A new independent report by the U.K. government has recommended doubling down on vaping as a way of driving down smoking rates.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration dithers and backslides on regulating products that it fully recognizes are far less harmful than smoking, across the pond they are talking of a “vaping revolution” with cross-party political support.
The June 2022 report aims to “mak[e] smoking obsolete” and considers vaping products to be central to its plans to achieve the government’s goal of being smoke-free by 2030. Recommending that the government “must embrace the promotion of vaping as an effective tool to help people to quit smoking tobacco,” report author Javed Khan OBE has put forward progressive policy proposals on harm reduction which put the FDA’s precautionary principle approach to shame.
He suggests that health professionals should offer vapes to smokers in health settings as a substitute for smoking and that government should accelerate the pathway by offering vaping products to be prescribed by the National Health Service. Furthermore, he recommends that vaping products should be provided free of charge to smokers in deprived communities, advocates for the products to not be subjected to a retail sales tax, and demands that smoking cessation information campaigns routinely include vaping as a means of quitting smoking.
In direct contrast to the misinformation campaigns by public health groups in the U.S., Mr. Khan also calls for skeptical health professionals to be properly educated about the less harmful nature of e-cigarettes, and calls for a national information campaign to “dismantle myths about smoking and vaping.”
Furthermore, in announcing the publication of the review, U.K. Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid, categorically stated in the House of Commons that “[v]aping is far less harmful than smoking and is an effective quitting device,” something that one could never imagine the bumbling FDA to declare so unambiguously…
Martin Cullip – Washington Times – 2022-06-22.
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