Promote e-cigarettes widely as substitute for smoking says new RCP report

The Royal College of Physicians' new report, ‘Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction’, has concluded that e-cigarettes are likely to be beneficial to UK public health. Smokers can therefore be reassured and encouraged to use them, and the public can be reassured that e-cigarettes are much safer than smoking.

Tobacco smoking is addictive and lethal with half of all lifelong smokers dying early, losing an average of about 3 months of life expectancy for every year smoked after the age of 35 (some 10 years of life in total). Although smoking prevalence in the UK has reduced to 18%, 8.7 million people still smoke. Harm reduction provides an additional strategy to protect this group of smokers from disability and early death.
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