CAPHRA says its time to stop targeting those who help people who smoke

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - June 7, 2026 - PRLog -- Public health officials who attack people helping smokers quit are betraying basic harm‑reduction principles, the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) says.

Responding to discussions at this year's Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN26) in Warsaw, CAPHRA said experts warned that tobacco harm reduction is treated as an exception, even though harm reduction is standard for drug use, HIV and hepatitis.

"Public health embraces harm reduction for heroin and HIV, but fights it for nicotine," said Nancy Loucas, Executive Coordinator of CAPHRA. "That is ideology, not evidence — and it leaves the heaviest‑smoking communities behind."

Speakers at GFN26 highlighted how, in some countries, officials and campaigners now focus on attacking vaping advocates, specialist retailers and clinicians who support switching to safer nicotine products, instead of focusing on the cigarettes causing the harm. CAPHRA said this hostility sends smokers a clear message: stick with cigarettes.

"Harm reduction products like vapes, pouches, heated tobacco and snus are vastly less harmful than smoking," Loucas said. "Prohibition and moral panic keep cigarettes as the default and push people toward unregulated markets."

CAPHRA is urging health agencies to apply the same harm‑reduction principles to nicotine as to other drugs, adopt risk‑based regulation that protects youth while preserving adult access, engage directly with people who smoke and vape, and stop vilifying those who help smokers move away from combustible tobacco.

"Every time public health attacks people who help smokers quit, it protects cigarettes," Loucas said. "That has to stop."

https://www.caphraorg.net