People with lived experience of using safer nicotine products for harm reduction take center stage on a new platform that aims to amplify their voices. THR Global collates real-life testimonies from individuals who have made a potentially life-saving switch. Visitors can read these accounts—organized by country, city, type of safer product used and so on—and submit their own testimonies if applicable.
The project stands against a status quo where nicotine consumers are treated as an afterthought, largely excluded from media representation and policy deliberations that directly impact them. Consumer advocacy groups have little or no funding, and their voices are drowned out by well-funded anti-harm reduction groups and a media landscape that credulously accepts their ideology.
“Consumers rarely get to engage where decisions are made,” as the website states. “This platform helps make those voices visible—at scale, across the world, and in direct view of decision-makers and decision influencers.”
“The stories shared by people who have used safer nicotine products to quit traditional tobacco are so vitally important, but almost never get attention in the areas it counts most.”
THR Global launched earlier in April, but it was catalyzed many years ago. The site was developed and built by Kurt Yeo—co-founder of the South African consumer group Vaping Saved My Life. Filter previously told the story of Yeo’s personal journey to smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction advocacy, which began after his father died of a smoking-related illness.
“I have always felt that the stories shared by people who have used safer nicotine products to quit traditional tobacco are so vitally important, but almost never get attention in the areas it counts most,” Yeo told Filter.
“Consumers and consumer groups almost never get a seat at the table where decisions are made, or even at some conferences where tobacco harm reduction is discussed,” he added.
THR Global is looking to change all that, by consolidating those lost voices in a way that’s coherent, empowering and harder to ignore. Yeo said he hasn’t previously been aware of a place “where this data has been extracted, aggregated and presented” at scale.
Centering lived experience and the agency of directly impacted people is considered a basic principle of harm reduction in general, and the tobacco harm reduction space should be no different. Adhering to that, as Yeo noted, means benefiting from wisdom and knowledge that can’t be found elsewhere.
“If someone spends just 5 minutes with someone who has made the switch, they will be amazed by the level of detail many can share about their journey.”
“If someone spends just 5 minutes with someone who has made the switch, they will be amazed by the level of detail many of these people can share about their journey,” Yeo said. Whether it’s the date of the last cigarette a person smoked, the number of quit attempts it took, or the exact specifications of the vape, pouch or heated tobacco product that worked for an individual—when others may not have done—those details can be key to life-changing transitions.
One of the testimonies on THR Global is by Bengt Wiberg, from Sweden. He describes a harrowing time in his life, a “moment of extreme stress” in 1991, when he found himself in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as rockets were raining down. The experience, he writes, changed “the trajectory of my life” by spurring him to quit smoking. He calls snus—the smokeless tobacco product that has made Sweden “smoke-free”—his “lifeline,” which allowed him to leave his heavy smoking behind in what he calls a “personal victory.” The experience also turned him into an “Accidental Advocate.”
Another consumer, writing anonymously from Cape Town, South Africa, is looking forward to participating in a fourth half-marathon. This person smoked for 23 years before quitting with the help of vapes. “I am the fittest and healthiest I have been since 15 years old, turning 50 this year,” they write, adding, hauntingly, that smoking “does far worse” than kill; “it robs your quality of life.”
These and other testimonies on the site are clearly powerful, but Yeo explained that one of the biggest hurdles in getting the platform going was to convince consumers to share them. This, he said, is due to “consumer fatigue” and “apathy” stemming from years of being sidelined.
“Over the years, consumers and consumer groups have submitted written testimonials and responses to whatever the call for action required,” Yeo said—often, for instance, when regulators invited public comment on proposed regulatory changes. “But they have been discouraged when their voices seem ignored or not taken seriously.”
As a result, Yeo continued, many nicotine consumers “have little trust that their story could sway anything. My view is that the issue isn’t the story, but how these stories have been presented.”
“I urge all who are interested to encourage their respective communities to share their stories. Its success relies on participation.”
THR Global offers an “alternative approach”, Yeo said: “Have this data captured centrally and displayed in a way that highlights the scale and extent of tobacco harm reduction across all population groups and regions.”
THR Global is a multi-purpose website that also tracks global policies, trends and research. But at its heart is the consumer—and for the project to have the desired impact, many more voices from around the world will need to be added.
“I urge all who are interested to encourage their respective communities to share their stories and to consider THR Global as a platform for doing so,” Yeo said. “Its success relies on participation, and the success of having THR confirmed as a very real solution relies on evidence. Consumers are central to this evidence.”
Photograph (cropped) by Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction via Flickr/Public Domain