Switching to e-cigarettes could save millions of smokers’ lives, a conference on the increasingly popular devices heard, though some experts warned more research on the health effects is needed.
The merits of e-cigarettes were thrashed out at a one-day gathering of some 250 scientists, policymakers, industry figures and enthusiasts at the Royal Society in London.
The use of electronic cigarettes — battery-powered devices that simulate smoking by heating and vaporising a liquid solution containing nicotine — has grown rapidly, with tobacco manufacturers jumping on the trend.
Sales have doubled annually for the last four years and there are an estimated 7m users across Europe, organisers said.
The European Parliament last month threw out a bid to curb sales of e-cigarettes by classifying them as medicinal products.
Delegates in London debated how the market had moved faster than science or the law.
Many delegates merrily “vaped” away throughout the indoor conference sessions, including one man puffing on a sizeable e-pipe and another inhaling an e-cigar that lit up blue.
“Cigarettes are killing 5.4m people per year in the world,” said Robert West, a health psychology professor and the director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK.
He told delegates switching to e-cigarettes could save millions of lives, but the debate was about “whether that goal can be realised and how best to do it”.
He said almost one third of attempts to quit smoking involved e-cigarettes.
Though they are estimated to be between 95% and 99% safer than smoking tobacco cigarettes, some countries have banned them and attendees debated the thorny issue of whether regulation — possibly under medicinal rules — should be brought in.
Source: Robin Millard, Irish Examiner, 14/11/13
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