Daily Telegraph on e-cigarettes
Simon Breheny at the Daily Telegraph writes:
ELECTRONIC cigarettes may be the greatest tool in the fight against lung cancer that the world has ever seen. They’re cheap, convenient and they’re helping smokers everywhere to quit.
And the best part about this health solution? It doesn’t involve government.
Demands for governments to identify and solve problems are a recipe for disaster. They lead to higher taxes and less freedom. A cure administered by the nanny state is worse than the disease.
Often it is.
There are a range of cigarette substitutes already on the market. Electronic cigarettes are the most prominent, and they’re currently taking the world by storm.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered nicotine vaporisers. They do not contain tobacco or produce smoke. E-cigarette users inhale vapour, which produces a similar effect to smoking without the health risks caused by the carcinogenic and toxins of combustible tobacco products.
The global e-cigarette market is worth around $2 billion. This is predicted to grow to $10 billion by 2020. Part of the success of this new product is that it is used as a device to help traditional cigarette smokers to quit tobacco.
An article published in August 2014 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Health concluded that “the use of [e-cigarettes] can reduce the number of cigarettes smoked and withdrawal symptoms …”
In an article for BMC Medicine last year, Peter Hajek of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine said: “although there is no doubt that smokers switching to electronic cigarettes substantially reduce the risk to their health, some tobacco control activists and health organisations discourage smokers from using [e-cigarettes] and lobby policy makers to reduce [e-cigarette] use by draconian regulation.”
In NZ they are banned from being sold! You can sell tobacco but not e-cigarettes.