The most frequently mentioned smoking-related health hazard was harm to trachea and some also mentioned harm to the stomach.
Of the 30 countries in the region, 25 explicitly and supportively mentioned harm reduction in their national strategies, and 27 have undertaken at least one sero-prevalence and one behavioural study among PWID in the last 10 years.
Among the 243 articles that mentioned harm in the text, 130 articles [53.5% (CI95% 47.0 to 59.9)] reported harm in the abstract; a figure that rose to 75.9% (CI95%: 62.4 to 86.5) when the harm reported in the text was statistically significant.
Seventeen (4.0 %) articles mentioned third-hand smoking, while one third (n = 143) mentioned harms to children from SHS exposure in the home.
24% mentioned harms (or specifically declared no harms) when harms were not mentioned in the press release, 68% when mentioned in the press release (2.8, 1.1 to 7.4), and 36% when no press release was issued (1.5, 0.49 to 4.4).
Of the newspaper stories reporting on beneficial interventions, 24% mentioned harms (or specifically declared none) when harms were not mentioned in the press release, compared with 68% when mentioned in the press release (relative risk 2.8, 95% confidence interval 1.1 to 7.4).
The introduction section of the included RCTs reflect an imbalance in the reporting benefit harms, with one study 16 reporting that less than 5% of RCTs had mentioned harms in the introduction, and one study 17 reporting more than 70% of its included RCTs has satisfied this criteria.
Avoiding just one major complication saves, on average, fourteen thousand dollars in medical costs — not to mention harm to a human being.
It has yet to pass a resolution mentioning harm reduction, which has been part of everyday drug-policy language for years in many countries, notes Mr Jelsma.The difficulty of agreeing on change has left the UN's drugs authorities out of step with other agencies.
He points out that laws intended to prevent "substantial risk of harm to life of a minor or an incompetent" do not mention harm against a fetus.
However, press releases of high quality had a stronger influence than no press release for: quantifying the main result with absolute numbers (53% v 20%, P=0.001), mentioning harms of beneficial interventions (68% v 36%, P=0.01), and limitations of research with important limitations (48% v 21%, P=0.06; fig 2).
