I am rather happy that my country is widely regarded as a global leader in tobacco harm reduction. Enthusiastic take-up of vaping products has led to the UK boasting the second lowest smoking prevalence rate in Europe, behind only Sweden. Sadly, it hasn’t always been this way.
Our government used to prefer the stick to the carrot. In 2007, after years of hiking taxes on tobacco, it implemented a nationwide smoking ban in indoor public spaces. Post-implementation reviews by tobacco control activists spoke of the potential for making life so inconvenient for smokers that they would surely quit. Instead, the next three years saw a stall in the previous long-term steady decline in smoking prevalence, with 21 percent of the public stubbornly continuing to smoke.
It was in this environment that e-cigarettes first appeared in the UK, a few years after their invention by Chinese scientist Hon Lik.
Martin Cullip – Filter – 2021-08-16.
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