Prohibition is a hard habit to break
The proposed Tobacco Bill will affect businesses, employment, the economy, public health and individual freedoms
Kurt Yeo
Father, husband, co-founder of VSML, and Tobacco Harm Reduction advocate. Quit a twenty year, forty cigarette a day smoking addiction with the help of flavoured nicotine vapes in 2014.
Over Half of Participants in 12-Week Vaping Trial Quit Smoking
Well over half of the participants in a three-month trial in which smokers tried vaping as a way of either stopping or reducing smoking successfully gave up cigarettes. Of those who continued to smoke while also vaping, 79% reduced their cigarette consumption.
An Open Letter: SA smokers looking to quit will suffer if Parliament passes baseless regulations
The Bill rightly aims to reduce the incidence of tobacco-related illness, disability and death. Surely the regulations, and those arguing for their enforcement, should draw on all available research and consider the local context if South Africa’s smokers are to truly be helped?
Vaping reaches record levels in Great Britain
In the ‘vaping revolution,’ an estimated 4.3 million people use e-cigarettes, up from around 800,000 a decade ago.
Social Experiment – The Pilot
With all participants managing to quit smoking cigarettes, the social experiment proved that vaping has the potential to be a viable tool for smoking cessation. What all this demonstrates to us as VSML, is that vaping is not the same as traditional smoking and shouldn’t be treated the same in policies and legislation.
LET US BE SCIENTIFIC IN THE VAPING DEBATE, NOT IDEOLOGICAL
There is a need to structure this debate in a way that speaks to the right parts. Preventing youth vaping and smoking remains a key and noble objective. It would be highly unfortunate and regrettable, though that, in attempting to reach this objective, we relinquish efforts to assist the over 8 million smokers in South Africa to quit smoking. It would be morally repugnant to penalise smokers in furtherance of our vendetta against the tobacco industry.