A current thought on harm reduction

 Harm reduction was a term coined in response to diseases and maladies encountered by homosexual men and by intravenous drug users in the face of the tremendous onset of the AIDS epidemic in the late 80s.  Clean needles and condoms were seen as a way to offset the worst effects of a public health crisis until an actual cure or remedy for the diseases that were killing people was found. 

Since then the term ‘harm reduction’ has been bastardized by the tobacco industry as not a way to reduce harm until a remedy for tobacco related disease is found but a way to perpetuate tobacco industry profit under the guise of public health.  This is so very evident after we see that the same arguments for the ‘harm reduction’ of spit tobacco are the same used for the novelty of electronic nicotine delivery.  There is disease related to intravenous drug use and some sexual behaviors.  There is disease related to tobacco use.  One use of the term ‘harm reduction’ wants to find a remedy for disease.  The latter uses the term as a means of continuing tobacco industry profit.  The crux is that there may be a human inclination toward intoxication and certain sexual behaviors but that does not necessarily include nicotine.

Focusing public health efforts on safe sex and clean needles responds to modified and alternative behaviors as remedial. Focusing efforts on changing nicotine delivery responds to alternative nicotine delivery as the remedy.  The first is a public health strategy. The latter is a marketing strategy.  As the multinational tobacco corporations ease their way into electronic cigarettes we see more and more of the same arguments for ignoring actual data concerning dual use and disease.  Electronic nicotine provides no significant pubic health benefit.

One must look closely to see the tobacco industry’s subtle diversion of blame and rights with harm reduction. The original use of the term regarding drug use and sexual behavior wants to see individuals change their behavior.  The tobacco industry wants to see harm reduction confuse behavior with a choice of nicotine delivery. 

The tobacco industry is not concerned with rights, but profit.

Using grammar to challenge electronic cigarette marketing

Early electronic cigarette marketing.

Seeing the growth of the popularity of electronic cigarettes I wanted to note the importance of tobacco free advocates making a collective effort at getting our language together. ANR has a presentation ice breaker where the audience is asked to say, “smoking ban.”  The presenter then congratulates them for getting that out of the way so that they never have to utter that phrase again.  We work for tobacco free spaces, clean indoor air, and safe smoke free workplaces and public space. We try to avoid saying anything about “anti tobacco” and recognize that “environmental tobacco smoke” is a polite industry way of talking about secondhand smoke. We need to make sure that we do not address the industry challenges from electronic cigarettes with their language. 

It is with this spirit that I suggest that advocates drop, as is conversationally convenient, the use of terms like “vaping” and “E vapor.”  Even the term “E cig” has the short harmless aspect of a nickname.  We might do well to consider the discipline of always using a full description of “electronic cigarettes” as another “nicotine delivery device.”  We can refer to the effluent as just that, “effluent.”  And make note to point out the “fine particulate” included in the “aerosol contamination.” 

The stakes are too high to allow the tobacco industry to define our terms.