Smoking! –
June 17, 2019 – GFN was a diverse gathering of 600 delegates—directly impacted people, advocates and activists, scientists, clinicians and social workers, and industry representatives, who also attended an accompanying tech convention—from 70 countries on every continent except Antarctica … “In Australia, we have appalling laws about nicotine delivery,” said politician Fiona Patten, leader of the country’s Reason party. “Our reduction in smoking is pretty much stagnating. When I ask the minister of health about vaping regulation, I get told that vapes are ‘a gateway for children’, that they ‘renormalize smoking.’” As harm reductionists have long known, much opposition is fundamentally due to narrow-minded tenets about what is and isn’t acceptable for other people to do. “We know that it’s not arguments about facts and evidence,” said Professor Gerry Stimson, director of GFN host organization Knowledge Action Change* and a veteran of harm reduction responses to HIV/AIDS. “It runs much deeper than that.” … “For the first time in 120 years, we could eliminate the death and disease caused by the cigarette rolling machine.”
