The Vaping Future in England

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Gandhi

In the United Kingdom, we might have a better vaping future than elsewhere. Today Clive Bates posted an uplifting piece which you can read in full HERE.

Public Health England says truthful realistic things about e-cigarettes

Today sees a new e-cigarettes assessment from England’s public health authority, Public Health England. It includes an excellent evidence review by Professors Ann McNeill and Peter Hajek and their colleagues. Great kudos must go to Kevin Fenton, Rosanna O’Connor, Martin Dockrell and their colleague at PHE who have been determined to get this issue right – to maximise the benefits and to take an evidence-based approach to managing the risks.

The package is here: E-cigarettes: an evidence update comprising E-cigarettes: an evidence update (111 pages) / E-cigarettes: a new foundation for evidence-based policy and practice – 6 pages

More ....

Safety and the perception of risks

It is important that the public be provided with balanced information on the risks of e-cigarettes, so that smokers understand the potential benefits of switching and so non-smokers understand the risks that taking up e-cigarettes might entail:

• when used as intended, e-cigarettes pose no risk of nicotine poisoning to users, but e-liquids should be in ‘childproof’ packaging. The accuracy of nicotine content labelling currently raises no major concerns
• the conclusion of Professor John Britton’s 2014 review for PHE, that while vaping may not be 100% safe, most of the chemicals causing smoking-related disease are absent and the chemicals present pose limited danger, remains valid. The current best estimate is that e-cigarette use is around 95% less harmful to health than smoking
• e-cigarettes release negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders
• over the last year, there has been an overall shift among adults and youth towards the inaccurate perception of e-cigarettes as at least as harmful as cigarettes

Clive Bates shows  an interesting graph...

 Support used and stop smoking service self-reported quit rates 

Nothing could be clearer than that.

But vapers haven't won - yet - next year is the implementation of the TPD.

Clive Bates points out -

On the Tobacco Products Directive Article 20 – this is a truly dreadful piece of legislation, made in haste on the foundations of bad science, bad economics, bad ethics and bad process.  If this evidence review had been available during the negotiations we might have better legislation – but instead of taking care to get this right and save thousands of European lives, the European legislature just blundered on full of hubris and anti-scientific delusions.  The directive was based on junk science from WHO (hereand here) and negligence on the part of the European Parliament rapporteur (here), evidence free ideas of the European Commission (here) and the unrivalled pomposity and negligence of the European Council and its Irish presidency along with many other actors (here). I really do hope lessons are learned.

Vapers hope so too.