Alex Massie’s right: attempts to clamp down on electronic cigarettes are entirely misguided, and will, if successful, lead directly to more preventable deaths. The opponents are doing Big Tobacco’s work for them – there has never been a bigger threat to tobacco consumption than e-cigarettes, vaporisers, call them what you will, at least in the West. If you’ve got the time, here’s an extraordinarily long list of scientists and others quoted on the subject. To give one example from there, here’s Professor John Britton, chair of the Royal College of Physicians’ Tobacco Advisory Group:
If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It’s a massive potential public health prize.
So why not regulate them? Here, from the same source, are ten good reasons. And perhaps this is the clearest summary, from Professor Jean-François Etter, head of the tobacco group at the University of Geneva’s Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine:
It would be a mistake I think to regulate these products as medications, and if they were regulated as medications this would limit access to the product too much and cause many deaths. … Astonishingly, the most vocal opponents of e-cigarettes are people from the public health community, who perhaps don’t understand what is at stake, and just don’t like the product because it looks too much like a cigarette.
And now the foolishness of the “treat them as medicines” lobby has arrived at Holyrood via this motion from Stewart Maxwell MSP. He led the campaign for a ban on smoking in public places from 2003, so seeing him trying to restrict something which reduces the incidence of smoking is like watching a road safety campaigner suddenly argue against speed limits, seatbelts or airbags. His motion says the “potential health risks are unknown”, and advises people to stick to the patches and gum which have left us with almost a quarter of Scots still smoking.
Sure. We don’t know everything yet, but research is coming in, and we can also be absolutely certain about the alternative: continuing to smoke tobacco. To quote ASH, this country’s most implacable opponents of smoking (who do support regulation but also oppose a ban on the use of e-cigs in public places):
Certainly, in the absence of thorough clinical evaluation and long term population level surveillance absolute safety of such products cannot be guaranteed. By comparison, the harm from tobacco smoking – the leading cause of preventable death in the UK – is well established.
One study concludes that e-cigarettes have a low toxicity profile, are well tolerated, and are associated with only mild adverse effects.
I don’t even think they should be unavailable to children, despite the concerns about young people starting straight on e-cigs. Currently 13% of Scottish 15 year-olds smoke cigarettes: I’d rather they weren’t inhaling any tar, any particulates, any carbon monoxide, or any of the remainder of the toxic cocktail a cigarette generates. Maxwell’s motion calls for a ban on promotion to non-smokers, and that’s probably as far as I would go with him, although I’m not quite sure what that looks like.
With proper support, this could be the last generation that sees mass smoking of tobacco in this country. With a decent alternative for those already hooked, you could even make the case for pre-announcing a 2020 ban on smoking altogether (not that the Massie family would be likely to support that). One more quote, this time from Robert West, Professor of health psychology and director of tobacco studies at UCL’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health:
We could see the end of tobacco use in the UK within five to ten years if e-cigarettes are allowed to flourish. Why would smokers continue to kill themselves if they could use e-cigarettes? Smoking tobacco is so last century.
The prize is that big. I see my friends switching from something that will very likely kill them to something which almost certainly won’t. And I wish Stewart Maxwell was on board with that.
#1 by Paul Cairney on June 19, 2013 - 1:48 pm
Fair point. It is difficult to comment without looking like I am all for the ban, but 5 things:
1. I think that people are wrestling with this because the Scottish and UK policies are based on an attempt to ‘denormalise’ smoking – something that e-smoking may undermine.
2. The reaction in a lot of public health groups will be that these sorts of measures are used by the tobacco industry to keep smoking, or in this case the appearance of smoking, in the public eye – to keep it looking like an everyday, normal part of life.
3. The tobacco industry has a lot of form, over the decades, in promoting safe (or harm reduction) alternatives – starting with the move from high to low tar, continuing with filter tips and, most recently, continuing with ventilation systems to remove the risks of passive smoking indoors. In that context, you can understand a lot of wariness about the new, safe alternative.
4. One benefit to medicalising the issue is that they can monitor the effects of e-cigarettes in a systematic way – something that would beat the initial speculation and subsequent (perhaps more selective) anecdotal evidence.
5. I wouldn’t be so quick to argue that a current ~20% smoking rate is bad progress. The levels were as high as 80% in men immediately after WW2. Through the powers of modern technology, I will tweet you a picture of those figures.
With a heavy heart, I have clicked ‘Notify me of follow comments via email’!
#2 by Shave on June 19, 2013 - 1:59 pm
The intense lobbying to medicalise e-type fags is, I believe, coming from the pharmaceutical industry. Their patches and gums, with their woeful success rates in smoking cessation, are very big earners.
I tried patches. They made me feel a bit ill and gave me an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
I tried gum. They made me feel a bit ill and gave me a feckin’ awful taste in my mouth.
I tried an e-cig and am currently ‘vaping’ a rather nice peanut-brittle flavour, having not smoked a cigarette in three months. I smoked for 24 years.
I expected that giving up smoking would be a terrible trial, but it was actually quite pleasant. Partly this was due to having a new gadget, but mostly it was the wide variety of flavours available that kept my enthusiasm for quitting tobacco going. The ingredients are all either food or pharmaceutical grade, and they really are nice.
The anecdotal evidence for the success rates of e-cigs in smoking cessation is impressive though a proper study into their efficacy would be useful.
What we don’t need is lobbying from very interested parties for a knee-jerk ‘medicalise’ response.
E-cigs have a huge potential for harm reduction within the smoking population. Don’t regulate them out of existence.
#3 by James on June 19, 2013 - 4:05 pm
I do think it helps that they look like sonic screwdrivers, too. Smoking used to be cool. Let’s make not smoking even cooler.