters, because the people harmed most are usually the smokers with the fewest good options.

Snus changed what we know about nicotine, smoke and disease risk. Decades of epidemiological evidence show that removing combustion can dramatically change the health profile of nicotine use — a lesson now highly relevant to nicotine pouches. The question is how carefully that evidence can be applied to newer smoke-free products without ignoring important differences between categories. Better policy starts with understanding what long-term data can tell us, and where new evidence is still needed.

Lawmakers and prosecutors in the Philippines are urging stronger efforts to combat the rising illicit tobacco trade due to ineffective seizures. They emphasize the need for convictions to deter criminal networks in the lucrative trade. A recent study estimated a significant tax revenue loss of ₱141 billion ($2.3 billion) over two years. Proposed actions include an Anti-Illicit Trade law to enhance prosecutions, better coordination, and the use of track-and-trace technology. Prosecutors highlight the need for additional evidence in ongoing cases.