The Fight Over Vaping: Lobbyists, Campaigners Clash Before Summit

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Feb, 2024) Does vaping offer an opportunity for smokers to kick their deadly tobacco habit, or pose a vast new health threat to the world's young people?

This long-smouldering question has again come to the forefront in the run-up to a tobacco summit being held by the World Health Organization next week.

It will likely be the scene of a familiar fight pitting proponents of e-cigarettes -- including some lobbyists for the tobacco industry -- against anti-smoking campaigners.

Vaping and other recent smoking innovations are expected to be high on the agenda as country representatives gather in Panama City on Monday, tasked with revising a WHO treaty on tobacco control.

E-cigarette devices do not contain tobacco. Instead, they are loaded with a liquid usually containing nicotine that is inhaled as vapour.

The process does not involve tar or carbon monoxide, the main drivers of the countless cancers and heart diseases linked to tobacco, suggesting that vaping should be less harmful than smoking.

However, the WHO has declined to acknowledge that vaping is any less dangerous than cigarettes.

This position, shared by many anti-smoking campaigners, is based on the precaution principle.

Because there is very little research on vaping dating back more than a decade, it is impossible to rule out that it could pose an unknown, long-term threat to people's health.

This lack of clarity has led to very different national policies. More than 30 countries have banned vaping, but it is largely unregulated in others.