[Alternative harm-reducing smoking products and their role in quitting smoking]

The negative effect of smoking on health is well known. There is a detectable link between smoking and the pathogenesis of different severe diseases. However, nowadays there is approximately 1.3 billion smokers on Earth. Moreover, it is important to note that this harmful habit causes about 8 million deaths each year. The Hungarian statistics show correspondence to the European Union’s. The difference between and within countries can be explained with cultural and sociological reasons. The fact that even the health care staff tends to get addicted to this maleficent passion makes this article even more important: worldwide 21% of doctors and 26% of nurse students consume tobacco products regularly. There could be various reasons of this supposed cognitive dissonance. In the last decades, the alternative products became widespread, especially the electronic cigarettes and the heated tobacco products. They are usually recommended for harm reduction, however, their long-term effects are not completely known. There is a wide variety of these products, they can be classified into four generations depending on their first release date, but other classification systems are also known, according to other aspects, such as operating mechanism. It is important to note some of the most common types: “mod”, “pod” and heated products. It is worthy and interesting to compare the health effect of the conventional and alternative consumption methods. This is a rather complicated tasks, because on both sides various consuming fashions can be found, which makes the evaluation rather hard. Pregnant women also need to be mentioned separately because in their cases harm reduction is especially important. According to our current knowledge, the new alternative smoking habits pose a significantly lower risk for the fetus. So, while they are still not harmless, they could be used with greater safety. Orv Hetil. 2025; 166(28): 1091–1098.