The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) has cautioned that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent policy shift against tobacco hurt reduction not solely contradicts a long time of proof however ‘disproportionately’ harms nations like India—the place the results are much more complicated and far-reaching than in high-income settings.
With the biggest variety of tobacco customers globally, India faces a uniquely various and casual tobacco panorama, it mentioned.
India’s tobacco economic system, not like the cigarette-dominated markets of the West, consists of over 200 million smokeless tobacco customers, tens of millions of bidi people who smoke, and a casual worth chain that helps greater than 45 million livelihoods—from farmers and bidi rollers to small retailers and micro-enterprises, many led by rural girls, it added.
A transition to manufacturing safer nicotine merchandise with available uncooked supplies and sources would shield these livelihoods and handle the general public well being hurt from combustion and harmful oral merchandise, it additional mentioned.
“This isn’t just a public health misjudgment—it’s an act of economic and public health harm, an economic blow to the most vulnerable,” mentioned Nancy Loucas, Executive Coordinator of CAPHRA in a press release.
“WHO’s donor-influenced policy shifts that prioritise cessation-only approaches may work in Manhattan or Oslo, but in Munger or Malda, they can exacerbate health inequities and erode India’s right to decide its own policy path,” she mentioned.
According to CAPHRA the WHO traditionally supported a three-pillar strategy: prevention, cessation, and hurt reduction. Its personal tobacco regulation group, TobReg, as soon as acknowledged that options akin to e-cigarettes and heated tobacco merchandise, when correctly regulated, may save lives—particularly for folks unable or unwilling to give up.
“But in recent years, under the growing influence of philanthropic donors like Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Gates Foundation, WHO has shifted toward a prohibitionist agenda—rejecting innovation and undermining the very tools that once showed promise for global tobacco control” CAPHRA mentioned.
CAPHRA has argued that this shift mirrored a “dangerous global double standard”.
“While countries like Japan and Sweden have seen smoking rates plummet due to legalised safer alternatives, WHO now urges low- and middle-income countries to ban the very tools that others are using to succeed,” it mentioned.
“If WHO’s position is truly grounded in science and health equity, then why has it failed to impose these bans in high-income countries like the United States, United Kingdom, or Japan? The reality is that in those countries, prohibition is politically infeasible, economically disruptive, and socially unpopular,” it added.
