If there is something that every smoker confesses to, it is the desire to quit. However, many will add that they easily relapse as their body craves the deprived nicotine when they put the cigarettes down.
For many nicotine addicts, cigarettes are the main source despite the harmful effects that come from combusted tobacco. The general policy approach has been to push smokers to quit by putting in place various public health restrictions.
Data shows that 80 per cent of the world’s smokers live in low and middle-income countries and eight million people die due to smoking-related diseases every year. The WHO estimates that one billion people will die of smoking-related diseases by the year 2100.
Overall, 98 million people are estimated to use alternative nicotine products worldwide with 68 million being vapers largely located in the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, Japan, Germany and Mexico.
I have tried to quit for many years now and my first success story on not consuming tobacco has been in the last 30 days - the longest ever in the last 15 years. I have previously tried nicotine gums, nicotine patches and vapes before giving up after a few days and going back to cigarettes.
I decided to try disposable vapes again and I have eventually done away with the harmful combusted tobacco. My cravings for nicotine have greatly reduced making it easier for me.
Alternative nicotine products are seen as a way of encouraging tobacco harm reduction, similar to what was done in many other areas of consumer goods and human behaviour, but some governments, as well as NGOs, are still opposing all the evidence around them.
Since less harmful nicotine products have become available, accessible and affordable in countries such as Japan, the UK and Iceland, the ongoing decline in smoking rates has accelerated.
The fact is that if smokers and the general public would get factual and evidence-based information on better nicotine products - that do not rely on combustion - it would make it possible for them to make choices based on the information and on risk reduction principles.
Although scientific evidence shows that smoke-free products release much lower levels of chemicals compared to combustible cigarettes, many countries recommend they be treated with the same restrictions.
Kenya, for instance, imposed directives on Lyft nicotine pouches that are near-similar to those of traditional cigarettes, thus slowing down its penetration in the market and denying thousands of smokers a chance to try less harmful solutions to traditional smoking.
Recently, there have been calls to ban the product, despite the Government imposing an excise regime on it. All these efforts are made without weighing the health benefits for smokers who would take them up as an alternative. We have seen suggestions that other nicotine products should be regulated like cigarettes, yet these products are different.
In my view, like all other addictions, there is a need for tobacco harm reduction to be mainstreamed. Most public health policies on tobacco use in Kenya and indeed the continent are engineered to be punitive to the addicts instead of helping reduce the use and save lives.
We must think of alternative nicotine products in the manner in which we introduced the ABC when dealing with STDs when HIV was ravaging. Goal should be to ensure that there are no new tobacco users. For those that are already in, there are less riskier options such as pouches or vapes.
The problem we have today in Kenya is that we see the addiction as being to tobacco and not the chemical component itself - Nicotine. The other problem is that we have not opened up the conversation on whether there are other safer ways of dealing with nicotine addiction.
A lot of research has been done on tobacco harm reduction and its benefits not only to those addicted to nicotine but the wider population which suffers through secondary smoking. The aim should be to help and not to punish those that are addicted.
That is why the recent approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration to allow the marketing of e-cigarette products is a welcome move as the world increasingly continues to rely on science-based solutions as tobacco harm reduction alternatives.