Swedish Health Experts Report Smoking Rate Will Fall Below 5% Through Vaping

Recently, several public health experts from Sweden released a significant report titled "The Swedish Experience: A Roadmap to a Smoke-Free Society," stating that due to the promotion of e-cigarettes and other harm reduction products, Sweden is about to reduce its smoking rate to below 5%, becoming the first "smoke-free" country in Europe and even the world.

Image: The Swedish Experience: A Roadmap to a Smoke-Free Society

The EU announced in 2021 the goal of achieving a smoke-free Europe by 2040, meaning that by 2040, the smoking rate (number of cigarette users/total population * 100%) will be reduced to below 5%. Sweden has completed this task 17 years ahead of schedule, which is regarded as a "milestone extraordinary achievement." The report shows that when the national smoking rate was first recorded in 1963, there were 1.9 million smokers in Sweden, with 49% of men using cigarettes. Today, the total number of smokers has decreased by 80%.

Sweden's remarkable achievement is attributed to its harm reduction strategy. "We know that cigarettes take the lives of 8 million people each year. If other countries in the world encourage smokers to switch to e-cigarettes and other harm reduction products, it could save 3.5 million lives in the next decade alone in the EU," the authors emphasized in the report.

Since 1973, the Swedish Public Health Agency has consciously controlled smoking through harm reduction products. Whenever new products emerge, regulatory authorities conduct research on relevant scientific evidence, and if the product is proven to be harm-reducing, it is opened for management and even promoted to the public.

In 2015, e-cigarettes began to gain popularity in Sweden. That same year, authoritative international research confirmed that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes. The Swedish authorities immediately encouraged smokers to switch to e-cigarettes. Data shows that the proportion of e-cigarette users in Sweden increased from 7% in 2015 to 12% in 2020, while the smoking rate in Sweden decreased from 11.4% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2022.

“Pragmatic and open management methods have greatly improved Sweden's public health environment.” The World Health Organization confirmed that Sweden's cancer incidence rate is 41% lower than that of other EU member states, and Sweden also has the lowest lung cancer incidence rate and male smoking-related mortality rate in Europe. More importantly, Sweden has cultivated a "smoke-free generation": the latest data shows that the smoking rate among Swedish youth aged 16-29 is only 3%, far below the EU requirement of 5%.

Image: Sweden has the lowest youth smoking rate in Europe

“The Swedish experience is a gift to the global public health community. If countries worldwide control smoking like Sweden, it could save tens of millions of lives.” The report also offers several suggestions on "how to replicate the Swedish model," including publicly acknowledging the harm reduction benefits of e-cigarettes, educating the public, especially smokers, about the benefits of harm reduction, providing appropriate policy support, and making it easy for smokers to purchase e-cigarettes.