The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) awarded a grant to the U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit to “expand the capacity of Filter magazine to disseminate informative and evidence-based information about tobacco harm reduction and related issues.” The Influence Foundation is a journalistic organization dedicated to a variety of health-related harm-reduction causes,
FSFW Grant Bolsters Exemplary Tobacco-Harm-Reduction Journalism
“The Influence Foundation’s mission is to advocate through journalism for rational and compassionate approaches to drug use, drug policy, and human rights,” explains Will Godfrey, The Influence Foundation’s president and executive director, who also serves as editor-in-chief for Filter. “The central activity of our nonprofit is to operate Filter, which publishes daily online articles at filtermag.org covering these areas and many intersecting issues through a harm-reduction lens.”
Through research and reporting, Filter has been able to “highlight international examples of tobacco harm-reduction success stories — for example, in Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,” said Godfrey. “Such examples serve not only as inspiration, but also “have a great deal to teach us.”
Filter’s harm-reduction-specific editorial mandate is disseminated via five distinct vertical channels: politics and legalization, use and harm reduction, intersections and injustice, drugs and money, and media and culture. In addition to detailed and painstakingly researched multimedia reportage, Filter offers insightful commentary provided by highly regarded tobacco-harm-reduction subject matter experts, including Martin Cullip, an international fellow at the watchdog Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center, who frequently writes on the intersection of government policy and tobacco harm reduction for Filter and other media outlets.
Cullip’s recent pieces for Filter have given close scrutiny to the actions of “harm-reduction deniers” at the World Health Organization and a blatant vaping misinformation campaign promulgated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which, in Cullip’s considered opinion, runs the gamut from counterintuitive to downright dangerous.
For his CDC exposé, Cullip cites a December 2022 Society of Addiction editorial co-authored by then-Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and a coterie of public health experts culled from five major U.S. universities warning that “health misinformation is a serious threat to public health,” and ending it “is a moral and civic imperative.” Yet, the authors noted, “[The] CDC continues to falsely attribute a 2019 outbreak of lung injuries, misnamed ‘EVALI’ (e-cigarette, or vaping product, use-associated lung injury), to nicotine vaping products.”
“The CDC has done its utmost to deter Americans from switching to safer nicotine products which can help them quit. This prolongs smoking harms rather than reducing them,” Cullip concluded.
But far from being all doom and gloom, Cullip also heralds heartening efforts by enlightened governments in places such as Canada, which have begun to forge meaningful policy to implement positive tobacco-harm-reduction outcomes. “There are subtle signs that Canada may be moving away from opposition to tobacco harm reduction that has stood in stark contrast to many of its other drug policies,” Cullip wrote. “In applying harm reduction to tobacco, it would join a small coalition of countries with a similarly enlightened approach. This would be great news for Canadians who smoke and for the country’s strained health care system.”
In the News: Tobacco Harm Reduction and At-Risk Groups Around the Globe
Members of at-risk groups, particularly those marginalized by societal or economic constraints, are especially vulnerable to the perils of smoking. That’s part of the reason the broad dissemination of news regarding the fight against the devastating global impact of combustible tobacco production and consumption is crucial to the missions of both the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and the Influence Foundation. Providing detailed, cutting-edge information on the latest advances achieved via means of scientific research, policy implementation, agricultural transformation, and the introduction of alternative, less harmful products can lead to real and meaningful change.
As part of its effort to effect positive change, particularly for at-risk segments of the population, Filter produces and presents compelling documentary content assembled by activists on the harm-reduction front lines, such as senior editor Helen Redmond, a Harlem, New York-based multimedia journalist whose beat covers methadone, vaping, and nicotine. Redmond is a gifted filmmaker, licensed social worker, and assistant professor at New York University, and in addition to her methadone-focused cinematic studies, Liquid Handcuffs and Swallow This, she’s one of the creative forces behind Switch? A Documentary About Smoking and Schizophrenia.
“Does anyone care that people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders have devastatingly high rates of smoking?” Redmond recently blogged while sharing a documentary she co-produced on the matter, Switch? A Documentary About Smoking and Schizophrenia. “Research has found the prevalence to be ‘at least two to three times that in the general population,’ with rates in some study cohorts exceeding 80%. Estimates are even higher than for people with other mental health diagnoses and other vulnerable populations.”
In search of answers, Redmond and fellow journalist Marilena Marchetti traveled to Sicily to interview participants in the Genesis Trial. The groundbreaking study, conducted by clinical psychologist Dr. Pasquale Caponetto and his colleagues at Italy’s University of Catania, investigated the effectiveness of nicotine vape intervention for schizophrenic patients who smoked.
The study findings were clear: When complete smoking cessation simply wasn’t a viable option, alternative choices such as vaping offered real hope for better outcomes. “People with schizophrenia die not from schizophrenia, but from smoking,” Caponetto stated adamantly. “People with schizophrenia can improve their quality of life and there is a solution.”
How Solid Journalism Leads to Improved Harm-Reduction Outcomes
Confronting challenging issues head-on and producing fact-based stories that articulate the true benefits of tobacco harm reduction — now and in the future — will continue to drive the Influence Foundation’s trajectory. Godfrey believes the response to Filter’s 2022 efforts that shed light on a broad scope of tobacco-harm-reduction-related topics has already achieved measurable results.
“We’ve seen many organizations and prominent individuals in the general harm-reduction space share [tobacco harm reduction] material and comment on THR issues; some that drove a lot of engagement and discussion included reporting on the intersections of THR and wider harm reduction, including conversations with harm reductionists who hadn’t previously included THR in their remit,” says Godfrey. As the old adage goes, “Knowledge is power” and nowhere is knowledge — and the news that delivers it — more important than when that power can be a force that creates positive change.
