# Derek Yach - A south african to be proud of



## mrh (20/6/20)

https://regulatorwatch.com/brent_st...-on-harm-reduction-intensifies-regwatch-live/

Reactions: Like 3 | Winner 7 | Informative 2


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## Roodt (20/6/20)

Thank you for the link. That was really interesting.

Reactions: Like 3 | Agree 2


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## Room Fogger (20/6/20)

Just finished watching this and was going to post the link, quite a long interview but definitely recommend for everyone. And having a South African in there made it a bit more compelling to me.

Great find @mrh ,  and thank you for posting it here, it is quite an eye opener as to what is still happening out there and the battles being fought. As always a great piece by Regulator Watch, he has a couple of great interviews in his archives with a diverse panel of experts that can be viewed by anyone that want to find out more.

Reactions: Like 4 | Winner 2


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## Resistance (21/6/20)

mrh said:


> https://regulatorwatch.com/brent_st...-on-harm-reduction-intensifies-regwatch-live/


Three cheers to him!

Reactions: Like 2 | Agree 2


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## Silver (22/6/20)

Thanks very much for posting this @mrh 

Took me a bit of time to get through the interview. I listened to a bit here and there each day. 

Derek Yach is great - he knows his stuff and always remains calm. His comments are very insightful and what I like about him is that he focuses on the big picture.

For those who don't know, Derek Yach is the president of the Smoke-Free World foundation. (smokefreeworld.org) He was also Chief Health Officer for the Vitality Group (part of Discovery) and he worked as SVP of Global Health at PepsiCo. Prior to that he was an executive director at the World Health Organisation and led the development of their framework convention of tobacco control. He is South African but lives in the USA.

One of his big picture comments that stuck with me is that he hopes the world's anti-vaping stance will change for the better. He cites some positive recent developments on this. He still believes that vaping and other reduced harm forms of delivering nicotine offers the greatest potential to save human lives in the next few decades. 

*Combustibles (eg smoking) are bad and non-combustible forms of nicotine delivery (eg vaping) are much safer.*

The interview is long (over an hour) but I think it's well worth listening to. Here are some highlights that I jotted down:

~ 25 mins - lol I can't remember why I jotted this down but it must have made an impression on me 
~ 35 mins - explanation of nicotine versus the rest
~ 46 mins - he asks Derek if he thinks vaping can save lives (he discusses the prevalence of smoking 
~ 1hr04 - smokers being under-represented in hospitals for COVID
Great interview and the guy from Regulator Watch is also great. He has good knowledge of the topic.

Reactions: Like 2 | Agree 3 | Winner 1


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## mrh (22/6/20)

ya - he seems very down to earth and not prone to getting hysterically polarized - gives credit to some of Bloomberg's work even though Bloomberg is being stupidly anti-vaping - very holistic in his understanding of the big pic as you say, and of course qualified to be so as he actually worked for WHO. He exhibits a real maturity and solidness - definitely proud he is S.african!

Reactions: Like 4 | Agree 1


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## Silver (22/6/20)

mrh said:


> ya - he seems very down to earth and not prone to getting hysterically polarized - gives credit to some of Bloomberg's work even though Bloomberg is being stupidly anti-vaping - very holistic in his understanding of the big pic as you say, and of course qualified to be so as he actually worked for WHO. He exhibits a real maturity and solidness - definitely proud he is S.african!



Well said!

Reactions: Like 3


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