Sign the Declaration

Combustible tobacco is the primary driver of tobacco-related death and disease. In the Asia-Pacific region, the greatest oral-health burden is driven by high-risk oral tobacco products such as gutka, khaini, paan, naswar, zarda, and mawa, which are major contributors to oral cancer and other serious diseases.

Nicotine use, when separated from combustion and the most hazardous oral tobacco exposures, is dramatically less harmful than smoking and high-risk oral tobacco use, and has helped millions of adults quit cigarettes all over the world. The delivery of nicotine without burning tobacco, according to multiple evidence reviews, including those historically published by Public Health England and the Cochrane Review, has concluded that vaping and other safer nicotine products (such as heated tobacco products, nicotine pouches and snus) are substantially less harmful than smoking. Governments responsible for protecting public health should therefore enable and encourage switching from the most dangerous products to lower-risk alternatives.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control defines tobacco control as a range of supply, demand, and harm-reduction strategies aimed at improving population health. Risk-proportionate regulation is thus not optional; it is aligned with Parties' obligations and the treaty's own definition of tobacco control.

Blanket bans and excessively restrictive rules do not eliminate demand; they protect the cigarette market and drive consumers to illicit supply. Youth protection must be achieved through targeted measures such as age-of-sale enforcement, product standards, marketing restrictions, and penalties for non-compliance, while preserving adult access to regulated lower-risk products. Public health is about people and outcomes. For those who already smoke or use high-risk oral tobacco, switching completely to regulated lower-risk nicotine products is a far better option than continuing to use the products that cause the overwhelming majority of preventable harm.

Governments and delegates to the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC, together with other national and international governing bodies, must assert their authority over tobacco-control proceedings. They must require that the WHO FCTC Secretariat and related institutions operate with transparency, scientific rigor, and full consideration of the peer-reviewed evidence base, without bias. The WHO, the FCTC system, and all relevant public health authorities should cease rhetorical and selective treatment of evidence that undermines harm reduction, and instead communicate accurate, balanced, evidence-based information to support effective public health policy. Authorities should include people with lived experience to take part in the policy making process.