I have discovered the Holy Grail of science, Mr. Laurent. I give life… The possibilities are endless here. In two years’ time, I will be able to cure children’s leukemia. How many people on Earth can say that, Mr. Laurent? – The Island

WHEN an entire continent institutionalizes a key principle against human harm, don’t you think it’s an overwhelming validation about its soundness?

Just as it should be.

Europe, after all, gave us “The |Rights of Man”.

The basic principle of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen –– a basic charter of human liberties containing the principles that inspired the French Revolution — is that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”, including liberty, private property, and the inviolability of the person, among others.

Is there a right more superior than that upholding the “inviolability of the person”?

A modern yardstick used by the United Nations is the Human Development Index, a broad barometer of quality of life which measures a nation’s provision of key socio-economic services to its citizens, including public health and safety.

Surely, if all Europe holds life as primordial, then the right to personal safety and security or freedom from harm must be the main public policy.

Well, in this sense, the representatives of citizens of European nations did not let them down. ,

The European Parliament has adopted, a first for such a vast jurisdiction, a tobacco-harm reduction perspective in the broader campaign against cancer as it recognized that vaping may help some smokers quit.

THR refers to a pragmatic approach to end the global smoking epidemic which affects 1.1 billion people worldwide. It involves the use of less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and snus to reduce the eight million annual death toll from the smoking problem.

Members of the European Parliament voted 652 to 15, with 27 abstentions on February 16 to approve the December 2021 report by the Parliament’s Special Committee on Beating Cancer which, among others, introduced the THR perspective.

They also rejected attempts by a political faction to remove the report’s harm-reduction declaration, according to the Independent European Vape Alliance.

The THR perspective in the BECA report is reflected in the declaration that the committee “considers electronic cigarettes could allow some smokers to progressively quit smoking”.

This makes the European Parliament the first chamber in the world to officially recognize THR as a public health policy, according to the IEVA.

It established BECA in June 2020 to come up with the report and completed its mandate on Dec. 23, 2021.

BECA held an extensive consultation process through a series of public hearings. Members exchanged views with national parliaments and with international organizations and experts.

It was chaired by Polish MEP Bartosz Arłukowicz and was tasked with establishing concrete recommendations for EU-member states and institutions to strengthen the EU’s “resilience against cancer”.

Before the vote, BECA Rapporteur Véronique Trillet-Lenoir described the Strengthening Europe in the Fight Against Cancer report as historic in terms of ambition, objectives and resources.

“We will finally be able to fight effectively, together, against the health inequalities that persist within the European Union and respond to the needs of millions of Europeans affected by this disease. Today, the European Health Union is moving forward,” Trillet-Lenoir said.

The IEVA said the approval of the report is “a landmark declaration by the European Parliament, which should go a long way to reassuring smokers of the health benefits that a switch to vaping can bring”.

It noted that harm reduction has been practiced in many fields of healthcare for decades and has helped many people to curtail harmful habits, which is good both for them and those close to them.

“This model has also been successful in mitigating the death and disease associated with smoking. Over six million smokers in the EU have been able to significantly reduce the damage to their health by switching completely to reduced-risk alternatives such as the e-cigarette,” the IEVA said.

No less than the Public Health England, a leading health agency in Europe, confirmed the results of peer-reviewed studies showing that vaping, or the use of e-cigs, is 95-percent less harmful than smoking tobacco.

The IEVA said the European Parliament’s vote also brings the EU a step closer to putting regulation in place that allows smokers to choose alternatives to smoking.

“We now encourage the other EU institutions—and in particular the European Commission—to take this on board and ensure that policy follows science, not the other way around,” said IEVA president Dustin Dahlmann.

The BECA report, a part of a more effective EU strategy to beat cancer, says that as more than 40 percent of all cancers are preventable through “coordinated actions targeting behavior-related, biological, environmental, work-related, socio-economic and commercial risk factors, MEPs call for effective prevention measures at national and EU level, based on independent scientific expertise”.

The report calls on the European Commission to fund programs that promote smoking cessation and underlines, among other things, that tobacco consumption is a risk factor common to other chronic diseases and that cancer prevention and risk-reduction measures have to be implemented in the context of an integrated chronic disease prevention program.

It also asks the European Commission to follow up on the scientific evaluations of the health risks related to e-cigs, HTPs, and novel tobacco products, including the assessment of the risks of using these compared to consuming other tobacco products, and the establishment at European level of a list of substances contained in, and emitted by, these products.

On its vaping provision, the report considers that e-cigs could allow some smokers to progressively quit smoking and that e-cigs should not be attractive to minors and non-smokers.

It, therefore, calls on the European Commission to evaluate, in the framework of the Tobacco Products Directive, which flavors in e-cigs are in particular attractive to minors and non-smokers for a possible ban on such.

The parliament’s approval and adoption of the BECA report is seen to encourage the switch to these less harmful alternatives.

It is also expected to harmonize individual country members’ views and policies on e-cigs, HTPs, and other alternatives. This may also have broader implications worldwide, particularly in countries with a high death toll from smoking, according to them.

In 2020, cancer led to 1.3 million deaths in the EU.

Behold God’s glory and seek His mercy.

Pause, ponder, act, and pray, people.