AHRA’s response to Australia Department of Health’s Draft National Tobacco Strategy 2022-2030

The Australian Government should decide strategically to exploit the opportunities of tobacco harm reduction and move to a system of risk-proportionate regulation covering all consumer nicotine products, including vaping, heated and smokeless tobacco products, and novel oral nicotine.

This week was the deadline for submissions to the Australian Department of Health in response to their draft National Tobacco Strategy 2022-2030, which aims to improve the health of all Australians by reducing tobacco use. In order to achieve their goal of reducing adult daily smoking prevalence to <10% by 2025, the Government sought feedback from public health experts, tobacco control experts, and the Australian community.

Dr Delon Human and Dr Kgosi Letlape, co-founders of AHRA, are both regularly concerned in their professional lives with combatting the tremendous burden of disease and mortality due to combustible tobacco. They are South African physicians who have sub-specialised in harm reduction science and policy matters, relevant to alcohol, tobacco, food, drugs, HIV and Covid-19.

Upon reviewing the documents provided by the Australian Department of Health, Dr Human and Dr Letlape noted that whilst the draft Strategy contains strong MPOWER tobacco control measures, the main element missing from it is tobacco harm reduction – as outlined in Article 1d of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

As part of a 20-point document (read the full response), the AHRA founders wrote: “The Government of Australia should decide strategically to exploit the opportunities of tobacco harm reduction and move to a system of risk-proportionate regulation covering all consumer nicotine products, including vaping, heated and smokeless tobacco products and novel oral nicotine.”