The World Health Organization s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is scheduled to take up the issue of e-cigarettes at its meeting next month in Seoul and it appears as though the deck is stacked against advocates of tobacco harm reduction. This means more bad news for addicted smokers. A report by the convention secretariat to the countries attending basically urges them to ban e-cigarettes, saying they are products resembling cigarettes and could therefore undermine the denormalization of tobacco use ¦Parties may also wish to consider whether the sale, advertising, and even the use of electronic cigarettes can be considered as promoting tobacco use, either directly or indirectly.
Boston University School of Public Health professor and ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Siegel picks apart this reasoning on his blog:
What does the World Health Organization think that smokers who are using electronic cigarettes are going to do if these products are taken off the market? Quit smoking? Not likely. The truth is that if taken off the market, most ex-smokers who have quit by using electronic cigarettes are going to return to cigarette smoking. Thus, a ban on these products will not have any effect on reducing smoking and therefore will not contribute in any way to the de-normalization of smoking.
Moreover, smokers who are using electronic cigarettes are typically those who are unable to quit. If not for electronic cigarettes, they would be smoking, not ex-smokers. Thus, the use of electronic cigarettes plays no role in normalizing smoking behavior. On the contrary, it helps many smokers get off of cigarettes and thus reduces smoking prevalence.
ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says it s an idiotic antithesis of a public health benefit to suggest banning e-cigarettes just because they resemble smokes: It s as if I were a prohibitionist in the early days of the 20th century, and I said that cough syrup should be banned because it resembles alcohol.
Incidentally, the United States is not a party to the WHO s framework convention on tobacco control but 176 other countries are, making it an influential group.