PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
This article is part of the Research TopicWhat Are the Best Policy Solutions to Control the Use of E-Cigarettes (Vaping) Around the World?View all articles
Strategies for Harm Reduction in Latin America: The Example of Tobacco
Provisionally accepted
- Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Tobacco consumption continues to impose a profound public health and economic burden across Latin America, disproportionately affecting men, adolescents, and low-income populations. Despite progress in some countries through implementation of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), significant gaps remain due to weak regulatory frameworks, limited enforcement capacity, and persistent interference from the tobacco industry. Against this backdrop, tobacco harm reduction (THR), the substitution of combustible products with non-combustible or lower-exposure alternatives such as nicotine replacement therapies, electronic cigarettes, and heated tobacco products, offers a potentially valuable but underutilized strategy. Rather than a systematic review, this work offers a narrative, opinion-based synthesis of policy and evidence sources published between 2015 and 2024. While the WHO currently does not endorse electronic cigarettes or heated-tobacco products as cessation tools, the guiding principles of the WHO FCTC: proportional risk assessment, transparency, and surveillance, provide a conceptual basis for evaluating all nicotine-delivery systems under strict regulation. Latin-American governments should prioritize access to approved nicotine-replacement therapies and cessation services, while considering time-bounded, independent evaluation of non-combustible products within WHO FCTC guardrails where these are already present in the market. This perspective aims to inform balanced, evidence-based debate rather than advocate adoption of any specific product or policy
Keywords: Tobacco & tobacco product, tobacco harm reduction (THR), Nicotine, Latin America, Regulation and policy
Received: 01 Oct 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Teran. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Enrique Teran, eteran@usfq.edu.ec
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.