Distinguished delegates, dear colleagues and friends,
Good afternoon and thank you for your interest in this very important issue.
The world has made impressive progress against tobacco use.
Since 2000, the proportion of men using tobacco has fallen from around 50 percent to 40 percent, and female tobacco users have dropped from almost 17 percent to less than 7 percent. We expect those trends to continue.
At the same time, the past decade has seen the emergence of a new nicotine phenomenon: e-cigarettes.
These products are designed to attract users, have proliferated in many markets around the world, and in some countries, children are using them in large numbers.
E-cigarettes come in multiple forms, with multiple characteristics, presenting multiple challenges to national authorities.
There have been divisive debates as to whether e-cigarettes can help smokers quit, but their potential role as a population-level tobacco cessation intervention remains unclear.
But one thing is clear: we must be guided by science and evidence, not the marketing campaigns of the tobacco industry – the same industry that has engaged in decades of lies and deceit to sell products that have killed hundreds of millions of people.
Here’s what we do know: e-cigarettes generate toxic chemicals, which have been linked to harmful health effects such as cardiovascular disease and lung disorders.
And there is a growing body of evidence in some countries that adolescents who use e-cigarettes at least double their chance of starting to smoke cigarettes later in life.
Although there is a lot we still don’t know about these products, we know enough to protect our children from their ill-effects.
Thank you.