Smokers should be offered e-cigarettes to help quit, RCP recommends

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has suggested that smokers should be encouraged to use electronic cigarettes as a way to help them quit the habit.

The RCP claimed there was resounding evidence that e-cigarettes are significantly safer than smoking and the forms of aid quitting. It added that with the right measures, vaping could improve the lives of millions of people.

The news comes as critics have claimed that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking.

However, currently e-cigarettes can only be purchased online and in specialist stores and are not offered on the NHS.

UK doctors can only prescribe e-cigarettes as a smoking aid if they have been licensed as such, which requires strict regulation. However, most manufacturers of e-cigarettes sell products merely to satisfy the users’ nicotine craving but without the consumption of other harmful tobacco by-products.

RCP president Professor Jane Dacre said: “Since the RCP’s first report on tobacco, Smoking and health, in 1962, we have argued consistently for more and better policies and services to prevent people from taking up smoking, and help existing smokers to quit. This new report builds on that work and concludes that, for all the potential risks involved, harm reduction has huge potential to prevent death and disability from tobacco use, and to hasten our progress to a tobacco-free society.

“With careful management and proportionate regulation, harm reduction provides an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people. It is an opportunity that, with care, we should take.”