Yet another study that shows how effective e-cigarettes can be. UCL researches carried out the studies on a whopping 6000 quitters, and found that e-cigarettes and e-liquids are considerably more effective for quitting smoking than pharmacy counter treatments like nicotine gum and nicotine patches.
Some people worry that maybe e-cigarettes are re-normalising smoking, or making smoking seem cool again, but the huge health improvements from ex-smokers make this issue very small in comparison to the proven benefits. Professor Robert West of University College London stated in the video below that they had proven very efficient quitting smoking aids, which could “substantially improve public health”.
e-Cigarettes have now been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), who have also found that quitting smoking with e-cigarettes the most likely way to quit. It would be “perfectly reasonable” for the NHS to start supplying e-cigarettes to people who need them after this study.
Another issue which may rise with the NHS is where the money is going to pay for them. For example, some of the leading tobacco companies from the U.S. manufacture e-cigarettes in huge quantities, if the NHS buy there e-cigarettes from a company like this, then in essence the NHS are paying out huge money to multi-national tobacco companies, which seems like public health moving in the wrong direction.
Professor west also states
“It’s such a complicated area…the tobacco industry has money coming out of their ears. For them it is petty cash to put in an MHRA application…for a small e-cigarette company that is innovating, the cost and the timescale involved is prohibitive. The challenge for the MHRA, and I know they’re looking at this, is to bring the cost and timescale for getting a medical licence down to a point where the medium-sized companies doing the innovating can take part.”
But whatever the NHS decide to do by 2016, it is becoming clearer and clearer that e-cigarettes pose a huge benefit to the public health of smokers, and the amount of smokers that actually quit using these devices are hugely more successful than nicotine patches or gum.
The full article can be found here: ecigarette study