Quit Like Sweden: “Will New Zealand Quit Like Sweden?” 2024 Warsaw Event Highlights
Quit Like Sweden: “Will New Zealand Quit Like Sweden?” 2024 Warsaw Full Event
Date: 12 June 2024
Time: 18:00 CEST
Location: Level 27, Warsaw, Poland
About the Event
On the sidelines of the Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN) in Warsaw in April 2024, experts gathered to discuss New Zealand’s progress in eliminating cigarette smoking, inspired by Sweden’s successful approach. This discussion was hosted by Quit Like Sweden, a platform dedicated to promoting tobacco harm reduction globally.
The event brought together a distinguished panel of academics, regulators, politicians, and consumer advocates to explore how Sweden’s strategies in tobacco control are being adapted in New Zealand. The goal was to examine the potential lessons other countries can learn from these approaches, with Sweden’s widespread use of safer alternatives, such as snus and e-cigarettes, driving improved public health outcomes.
Professor Marewa Glover, a public health academic specializing in smoking cessation, presented a report highlighting New Zealand’s achievements in cutting its smoking rates by half over five years. Particularly impressive were the reductions seen among low-income groups, Māori communities, and individuals with mental health conditions, supported by the nation’s policies encouraging smokers to switch to vaping.
Suely Castro, the founder of Quit Like Sweden, emphasized: “For decades, we’ve envisioned a world free from the deadly grip of cigarettes. That vision is becoming a reality in Sweden and New Zealand. Harm reduction is proving to be a critical tool in the fight against smoking.”
The panel featured renowned experts like Dr. Anders Milton, former Chairman of the World Medical Association, Dr. Colin Mendelsohn from ATHRA, and science advocate Jessica Perkins. Consumer representatives also shared their perspectives, including Nancy Loucas of AVCA, Carissa Düring of Considerate Pouchers Sweden, and Professor David Sweanor of the University of Ottawa.
Castro urged policymakers and regulators to look to Sweden and New Zealand for guidance, stating: “Without such measures, we will continue to see stagnant smoking statistics and wonder why change isn’t happening.”
This event offered a dynamic exploration of how harm reduction strategies can transform public health, with Sweden and New Zealand leading the way. Be part of the conversation and discover how these insights can inform global efforts toward a smoke-free future.
Speakers:
Professor Marewa Glover
Professor Marewa Glover is one of New Zealand’s leading tobacco control researchers. She has worked on reducing smoking-related harm for 31 years. She is recognized internationally for her advocacy on tobacco harm reduction; and locally was a Finalist in the New Zealander of the Year Supreme Award in 2019 recognising her contribution to reducing smoking in NZ. In 2018, Dr Glover was appointed Tobacco Section Editor for the Harm Reduction Journal. In that year she also established the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking, an international program of research aimed at reducing smoking-related harms among Indigenous peoples globally. The Centre’s research was funded with grants from Global Action to End Smoking (formerly known as Foundation for Smoke-Free World), an independent, U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) grantmaking organization, accelerating science-based efforts worldwide to end the smoking epidemic.
Dr Anders Milton
Dr. Milton is a physician with extensive experience in public service, a highly sought-after consultant in the healthcare sector and a former chair of the WMA.
Currently the owner and CEO of Milton Consulting and current chair of the Snus Commission.
He is the Chairman of the Board of three foundations that work with education for children and adolescents and a number of for-profit companies in the field of life science.
Dr Colin Mendelsohn
Colin has worked for over 40 years as a clinician, academic and researcher in smoking cessation and, more recently, in tobacco harm reduction. He was a member of the committee that develops the Australian RACGP national smoking cessation guidelines and is the Founding Chairman of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, a charity established to raise awareness of safer nicotine products. Colin was a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and is the author of a book, Stop Smoking Start Vaping, an evidence-based self-help guide to vaping.
Apart from his clinical and university work, Colin has conducted hundreds of workshops and lectures around Australia and New Zealand teaching students, medical practitioners and other health professionals how to help smokers quit. For many years he was actively involved in researching, developing and teaching Smokescreen for the 1990s, a program developed at the University of New South Wales for use by general practitioners to help smokers quit. He has also published widely on smoking cessation and vaping.
Nancy Loucas
Founded Paraclete Associates Ltd in April 2018. Utilising experience as a community and consumer advocate and using those skills to build other similar organisations to reach their full potential by providing mentoring & strategic planning, analysis and guidance in submissions and white paper documentation.
Director and Co- Founder of AVCA. Founded in 2015 with a group of four other vapers, we work closely with our colleagues worldwide towards educating the public by providing them with objective information, scientific research and policy updates and reviews that affect all consumers of vape and safer nicotine products.
Executive Coordinator for the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Redyction Advocates (CAPHRA). CAPHRA is the collective voice nicotine consumer organisations in eleven countries in Asia Pacific, as well as providing support and guidance to individuals in the region who advocate for access to and choice of safer nicotine products.
Carissa Düring
Carissa is a director of Considerate Pouchers Sweden, which is an independent platform setup to represent pouchers around the world.
She studies clinical psychology at Uppsala University in Sweden. She uses nicotine pouches as an alternative to smoking and is keen that the world should know how successful pouches have been in helping Sweden get smoking rates to the lowest in Europe.
Dr Janusz Krupa
Janusz Krupa, M.D., family medicine practitioner, graduate of Warsaw Medical School. Since 2017 lecturer at Postgraduate Education Center (CMKP) for family medicine residents, since 2022 – lecturing also in Medical Łazarski School in Warsaw.Member of PTMR and KLRwP (Polish associations/societies of family practitioners) and PTLO (Polish Society for Obesity Treatment).
Professor David Sweanor
David Sweanor is an adjunct professor, Faculty of Law, and chair of the advisory board of the Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics at the University of Ottawa and has been actively involved in tobacco and health policy issues since the beginning of the 1980s. He has worked globally, and with numerous groups, including the International Union Against Cancer, World Health Organization, World Bank and the Pan American Health Organization and played a key role in achieving many global precedents in tobacco policy. He currently focuses much of his tobacco and nicotine related efforts on risk reduction strategies.
