The 5th Scientific Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction and its related control will be held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens, Greece during the two-day period from Wednesday 21 to Thursday 22 September, which will be addressed by a total of 70 speakers from 25 countries, including Marewa Glover from New Zealand, who directs the Centre of Research Excellence for Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking COREISS and the world renown cardiologist and researcher of the University of Patras Konstantinos Farsalinos.
New Zealand indigenous researcher and pharmacologist Marewa Glover will give a speech on the new legislative reforms proposed in her country of origin New Zealand under the title “Current challenges that governments face in smoking control – the New Zealand case” where further anti-smoking measures are also expected to be discussed as threatened for their implementation by the current Labor government of the country, raising the age limit for the sale of cigarettes by one year each year and reducing their nicotine content by 95% as well as shrinking the stores where they are sold equally drastically to 500 out of 8000.
Marewa Glover was nominated for New Zealander of the year in 2019 and founded the COREISS research centre funded with one and a half million dollars indirectly by Philip Morris International through the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World that receives from the multinational tobacco industry a billion dollars in 12-year instalments. She was excluded multiple times in her country and in Australia from the public debate and her participation in the shaping of the health policy of the countries of Oceania based on the opinions she expresses even before receiving funding from the multinational tobacco industry. The conference where she will speak in Athens on Wednesday at 12:30 local time is organized by the scientific association SCOHRE which has Greek academics and scientists from founding and administrative members and executives.
The 5th conference on tobacco harm reduction held every year at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens, Greece this year includes 3 keynote speeches and 7 roundtables as well as the reading of a total of 30 papers. One of the round tables is on the theme “Are policies guided by the value they may have for society or by the scientific evidence? How is “irrefutable evidence” determined for politicians? How should scientists act when they are in favour of creating a policy? How does this apply to Tobacco Harm Reduction?”
Another round table is entitled “Should smokers be encouraged to switch and transition to less harmful nicotine delivery systems? Does switching to less harmful products mean that we are giving up on our ultimate goal, a completely smoke-free future? How ethical is it to put up barriers for smokers who could benefit from switching to less harmful products – less obviously than they would benefit from quitting smoking altogether, but certainly more than from continuing to smoke?”
Another roundtable discussion is on the topic “Can tax policies and increased prices push consumers to use less harmful products? This session will discuss how health economics can contribute to policy formulation and whether government policies could use taxation or other economic tools to modify consumer behaviours and encourage the replacement of recognized highly harmful products with others that are less harmful. Could the change in smoke-free products reduce health spending?”
Admission to the conference for scientists up close costs € 120 with early registration until August 19 and € 250 with the possibility of registration until Sunday, September 19 and is free of charge for online attendance while students and journalists enter for free in both cases. Online business monitoring and up close costs €600. For more details, the conference website can be found at https://www.nosmokesummit.org/ and the organizers’ website at https://www.scohre.org/ .
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