May 26 - Sweden is on track to become Europe's first smoke-free country by reducing its smoking rate to less than 5 percent in the next few months, according to a joint report by public health experts. Experts say the effective enforcement of tobacco control policies is due to emerging nicotine alternatives such as e-cigarettes.

"Smoke-free" society refers to The smoking rate of a specific population is less than 5%. In 2017, the European Union officially proposed to achieve the public health goal of a smoke-free society by 2040. At the Stockholm International Symposium not long ago, Swedish experts published The Swedish Experience: A roadmap for a smoke-free society, announcing Sweden's goal of becoming a smoke-free country.

One of the authors of the report, which details Sweden's pioneering strategy to reduce the harmful effects of smoking and save lives, Dr Anders Milton (former president of the Medical Society), said that if the rest of the EU adopted Sweden's tobacco control strategy, more than 30,000 lives could be saved over the next decade. Meanwhile, another author, Dr Delon Human, former secretary general of World Medicine, said it would be better for smokers to switch from traditional combustible cigarettes to e-cigarettes or nicotine packs than to continue smoking.

The truth is that no nicotine product is completely harmless, but e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than combustible cigarettes, making them somewhat safer than combustible cigarettes. At the same time, e-cigarettes deliver nicotine more efficiently and in a purer way than NRT (nicotine replacement therapy). Therefore, as an alternative to reducing carcinogens from combustible cigarettes and reducing nicotine dependence, using e-cigarettes is a very effective way to quit smoking.

According to the Lancet, smoking caused 7.7 million deaths worldwide in 2019, and medical studies have found a positive correlation between smoking and cardiovascular and lung diseases. Therefore, smoking cessation is a necessary means to ensure public health. The emergence of e-cigarettes not only ensures smokers can obtain nicotine in a healthy way, but also reduces the social smoking rate and even the harm of second-hand smoke.

The use of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation and harm reduction has become the consensus for tobacco control in some countries, and increasing evidence continues to show that e-cigarettes have advantages in safe smoking cessation. The Prospective association between e‐cigarette use frequency patterns and cigarette smoking was published by Wiley-Blackwell, a well-known American publishing house abstinence among adult cigarette smokers in the United States.

The study, published by the University of Southern California and Boston University in the US, found that after five years of follow-up of 5,699 adult smokers, 560 of those who continued to use e-cigarettes were able to quit. The researchers also found a positive correlation between continued e-cigarette use and smoking cessation success. After controlling for time and choice preferences, daily e-cigarette use was four times more likely to last 12 months than non-regular users.

It is the acceptance of smoke-free products as less harmful alternatives that has enabled Sweden to succeed in the promotion of tobacco control strategies. In fact, the benefits of Sweden's tobacco control strategy are huge. Statistics show that the total number of cancer deaths in Sweden is 38% lower than the rest of Europe, and the incidence of cancer is 41% lower than the rest of Europe, making Sweden the country with the lowest proportion of tobacco-related diseases in the European Union.

As one of the new tobacco products, the special taste of e-cigarettes does attract more users, and in the long run, the public and the media will treat e-cigarettes correctly rather than as a monster, which will have a more positive impact on the public health of the whole society. Dr Fagerstrom, the author of the Swedish report, agreed that it would be of great benefit to the world if other countries reduced the supply and demand of combustible cigarettes as Sweden has done, while at the same time instituting different tax rates, providing financial incentives for smokers and switching from cigarettes to less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes.