WHO’s Misinformation ‘Will Cost Lives’
The international health experts at Smoke Free Sweden have criticised the World Health Organization (WHO) for describing safer nicotine products such as vapes as “a public health menace”, rather than recognising the role the reduced harm products play in accelerating quit attempts and a decline in smoking.
Smoke Free Sweden told Planet of the Vapes: “As the world’s premier technical health agency, WHO is empowered to support strategies that reduce morbidity and mortality even if they do not eliminate the underlying behaviour.
“Furthermore, it should base its guidance on evolving scientific knowledge, which includes comparative‑risk assessments. Equating smokefree nicotine alternatives with combustible cigarettes, is essentially putting lives at risk.”
Smoke Free Sweden’s warning follows recent WHO comments suggesting that vaping and other non-combustible nicotine products are driving tobacco use in Europe.
“This narrative ignores real-world evidence from countries where access to safer alternatives has coincided with record low smoking rates,” it added.
As reported by Planet of the Vapes earlier this week, Sweden has now officially achieved smoke-free status (defined as an adult daily smoking prevalence below 5%). Smoke Free Sweden says that this is clear proof that pragmatic tobacco harm-reduction policies work.
Sweden’s success has been driven by adult smokers switching to lower-risk alternatives such as vapes, nicotine pouches and other non-combustible products.
“Vapes and pouches are helping to reduce risk, and Sweden's smoke-free transition proves this,” commented Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden. “We should be celebrating policies that help smokers quit combustible tobacco, not spreading fear about the very tools that are accelerating the decline of cigarettes.”
The health experts warn that conflating cigarettes with non-combustible alternatives risks deterring smokers from switching and could slow progress toward reducing tobacco-related disease.
Dr Human emphasised that youth protection and harm reduction are not mutually exclusive: “It is critically important to safeguard against underage use, but this should be done by targeted, risk-differentiated regulation and proper enforcement, not by sacrificing the right of adults to access products that might save their lives.”
Smoke Free Sweden told Planet of the Vapes that it is now calling on public health bodies around the world to embrace evidence-based policies that distinguish clearly between combustible tobacco - the primary cause of tobacco-related death - and far lower-risk nicotine alternatives.
“Public health policy must be grounded in science and real-world outcomes,” Dr Human concluded. “Sweden’s experience shows that when adult smokers are given access to safer alternatives, smoking rates fall faster than almost anywhere else in the world.”
