Image courtesy of flickr
The battle that is currently raging over whether E Cigarettes are safe or not as a tobacco replacement product took another twist this week; but a twist that is sure to delight the millions of E Cigarette users around the world.
ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) UK have more or less come out and endorsed E Cigarettes as a plausible and safe substitution for “real” cigarettes and the more traditional tobacco products such as pipes and cigars. Not only this, but they have agreed in principle with the rest of the E Cigarette industry that the products are actually an acceptable option to tobacco.
In a recent press release, ASH stated the following…
“ASH supports a harm reduction approach to tobacco, that is, we recognize that while efforts to help people stop smoking should remain a priority, many people either do not wish to stop smoking or find it very hard to do so. For this group, we believe that products should be made available that deliver nicotine in a safe way, without the harmful components found in tobacco. Most of the diseases associated with smoking are caused by inhaling smoke which contains thousands of toxic chemicals. By contrast, nicotine is relatively safe. Therefore, e cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without the harmful toxins found in tobacco smoke, are likely to be a safer alternative to smoking. In addition, e-cigarettes reduce second-hand smoke exposure since they do not produce smoke.”
Although ASH does now believe that E Cigarettes offer a good alternative to “real” tobacco related products, they, as an organisation, are slightly concerned about some issues of E Cigarette products including the fact that most of these only deliver very small doses of nicotine which might not give a smoker the “nicotine hit” he/she craves, therefore having an off-putting effect of traditional smokers taking these products up as a viable alternative to tobacco.
Although ASH UK doesn’t appear to worry overly about any high doses of nicotine, they seem more concerned with the low doses on offer in E Cigarettes, as outlined in the above paragraph, which conversely is in direct contrast to the views of their cousins across the pond, ASH United States. It has to be said though that the American ASH has been embroiled in a conflict of interests while attacking E Cigarettes because they accept funds from the very pharmaceuticals that produce tobacco cessation products in the States.