VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Tomasz Agencki
Smoke-Free Success: New Zealand and Sweden's Revolutions
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Transcription generated by Skrybot
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues. It's really wonderful to see you all here today in Warsaw. Firstly Sweden had Snus and that was a historically established tobacco product and then the oral nicotine pouches were designed so innovation played a role and the accessibility of these products on the market have induced a change and a transition from smoking into using these safer alternatives and because of that our smoking rates are going down. 17% of the Swedish men use Snus daily and 5% 5. 6% smoke. We are best in the world, I mean we have the lowest incidence of lung cancer within the European Union.
Sweden has taken a pragmatic approach to harm reduction and they've also embraced their culture with Snus and they've decided no this is what we're going to do, we don't care what other people are going to do, our people are more important than anything and I think that's the number one reason why Sweden has been so successful. We don't want people to die unnecessarily and prematurely. The result of that is that Sweden is well on the way to becoming smoke free. That will happen we think very soon because of these safer alternatives. We expect New Zealand to become smoke free by its target of 2025 because its current daily smoking rate is now 6. 8%.
We had very very slow reduction in smoking prevalence over the 30 years that I've been working in the field, very frustrating. Then vaping came along, a very new again innovative alternative. So the group I was working with we began to advocate for vaping to be allowed in New Zealand and for people who smoke to have access to that. And the most dramatic decrease was because they legalized vaping and the smoking rate went down from 16% down to 6. 8% in the last eight years. All these products are far safer than smoking. They all deliver nicotine but not smoke and we now know that smoke is what kills people and what makes people sick.
You smoke for the nicotine but you die from the tar. The important thing is to give people information. Tell them that if you continue smoking you will die. On the other hand if you continue getting the nicotine but in another form, well you won't die. And most people see that as a very compelling argument. Many people have ideological objections to harm reduction. They support purely an abstinence only approach which works for some people but not for many. Cigarettes bring in a lot of tax. There are vested interests that benefit from that. Some people fear new innovations.
But everybody has their own preference and in order to be able to find the best substitute for smoking for themselves would be to have plenty of options available and make sure that they are affordable so that people actually can buy them. A lot of people think that Australia and New Zealand are sister countries because we are so geographically close. And normally we do follow each other in terms of public health policy. Yes, Australia has taken a very restrictive approach to vaping. So in Australia nicotine is categorized as a medicine which requires patients who want to vape legally to see a doctor and get a prescription and of course virtually no one is doing that.
A small group of academics in Australia will not allow it, will not allow the truth to be told. And in New Zealand we were much more split on that. Black markets run by, controlled by organized crime groups and they're competing in a turf war. So we're seeing fire bombings of tobacco and vape shops. We're seeing extortion, we're seeing homicides. It just isn't working well. We had a lot of medical doctors, a lot of researchers, a lot of consumers, a lot of people involved saying we want this opportunity. This could do it for us.
My message to policy makers would be to make sure that alternative nicotine products are available, they are accessible and they are affordable. The things that doesn't kill you should be less taxed than the ones that kill you. And they should try to get people to leave smoking cigarettes and do something else. Focus on reducing death and disease and look to those countries that have managed to do that such as Sweden. The message is to take the harm reduction seriously. Keep in mind that harm reduction is a human right. This is about people, this isn't about money, this isn't about politics, this is about human beings.
We had a lot of people understand the evidence that this could really make a difference like Sweden. We could quit like Sweden and we have. The example of New Zealand and Sweden show that they can make a huge difference to population health. People first. When you do that you can pretty much do anything because you have the people working with you and not against you. .
S K R Y B O T
Skrybot. 2023, Video transcriptions from YouTube
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