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Daily Express
3 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Express
Docs speak up for safer smokeless tobacco, nicotine usage
Published on: Thursday, July 24, 2025 Published on: Thu, Jul 24, 2025 By: David Thien Text Size: 'How can we convince those in power that this consumer-led public health revolution can lead to real-world change?' asked Mark, who hosted the first public event on vaping in Vancouver in 2018. WARSAW: Everything possible should be done to increase smokers' access to tobacco harm reduction initiatives and increase the acceptance of such products, make them as easy to get as possible so as to get as many people off cigarettes. However, Prof. Dr Mark Tyndall, a professor at the University of British Columbia, and previously Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, said this is not happening. Speaking at the 12th Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN 2025) at the Warsaw Presidential Hotel from June 19 to 21, he said consumer advocates and tobacco harm reduction campaigners face significant challenges engaging lawmakers and public health organisations, including structural opposition to safer nicotine products. 'How can we convince those in power that this consumer-led public health revolution can lead to real-world change?' asked Mark, who hosted the first public event on vaping in Vancouver in 2018. 'I think the future of safer tobacco products is promising, but it's taking far too long and we really need to find ways to speed up this transition that I think will inevitably occur, but there's things that we can do right now.' He said based on his experience community activism is extremely important. 'We need to encourage and get people who have started to vape and people in the community who can really advocate for themselves and have a voice. 'If you have a heart attack, you see a cardiologist. If you have lung cancer, you'll see an oncologist. If you have bad COPD, you'll see a respirologist. They don't really think for one minute about prevention. 'They're really focused on helping people in their current situation and don't really look at the big picture of prevention. 'But the point is we've really created a whole medical infrastructure around treating these chronic illnesses due to smoking, and nobody's in a big hurry to change it. 'Also, tobacco control organizations aren't in a big hurry to change things, so they've really had decades of working on abstinence-based programs.' He said when safer products became available, they were constantly cautious, but now instead of starting to discuss the possibilities of how these could help people and help people's health, they just continue to double down. 'And now, 10 or 15 years into it, it's really hard for these tobacco control organizations to take a big breath and say maybe we were wrong all along, and that's probably not likely to happen because then people would ask, well, what else have you been wrong about for the last 10 or 15 years? 'So there's a lot of credibility at store there, and it's very hard, I think, for people to change course when they've doubled down and dug in so deep against these safer products.' He said in many countries tobacco companies aren't allowed to say that vaping is safer and that's a huge problem as far as getting the message out there,' Prof. Dr Mark Tyndall said. He remains committed to seeing an end to combustible cigarettes through vaping and other low-risk nicotine products. His book, 'Vaping Behind the Smoke and Fears', was launched at the occasion. Malaysia is one of those countries where it is not permissible to say that vaping is safer than smoking. It is well established that nicotine does not cause smoking-related diseases, which result instead from the inhalation of toxicants in tobacco smoke. Vapes, pouches, pasteurised snus and heated tobacco products (HTPs) all deliver nicotine without combustion, leading to substantially reduced health risks in comparison to continued smoking. These alternative products to cigarette smoking should be encouraged as substitutes for smokers who can't quit. The new regulations to enforce Malaysia's Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024 (Act 852), which replaced the previous version, now also include vape and e-cigarettes equally under expanded and updated controls. Vape and e-cigarettes are treated similarly to cigarettes and tobacco products. Malaysia currently spends an estimated RM16 billion annually treating smoking-related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Public access to alternative smoking products should be encouraged as preventive measures to minimise smoking-related illnesses. Dr Carolyn Beaumont said: 'We shouldn't need to put our reputation on the line, risk media censure and medical board discipline amid false accusations of being beholden to the tobacco industry. "But as a doctor, that's exactly what I've experienced. No wonder tobacco harm reduction isn't attracting more health professionals.' She hopes the voice of health professionals continues to play a leading role in promoting Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR). Not only doctors, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, social workers, psychologists, to name a few. 'The impact a single health professional can have on helping many smokers is remarkable,' she said, adding although they won't easily get media or politicians on side any time soon, 'we must focus on educating health professionals about tobacco harm reduction.' It's simply about offering smokers more solutions, about acknowledging that many don't want to give up nicotine and that they're sick of being lectured to and judged by doctors. 'I'm not telling doctors to ignore existing replacement therapies. I'm simply telling them there's another extremely effective tool in the toolbox. I want to briefly talk about the future of nicotine products, in particular nicotine pouches. 'And all I can say about this is three things. Innovate, regulate, educate. Whatever helps a smoker quit has to be considered seriously, and not just dismissed as yet another tobacco industry ploy to addict the next generation. 'We could remain open to new nicotine technologies and at the same time ensure they remain regulated and as safe as possible,' Dr Carolyn Beaumont. Paddy Costall said the aim is to win over medical professionals one at a time.
