@GoingSmokefree – Welcome to our #Twitterchat. Our topic for today is, ’Is #Snus a viable alternative for smokers in Africa?’ Our guest today is @AtakanBefrits. #SaferAlternatives
@GoingSmokefree: Thanks for joining us today @AtakanBefrits. Kindly introduce yourself to our audience, for those who may not be familiar with you #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Ok, Atakan Befrits, Economy, ecology and law at UNI. Entrepreneur and intrapreneur in large corps too and with a background fundraising for SOS-Children’s Villages. THR advocate and snus expert since 2007. Based in Sweden and Turkey, hopefully one day +Cyprus. #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits Africa has 77 Million Smokers, most of who have never heard of Snus. What is Snus? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – In my mind any kind of pasteurized low nitrosamine smokeless tobacco with minimal toxic or carcinogenic other constituents – part soil, part cultivation, part production technique and part storage = all play part in a vastly safer end product #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits In a nutshell, cold you explain what the Swedish experience is? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – The Swedish experience is basically the realization that availability of vastly safer products in combination with public education on the harms from combustible tobacco will generate a much faster downward trajectory of smoking rates and that they compound #SaferAlternatives. Oh, plus of course that with over 75 million user years in Sweden, there just is no registered harm, there is nothing there to find. More people have been harmed by milk. #SaferAlternatives – This is with a saying that goes: No proof of harm isn’t proof of no harm – bullshit.
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits Is Snus safer than smoking cigarettes? If so, is there any science to back this claim? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – There is no question that snus is at least 98% safer than smoking. In effect below any level that could not as well be explained by other “confounders” + A lot of science exists +100 years of no recorded harm in Sweden with +10% adult lifelong use always. #SaferAlternatives
It is really difficult to disregard that group of observable facts.
By the way, just to side-track for a second. Rakesh Gupta from India who is a world-renowned expert on something or other got on this thread yesterday and basically called me and snus and everything harm reduction a bluff
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits The Royal College of Physicians @RCPLondon claims using Snus is 
up to 1,000 times less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Should doctors advocate Snus? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Clearly and please quote me correctly, not using any nicotine is the overall best option, more so for pregnant women or CVD patients – Anyone not quitting smoking anyway, always YES! Success quitting is 4% and success snus is +60%, so YES! #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits Is Snus carcinogenic? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – NO! – sufficient quality food grade snus-similar products that can be cheaply produced in Africa will not cause cancer. Cancer is very prevalent in Asia (+Sudan) but there it is undiluted lye, pot ash, Areca nut and low quality high toxicant tobacco #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits Should snus be classified as a medical product or a consumer product? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Whatever gives the most impact and creates the highest speed and depth of switching for lower smoking rates. If you ask me: Both. Nicotine Replacement is heavily marketed, so gets used a lot, but doesn’t work 96% of time, so clearly marketing is important. #SaferAlternatives
And marketing is allowed, even in absolutely obscene amounts and for crap medicines that do not work, so in that sense there is rationale for having snus as both. Alcohol, in the shops for one thing and from the doctor for another thing – hardly rocket science.
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits A few days ago, the FDA @FDATobacco authorized Snus to be advertised as less harmful than cigarettes. Should regulators in Africa follow suit? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Why is there such controversy over THR and over snus? How is it possible that relatively low incidence of injury in US people using black market marijuana vape cartomizers is used to ban e-cig for harm reduction in Korea and Snus for harm reduction in Russia? #SaferAlternatives.
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits Tobacco harm reduction worked in Sweden. With cigarettes being legal in all countries in Africa, should Snus be made available? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Absolutely without any doubt whatsoever YES, you must! The potential and almost guaranteed benefits are massive and even the worst-case youth uptake scenario is nothing in comparison. We need to change mindset on the addiction-dependence paradigm though. #SaferAlternatives.
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits According to the Global State of tobacco harm reduction report, Snus is legal in most countries in Africa. Should smokers be made aware of its benefits? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – HERE SHE IS IN ALL HER “HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT” GLORY – IT’S THEIR REGULATORS, READ FOR YOURSELF AND THEN LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND SAY NO! #SaferAlternatives 
Absolutely! As long as smoking is legal it’s a clear breach of human rights not to at least allow smokers the “agency” to make vastly better choices, and that is also mandated in article 1(d) in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Someone stole that. #SaferAlternatives
Addiction = very serious social consequences like losing job, family, security, health, housing. Dependence = Coffee, tea, mountain biking, panodil.
If dependence isn’t a problem socially, then is dependence without addiction a problem? #SaferAlternatives
Otherwise this is what we get and those aren’t rich white people in the west landing 
under that bus…. #SaferAlternatives (image after pyramid) @GoingSmokefree Though smoking will, without a shred of doubt kill us all equal.
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits as we wind up, what is your take on tobacco-free snus? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – I am very happy for improvement. But honestly, before the FDA decision 2 days ago I feared that higher cost all white might make it easier to ban cheap-to-produce snus. That would be disastrous to 900 million users who happen to be poor. BOTH=BRILLIANT! #SaferAlternatives
That is interesting as I am at such an outfit when sending this live chat. I think it is not totally easy, but definitely much much much more easy today, than two days ago. Check for the follow up to this one #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – @AtakanBefrits For policy makers here in #Africa, what should the take home message be? #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – If you haven’t yet, consider registering the simplest possible association and give us a call. We want you with us so we have a stronger voice in Geneva and can assist you in your important work too. @INNCOorg @NNAllianceSW INNCO General Assembly from Warsaw. #SaferAlternatives
Question: @GoingSmokefree – And with that, we come to the end of our Twitter chat today. Big thank you to @AtakanBefrits and to all that participated, until next time, keep the conversation going #SaferAlternatives
Response: @AtakanBefrits – Big warm hug right back from cold and dark Stockholm. Reach me on any of the following: ab@innco.org – ab@nnasweden.org – Atakan.befrits@gmail.com Pick and choose 🙂 Best Atakan #SaferAlternatives
Twitter-Chat was coordinated by Campaign for Safer Alternatives. Twitter @GoingSmokefree
