Abstract
Background - In recent years there has been a proliferation of alternative tobacco and nicotine products that reduce consumers’ exposure to harmful substances and therefore have the potential to reduce risk to health. Post-market surveillance enables the evaluation of newly introduced tobacco and nicotine products (aka potentially reduced risk products (PRRPs)) at a population level. This study aims to investigate tobacco and nicotine consumer demographics and discover how people are using these products, and characterise behavioral trends as transitions between tobacco heated products (THPs) and other nicotine products. These behavioural aspects, in conjunction with the intrinsic risk of the product, are essential for assessing the potential health effects and establishing a population risk assessment. Design and methods - This epidemiological cross-sectional study will collect data using a self-administered study instrument from the general Japanese population aged 20 years and older. The targeted sampling size is up to 5,000 participants per study wave. The study addresses the following objectives: estimation of tobacco and nicotine use prevalence; characterisation of product usage by product type; changes in use behaviour in general, with particular emphasis on the introduction of THPs in the time period of one year; risk perceptions of different tobacco products and no tobacco usage; and participant perceived health status and quality of life. Discussion - The description of tobacco and nicotine product use behaviour, the estimation of prevalence data, the measuring of product-specific risk perception and the change of tobacco use behaviour within one year will allow for a comprehensive assessment of the effect of introducing THPs into a market. These data could also be used to inform a system dynamics population model in order to estimate the public health impact of introducing a THP into the Japanese market.
Highlights
Tobacco is used by more than one billion people globally [MacKay et al, 2006], and combustible tobacco is the most common form of tobacco use
Tobacco Harm Reduction is a concept described, amongst others, by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in their monologue Clearing the Smoke [Stratton et al, 2001], which summised that population health could be improved by replacing high-risk combustible tobacco products like cigarettes with innovative lower risk tobacco and nicotine products
Analytical assessments of toxicant emissions, pre-clinical assessments and clinical study data have all provided evidence that suggests tobacco heating products (THPs) have the potential to be reduced risk alternatives compared to continued smoking
Summary
1. Thomas Verron, Imperial Brands plc, Paris, France Xavier Cahours, SEITA-Imperial Brands, Paris, France. Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. Of the effect of introducing THPs into a market. These data could be used to inform a system dynamics population model in order to estimate the public health impact of introducing a THP into the Japanese market. Keywords Post-market surveillance, Population studies, Cross sectional survey, Tobacco Heating Products (THPs), Harm reduction
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