4 minute read
Prepare for Panama
from USA - 1
While COP9 ended up being of little consequence for vapers, the upcoming COP10 conference in Panama in 2023 should be totally different.
Words: Patrick Griffin
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The UK is being encouraged to forge alliances with other pro-vaping countries to help turn the tide of anti-vaping propaganda around the world.
Daniel Pryor, Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute, proposed the move in an effort to change the global agenda on tobacco harm reduction. Speaking at World Vape Show London, he encouraged pro-vaping governments to come together ahead of the COP10 tobacco control conference in Panama next year.
He also said that consumers had a vital role to play in giving governments the push needed to help make the change.
Pryor said: “When the next COP comes around, the government will remember the thousands of petitions, letters and consultation responses they have received on this issue.
“Those involved in government and public health can also expect a big consumer advocacy push next time and that will put pressure on them to really put forward the tobacco harm reduction case.
“The UK should make alliances with other countries with similar views to change the global agenda, as well as defending the UK’s domestic record on tobacco harm reduction.”
Martin Cullip from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center said the extra time to prepare for the Panana City conference was a ‘godsend’ to the pro-vaping community. He said it was promising that countries including China, The Philippines and Malaysia had all recently decided to regulate, rather than ban, e-cigarettes.
Cullip added: “If we have two more years of more countries doing the same, then the representation at the next COP could be a lot different than it is now.”
Could cocaine vapes be a smart new way to crack an old addiction problem?
Vaping technology can be used to administer many drugs other than nicotine, reports ECigIntelligence
Vaping technology has been employed for a while now as another way of using cannabis and cannabis derivatives, legally or illegally. The argument for making cannabis legal and regulated was demonstrated vividly by the 2019 EVALI crisis, which revealed just how dangerous it can be when mixed with inappropriate dilutants. While moves are afoot now in several parts of the world to legalise or decriminalise cannabis use, the logical argument for doing so – that legal, regulated stuff is a lot safer than stuff made and distributed criminally – could be applied equally well to pretty much any kind of recreational drug. At the same time, there is a growing acceptance of the need to use legitimate, clean drugs to help addicts off the bad stuff.
So how about clean, well regulated and administered vapes to deliver appropriately judged doses of crack cocaine, say? “It’s a thought I’ve had for a very long time,” toxicologist Fabian Steinmetz says. The knee-jerk response of generations of lawmakers and reporters brought up in the long era of prohibition will throw up their hands in horror at the very idea, exclaiming in unison that drugs are Bad, and hard drugs are Very Bad. But it’s worth listening with an open mind to what Dr Steinmetz has to say. He is lead author of a recently published paper, “The cocaine-e-cigarette – a theoretical concept of a harm reduction device for current users of smokable cocaine forms”, which makes a strong case for a crack vape device as a harm reduction tool for addicts.
It says: “While strategies based on drug prohibition did not eradicate the consumption of smokable cocaine forms, prohibition itself led to many harmful effects, such as criminalisation, stigmatisation, unpredictable smokable cocaine forms quality and hardly any safer-use education.” It goes on to suggest “a cocaine-e-cigarette which could be prescribed to problematic users of smokable cocaine forms to reduce the risk of lung damage, exclude potentially harmful adulterants, limit intake (by formulation and/or technical settings) and also to bring users of smokable cocaine forms into the medical system”. Proponents of nicotine vaping as a harm reduction system may not readily take gladly to any association of e-cigs with a drug generally viewed as more problematic. But it’s hard to resist the view that what works for nicotine addicts might work just as well for victims of other addictions. So far, Steinmetz’s idea is just an idea. But as he says: “The general principle to put drugs in e-cigarettes, I mean, this is already pretty old school.”
ECigIntelligence (www.ECigIntelligence.com) is the leading provider of detailed global market and regulatory analysis, legal tracking, and quantitative data for the e-cigarette, heated tobacco and combustible-alternatives sector worldwide.
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