Prof. Tim Dewhirst is featured in a CBC News series examining policy failures that led to the adoption of vaping as a smoking alternative and its consequences.

Dewhirst, a professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, talks about how vaping is not a form of harm reduction if it ends up drawing in new users to nicotine, or if smokers simply add vaping to their cigarette habit and fail to quit.

A senior research fellow in marketing and public policy, he studies brand strategy, sponsorship-linked marketing and social marketing in the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics.

He has served as an expert witness in tobacco and vaping litigation on behalf of governments whose policies have undergone constitutional challenges, and he was a delegate at the 2019 Harm Reduction International Conference.

He recently contributed a commentary to the Toronto Star about why so many tobacco companies are adopting “harm reduction” in their marketing communication.

The commentary notes that while tobacco companies are now promoting a “smoke-free world,” they are not suggesting smokers quit altogether but instead switch to vaping products, positioning them as “harm reduced.”