2 days ago
- Science
Inside the inferno: Researchers search for answers within Jasper's charred landscape
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. There are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking. Lori Daniels I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest, said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking. It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. [It's] a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments, she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels's research. It's also undertaking a series of investigations and reviews related to the fire, it said in a June statement. Changing forests Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand, Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. It was really hard for us to go back there, Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. But I think that we can learn so much from this fire. Fire tornadoes Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado, he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before, Jaffe said. There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex. The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. WATCH | Report suggests Alberta hampered Jasper wildfire response: However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months. Matthew Scace (new window) · The Canadian Press
National Observer
3 days ago
- Science
- National Observer
Wildfire, tornado researchers search for answers in Jasper's charred forest
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. "I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest," said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. "And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking." It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. "(It's) a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments," she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels' research. It's also undertaking a "series of investigations and reviews related to the fire," it said in a June statement. Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. "Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand," Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. "It was really hard for us to go back there," Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. "But I think that we can learn so much from this fire." Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. "It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado," he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. "It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before," Jaffe said. "There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex." The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months.
National Observer
3 days ago
- Climate
- National Observer
The 'why' of wildfires
We burned past a milestone this week, and not the kind any of us want to celebrate. Across Canada, wildfires have already torched more land than was burned in the entirety of last year — which was the second-most destructive fire season this century, eclipsed only by the year before that. Over five and a half million hectares of forest have gone up in flames so far this year. It's a scale that's hard to visualize or wrap your mind around. But you might try this: there are 72 countries whose entire land mass is smaller than that, including the likes of Costa Rica and Croatia. And, of course, it is only mid-July and there are at least two months left in the Canadian fire season. This year has not been tracking to be as destructive as the horrendous fires of 2023, but these recent years have all been staggering in size and ferocity. Canada's forests are truly enormous. But Mike Flannigan, one of Canada's foremost fire experts, estimates that seven per cent of Canada's forests have burned in the last three years. In British Columbia's northeast, the provincial government estimates that nearly a third of forests could burn by year's end. In the last two years, wildfires had already burned 10 per cent of that region's forests — more than the 60 preceding years, combined. The area has been in a multi-year drought lasting six or seven years now, says Lori Daniels, a professor at the University of British Columbia. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been particularly badly hit this year and both provinces have recorded well over a million hectares burned. For Manitoba, that's more than 10 times the 20-year average. Manitoba had to declare a provincewide state of emergency for the second time this summer and is ordering new evacuations. Almost 13,000 people are out of their homes, and some Indigenous communities evacuating again, just days after returning to their communities. There are 72 countries in the world whose landmass is smaller than the amount of hectares of forest that have burned across Canada this year — and wildfire season isn't over yet. Smoke from forest fires has smothered cities across North America, in many cases choking residents already sweltering through heat waves. Earlier this week, Toronto ranked as the second-most polluted city in the world for air quality. These climate impacts are rarely attributed to climate change in the public conversation. And it's even more rare for the media to delve beneath abstract concepts like 'climate change' and pinpoint its main cause, the burning of fossil fuels. Even as tragedies mount, they remain decontextualized and deracinated, floating across our newsfeeds as problems without any tangible cause that could be tackled. Only 13 per cent of Canadian news stories about wildfires mention climate change, even in passing. That's according to a media analysis I helped produce for the organization last year. And that 13 per cent figure is almost certainly an overcount because we deliberately omitted any emergency notices or breaking news about evacuation orders and alerts. The percentage has actually dropped from 16 per cent in 2023. The causes of climate change are even harder to find. Fossil fuels are mentioned in just 10 per cent of the stories that touch on climate change, even though they cause about 90 per cent of carbon pollution and 75 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Specific products that we interact with in real life — like oil, gasoline or natural gas — are even more rarely linked to climate change. It's a particularly bizarre omission because it violates such a fundamental checklist for storytelling and journalism: the five W's. We usually get the Who? What? Where? and When? but very rarely the Why? That missing 'why' isn't just an oversight — it's a political gift to the status quo. If wildfires, heat waves and floods are just something happening, then no one is responsible. But if they are, in fact, the predictable consequences of continued fossil fuel combustion — then we have to reckon with who profits from that combustion, who enables it and who celebrates it. This evasion allows governments to avoid shifting our domestic economy from fossil fuels to clean electricity, and allows them to greenlight new pipelines and LNG export terminals for export, all while publicly mourning the devastation of fiery disasters — as if the burning forests and burning fuels were unrelated. Politicians can promise support for communities one day, and stand at a ribbon-cutting for carbon-spewing projects the next. As the climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has long been arguing, making the connection explicit is crucial to public engagement. Hayhoe is talking about research like a new study just published in Nature Climate Change on how extreme events affect support for climate policies around the world. As one of its contributors writes: 'simple exposure to extreme weather events does not affect people's view of climate action – but linking those events to climate change can make a big difference.' Until we name the cause, we can't address it. Until we connect fossil fuels to climate impacts in our everyday conversations, our news coverage and our political discourse, we'll keep fuelling a worsening spiral. The fires tearing through Canada's forests are a kind of haunting mirror — burning trees reflecting the combustion in engines, furnaces, power plants and export terminals. Until we confront that symmetry and connect the burns, we'll keep fueling the flames.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Science
- Winnipeg Free Press
Wildfire, tornado researchers look for answers in Jasper's charred forest
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. 'I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest,' said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. 'And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking.' It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. '(It's) a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments,' she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels' research. It's also undertaking a 'series of investigations and reviews related to the fire,' it said in a June statement. Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. 'Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand,' Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. 'It was really hard for us to go back there,' Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. 'But I think that we can learn so much from this fire.' Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. 'It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado,' he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. 'It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before,' Jaffe said. 'There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex.' The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 21, 2025.
