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Article History

Received: 6 June 2025

Accepted: 5 September 2025

First Online: 3 October 2025

Declarations

:

: This was a secondary analysis of publicly available, anonymised data. No ethical approval was sought.

: As this study involved secondary data analysis, no ethical approval or informed consent was required by the authors for this research, as it qualifies for exemption from human subjects research.

: Najim Z. Alshahrani, Lucia Spicuzza, Venera Tomaselli, Giulio Giacono Cantone, Giulio Geraci, and Francesco Pennisi declare no conflict of interest. Yusuff Adebayo Adebisi received funding in the past through the Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship and the Kevin Molloy Fellowship, both awarded by Knowledge-Action-Change (KAC) UK, an independent public health organisation. KAC receives funding from Global Action to End Smoking (GA), an independent U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) grantmaking organisation that supports health and science research, cessation education, and agricultural transformation initiatives. Riccardo Polosa is a full tenured professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Catania (Italy) and Medical Director of the Institute for Internal Medicine at the same university. He has received the following EU and governmental competitive grants: U-BIOPRED, AIR-PROM, Integral Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists Network (IRIS), and several PNRR grants (PNRR 3277/2021, PNRR 341/2022, PNRR 411/2021) funded by NextGenerationEU of the European Commission. He has also received investigator-initiated grants from GA, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, CV Therapeutics, NeuroSearch A/S, Sandoz, Merk Sharp & Dohme, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Arbi Group Srl., Duska Therapeutics, and Forest Laboratories. He is the founder of the Center for Tobacco Prevention and Treatment (CPCT) and the Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of Harm Reduction at Catania University. He has received consultancy fees from Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Duska Therapeutics, Forest Laboratories, CV Therapeutics, Sermo Inc., GRG Health, Clarivate Analytics, Guidepoint Expert Network, and GLG Group. He receives textbook royalties from Elsevier and EDRA. He is also Chair of the European Technical Committee for Standardisation on “Requirements and test methods for emissions of electronic cigarettes” (CEN/TC 437; WG4) and scientific advisor of the non-profit Foundation RIDE2Med. This research was conducted independently and is not linked to any prior funding sources.