Media Release
3 June 2026
For immediate release
Banning or heavily restricting smoking-cessation tools directly impedes efforts to reduce the world’s annual toll of over 7 million smoking-related deaths.
Global experts are speaking out against counterproductive policies that leave the most dangerous form of nicotine use—combustible tobacco—as the most accessible or only legally available option. Prohibition and Public Health is the theme of the 13th annual Global Forum on Nicotine, taking place this week in Warsaw, Poland.
Safer nicotine alternatives—like vapes, nicotine pouches, snus and heated tobacco products—are vastly less harmful than cigarettes and are effective smoking-cessation tools, used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. (1-4) Globally, a billion people still smoke tobacco, and smoking is a leading cause of non-communicable disease. Yet in many countries, people who could switch to safer alternatives find their access hampered, threatened or entirely blocked.
GFN26 runs from Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 June in the Polish capital, and features over 80 speakers from around the world. Registration for online access is free and most sessions will be live-streamed.
“Safer, smoke-free nicotine products will inevitably and soon globally replace combustible cigarettes,” Dr. Alex Wodak, a physician, harm reduction advocate and former president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, said in a keynote speech. The public health impact will be “akin to the introduction of vaccination.”
But the speed of this transition—and the extent to which it is helped or hindered by governments—is a matter of life or death for millions.
There has been “vehement and protracted opposition to every new harm reduction intervention for drugs,” Wodak noted, and we now see it with nicotine. Tobacco harm reduction, he explained, “is an existential threat to organisations committed to a tobacco control ‘endgame,’ which will become obsolete when [safer nicotine products] have replaced cigarettes.”
This opposition results in a world where almost 50 countries, from India to Brazil, currently ban sales of nicotine vapes, shamefully encouraged by the World Health Organization. (5-6) The European Union, meanwhile, continues to ban the smokeless tobacco product snus. The one EU member with an exemption from that ban—Sweden—recently became the world’s first ‘smoke-free’ country, with a smoking rate below 5 percent, because snus and nicotine pouches have replaced cigarettes there. (7)
“Prohibition fails by every measure,” said GFN Director Jessica Harding. “It damages public health and costs lives by encouraging people to keep smoking. And rather than eradicating safer nicotine products as intended, it fosters illicit markets that operate without consumer protections or age restrictions.”
“The biggest victims of prohibition,” Harding emphasised, “are the vulnerable populations that smoke at the highest rates, disproportionately people who are on low incomes and marginalised. It is their right to health that is under attack.”
While outright bans are common, the spirit of prohibition is also evident in spreading measures such as bans of flavoured safer nicotine products, caps on nicotine content and tax hikes that make low-risk substitutes unaffordable for the populations that most need them. Policies that reduce the availability, visibility and attractiveness of smoking-cessation tools have been shown to boost cigarette sales. (8-10)
Around the world, critical decisions are currently being weighed that will profoundly impact the lives and deaths of people who smoke—from product authorisations in the United States to the European Union revising its Tobacco Products Directive. The expert consensus at GFN26 urges decision-makers to reject prohibition and prioritise public health.
***ENDS***
Notes to Editors
References:
- https://www.rcp.ac.uk/improving-care/resources/nicotine-without-smoke-tobacco-harm-reduction/
- https://f1000research.com/articles/9-1225
- https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub9/full#CD010216-abs-0002
- https://gsthr.org/media-centre/major-new-report-shows-global-transition-from-smoking-to-safer-products-is-underway-authors-call-for-regulation-not-prohibition-to-drive-down-tobacco-related-deaths/
- https://gsthr.org/faq-smoking-and-nicotine/nicotine-vaping-products/which-countries-have-banned-the-sale-of-nicotine-vaping-products-e-cigarettes/
- https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2023-urgent-action-needed-to-protect-children-and-prevent-the-uptake-of-e-cigarettes
- https://www.can.se/app/uploads/2026/03/can-rapport-242-vanor-och-konsekvenser-2025.pdf
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5705282
- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/734689
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7491748/
Contacts:
Event Website:
Conference Audience: The Global Forum on Nicotine is the only global event that welcomes all stakeholders involved with new and safer nicotine products, including: consumers and consumer advocates; public health experts; policy analysts, parliamentarians and government officials; academics and researchers; product manufacturers and distributors; and media representatives.
Conference Organisers: The Global Forum on Nicotine is organised by Global Forum on Nicotine Limited, an events company committed to providing a platform for global public health debate, knowledge exchange and networking, underpinned by the principles of inclusiveness and multi-sectoral engagement.
Funding Declaration: The Global Forum on Nicotine does not receive sponsorship from manufacturers, distributors or retailers of nicotine products including pharmaceutical, vaping and tobacco companies. Conference-supporting organisations endorse the event, but have no financial or administrative involvement in organisation of the event.