CAPHRA Warns WHO's "Quit or Die" Approach to Nicotine Products Puts Adult Smokers at Risk

METRO MANILA, Philippines - Rezul -- The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) is calling on the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) to ground its guidance on vaping and nicotine pouches in verified science rather than an abstinence-only approach that denies adult smokers access to lower-risk alternatives.

CAPHRA's latest position paper identifies a troubling pattern across international tobacco control policy: smokers were first directed toward pharmaceutical nicotine replacement therapy and counselling, and when those interventions failed the majority of dependent users, e-cigarettes emerged as a self-directed harm reduction pathway, only to face restriction and stigma from much of the regulatory establishment.  CAPHRA argues this approach is inconsistent with behavioural science and drives nicotine use underground rather than reducing it.

Clarisse Virgino, CAPHRA's representative for the Philippines, said adults across the region are being left without viable options: "Too many people who smoke have already tried and failed with approved cessation tools. When regulators respond to vaping and nicotine pouches with prohibition instead of proportionate rules, they are closing the only off-ramp many adults have left."

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The brief stresses that the scientific consensus on relative risk is not a tobacco industry invention, pointing to independent research institutions, national health bodies, and peer-reviewed literature that consistently show smoke-free nicotine products carry substantially lower risk than combustible cigarettes. It warns that one-size-fits-all restrictions have already backfired in countries such as Australia, Thailand, and India by pushing consumers toward cigarettes or unregulated black markets, while Japan and New Zealand are held up as examples of regulation that protects youth while still enabling smokers to transition to less harmful alternatives.

CAPHRA's paper is clear that it is not asking regulators to ignore youth protection or give tobacco companies a free pass. The brief outlines several distinctions it considers essential to a proportionate, evidence-based response.

Nancy Loucas, Executive Coordinator of CAPHRA, said the WHO FCTC must return to evidence rather than ideology: "Public health policy should follow relative risk, not moral panic. Every time the world dismisses a lower-risk alternative as a corporate construct, it is the people already trapped in addiction, often from lower-income and marginalised communities, who pay the price."

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CAPHRA's brief argues that the stakes are especially high in the Asia Pacific, where international guidance strongly influences national nicotine policy, leaving many adults caught between deadly tobacco use and regulations that make safer alternatives harder to reach. The paper, authored by C.Y. Virgino and N.E. Loucas and dated September 2026, calls for a treaty framework focused not only on regulating industry conduct but also on improving outcomes for the people most affected by combustible tobacco.