Can You Do Without Risk Reduction In The Fight Against Smoking?

Cigarette smoking is one of the major risk factors for the development of cancer, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. It alone causes more deaths than alcoholism, drugs, car accidents, homicides and suicides combined [1-6]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 8 million people die each year worldwide from direct cigarette smoking, while exposure to secondhand smoke causes 1.2 million deaths [7]. In the European Union, 700,000 deaths from this cause are counted each year (8) while in Italy the Ministry of Health estimates 93,000 deaths a year, of which about 43,000 are caused by tumors attributable to cigarette smoking [8-9]. Experts from all over the world and Regulatory authorities are trying to modify such scenario and the main areas of intervention concern bans, regulatory and fiscal aspects, support actions for cessation aimed at smokers and evidence-based guidelines [10-16]. However, despite all this, the smoking problem is far from being stemmed [17]. Based on the data released by the Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) on 31 May 2022 (World No Tobacco Day), the number of smokers in Italy has increased significantly in the last year with an increase of around 800 thousand smokers, compared to 2019, although this can be at least partially explained by the increase observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, given that compared to 2021 there was a decrease in smoking prevalence of about 2 percentage points [18]. These data give rise to concern, also considering the objectives of the European Commission which would like to achieve a smoke-free generation by 2040 [19].