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Comment by jijji | Hacker News Reader

you have a tobacco company funding studies under the name "Foundation for a Smoke-Free World" that show smoking is not harmful... what else could go wrong?

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My country's finally banning smoking inside restaurants and bars, and wouldn't you know it, it appears "heated tobacco products" are immune to the ban because it's somehow a smokeless product, despite definitely emitting smoke. And while the ban will only come into effect mid-December, there's already a concerning amount of "IQOS-only" places, and there's still ashtrays in such places, they're just slightly more discreet in their design.

And to top it all off the public consensus is that it stinks worse than a cigarette. So if nothing changes by then, we're gonna be in this paradoxical situation in which you can't smoke a strawberry-flavoured vape containing no tobacco, but you can smoke "smokeless" "tobacco product", which is totally not a cigarette 2.0 with no proven health benefits in comparison to cigarettes.

> studies under the name "Foundation for a Smoke-Free World" that show smoking is not harmful

Is that what the studies show? I was looking for that in TFA but all I saw was secrecy and suspicion (not that suspicion isn't warranted, given past behavior, but also the tobacco companies were required to fund smoking-cessation research as part of various settlements, were they not?)

Reading the linked report: https://exposetobacco.org/wp-content/uploads/STOP_Report_Add... it seems that the foundation was used specifically to fund think-tank-like outputs obliquely advocating for PMI's line of "heated tobacco products"—an e-cigarette-like product that has been shown by regulatory agencies to be identical to human health as smoking a real cigarette (since it not only contains addictive nicotine, like a normal nicotine ecig, but also the entire tobacco leaf itself, leading to similar rates of smoker cancer, secondhand smoke symptoms, etc, even though the different combustion processes means they don't create as much visible smoke or odor).

These HTPs have become very successful in Japan, and although PMI publishes most of the research they use to argue for them directly (for example, showing they have 3x less particulates than cigarettes, ignoring that they have similar health outcomes), the FSFW seems to play more of a "think tank" advocacy role in commenting on government policies and initiatives that would stand in the way of the rollout of these HTPs (from the report):

    There is overwhelming evidence that tobacco tax increases
    are effective in reducing tobacco use (232), including evidence
    that it is the only intervention proven to reduce inequalities in
    smoking (233, 234). Despite this, on World No Tobacco Day in
    2019, Marewa Glover, head of the [FSFW]’s “Centre of Research Excellence” in New Zealand, spoke out against increases
    in tobacco excise. In line with the tobacco industry argument
    that higher tobacco taxation is regressive (235), she claimed
    that such measures would disproportionately affect Māori
    populations (236). In August 2019, Glover also argued against
    the proposed ban on smoking in cars in New Zealand, saying (to
    much derision)(237) that “scientific studies have not proven that
    exposure to cigarette smoke in the car causes disease” (238).

Luckily, seems like they've already been rejected by most governmental orgs:

    In September 2017, the month of the Foundation’s inception, WHO released a statement saying that “WHO will not
    partner with the Foundation. Governments should not partner with the Foundation and the public health community
    should follow this lead” (267).
    In 2019, hundreds of global public health experts also called for governments and the public health community to
    reject collaboration with the Foundation (268).

They are now called global action to end smoking. Makes you think about all the so called good organizations that just don’t seem to be able to solve the problem. Quite smart though; fund an opposing team, market them , they become a lighting rod for all activism, then make sure to knee cap their ability to do anything through highly burrocratic and convoluted power structures, ensure your team is the CEO. And, ensure that they consider so many variables such that they can never make decisions. Or endlessly have good people write reports that no one reads. In fact, make sure that no one reads them and, have authorization on the final draft to ensure only vague and implausible solutions are proposed. So smart. laughable really.

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