Study Urges Smokers to Take Up E-Cigarettes

British medical group suggests the devices are the best hope for cigarette smokers to quit.

April 29, 2016

NEW YORK – A major British medical organization is suggesting that smokers who want to stop should switch to electronic cigarettes, saying the devices are “the best hope in generations for people addicted to tobacco cigarettes to quit,” reports The New York Times.

A report published this week by the Royal College of Physicians “summarizes the growing body of science on e-cigarettes and finds that their benefits far outweigh the potential harms. It concludes resoundingly that, at least so far, the devices are helping people more than harming them, and that the worries about them—including that using them will lead young people to eventually start smoking traditional cigarettes—have not come to pass,” the NY Times writes.

“This is the first genuinely new way of helping people stop smoking that has come along in decades,” John Britton, director of the U.K. Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham, who led the committee that produced the report, told the news source. E-cigarettes, he continued, “have the potential to help half or more of all smokers get off cigarettes. That’s a huge health benefit, bigger than just about any medical intervention.”

The medical group’s findings may be controversial in the United States; the Food and Drug Administration is expected to release its final deeming e-cigarette regulations by the end of the month.

The news source notes that some public health experts consider e-cigarettes as the “first real chance in years” for smokers to quit. However, the U.S. government, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has focused attention on potential dangers associated with the devices, such as being a gateway for children to take up cigarettes. (Editor’s note: In 2014, NACS issued a statement of position that encourages stores selling e-cigarettes to adopt, as a best practice, a policy of treating these products as age restricted and subjecting them to the same age-verification procedures as those applicable to tobacco products.) The news source notes that some public health experts consider e-cigarettes as the “first real chance in years” for smokers to quit.

However, the U.S. government, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has focused attention on potential dangers associated with the devices, such as being a gateway for children to take up cigarettes. (Editor’s note: In 2014, NACS issued a statement of position that encourages stores selling e-cigarettes to adopt, as a best practice, a policy of treating these products as age restricted and subjecting them to the same age-verification procedures as those applicable to tobacco products.)

Meanwhile, some American public health experts are applauding the British report, saying the recommendation that smokers try e-cigarettes could save lives.

“This is two countries taking pretty much diametrically opposed positions,” Kenneth E. Warner, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told the NY Times. “One is focused exclusively on the hypothetical risks, none of which have been established. The other is focusing on potential benefits.”

The Royal College of Physicians report covers “a decade of science” and studies both in favor and not in favor of e-cigarettes. The report suggests that e-cigarettes are only 5% as harmful as traditional cigarettes, “a conclusion that some American experts say has been lost in the United States in the rush to condemn e-cigarettes,” notes the NY Times, adding, “The report states bluntly that long-term effects of nicotine are likely to be minimal.”

The report notes that the “emergence of e-cigarettes has generated a massive opportunity for a consumer as well as a health care-led revolution in the way that nicotine is used in society,” adding that as the technology of e-cigarettes improves, “so the vision of a society that is free from tobacco smoking, and the harm that smoking causes, becomes more realistic.”

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