E-cigarettes: Untold stories

Sales of e-cigarettes, which heat nicotine-laced liquid into vapor, have been rising steadily since the first went on sale in 2007 in the UK. Since 2012, they have replaced nicotine patches and gum to become the most popular choice of smoking cessation aid in England.

However, public health experts have two alternative ways of looking at e-cigarettes. Negative views focus on possible side-effects and the risk that vaping could supplement rather than replace smoking and even inspire young people to take up real cigarettes. But a more positive view is gaining support.

Many public health specialists think e-cigarettes, or vapes, which do not contain tobacco, are a lower-risk alternative to smoking. Unlike nicotine chewing gum and patches, they mimic the experience of cigarette smoking because they are hand-held and generate a smoke-like vapor.

E-cigarettes may have helped about 18,000 people in England to give up smoking in 2015, according to new research by University College London (UCL) which was most recently published in the British Medical Journal, according to UCL portal. Researchers at the UCL Behaviour Research Centre analysed data from the Smoking Toolkit study – which provides the latest information on smoking and smoking cessation in England – and data on the percentage of the smokers who set a quit date with Stop Smoking Services.

The Cochrane Review, the international not-for-profit organisation preparing, maintaining and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of the effects of health care, also found that there were no serious side effects associated with e-cigarette use. In the second analysis, a review published by the Cochrane Library, researchers also found e-cigarettes may help people quit but said there is not yet enough evidence from the best type of studies - randomised controlled trials - to be sure.

Prof John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at Nottingham University, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that although still controversial, there is a growing consensus among UK health organisations that e-cigarettes, by enabling smokers to consume nicotine without the lethal cocktail of toxins in tobacco smoke, could prevent a substantial proportion of otherwise inevitable premature mortality and morbidity among the nine million smokers in the UK.