Over the past couple of years, as more in-depth research has been conducted, the NHS has endorsed the use of e-cigarettes alongside their stop smoking services. With the top scientists in the UK estimating that e-cigarettes are 95% safer than smoking tobacco, it's not hard to see why Britain's health service is taking its chances with this potentially revolutionary technology, but our cousins across the Atlantic are more cautious in their approach. In 2014, the Food and Drug Administration announced its plan to include e-cigarettes in its regulation of tobacco products, reflecting America's suspicions of the product and the government's desire to promote it as a danger on the same level as its tobacco counterpart. This plan was finalised in 2016.
E-cigarettes are just over a decade old, having first appeared on the market in 2004. This obviously poses some difficulties for scientists to discern the danger of the product, as nothing similar has been seen before. In terms of fulfilling its basic premise, though, it is a successful product. Instead of inhaling the smoke from burning tobacco, the smoker breathes in the vapour from a heated liquid that contains nicotine and other additives, such as flavours. This prevents the smoker from being exposed to the 4000+ chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 50 of which are carcinogenic. The only issue at stake is the unknown effect(s) of exposure to e-liquid vapour.
However, government bodies and the medical industry in the UK believe that the advantages of using e-cigarettes far outweigh the disadvantage of not knowing its long-term dangers, if indeed there are any. Numerous studies are continuously being conducted that expose the dangers of tobacco smoking and the value that every cigarette smoked has on your life. For example, this one by BMJ, which found that every tobacco cigarette smoked reduces the smoker's life by an estimated 11 minutes. The average smoker in the UK smokes 11 cigarettes a day, so that's 2 hours of life per day they are losing, and one month a year. The gist of the UK's argument is that even just swapping half of your total cigarettes smoked for an e-cigarette could save you months and, over time, years of your life.
In terms of its use to quit smoking altogether, the NHS is emphatic in its advice to use e-cigarettes alongside support from the NHS stop smoking service, because the desire for a cigarette is a psychological thing as well as chemical. But the reason the NHS recommend using e-cigarettes is not just based on scientific research. Charity 'Action on Smoking and Health' conducted a survey of the UK's 2.8 million e-cigarette users. 67% of the ex-tobacco smokers from that group said that e-cigarettes helped them stop smoking entirely. So far, both the theory and the practice of vaping has proven hugely successful in the UK.
America's government bodies, however, don't have 'sufficient evidence' to convince them of the benefit of e-cigarettes. The FDA's incorporation of the e-cigarette market into its Tobacco Act of 2009 means that every e-cigarette product will need to be presented to the FDA for approval, and every new product, such as new flavours, will need to be authorised by the FDA. Such a process could cost millions of dollars and will almost certainly stall the production and distribution of e-cigarettes in the US. Essentially, the US fears that e-cigarettes are actually a means for people - especially young people - to get into smoking rather than to quit. Both theories, however, don't have enough evidence to convince anyone either way. The FDA reports that 'long-term studies are not yet available' to determine whether e-cigarettes cause people to transition to 'combusted products' (i.e. tobacco) or are used as a means to quit smoking.
But it's not just the FDA who have these suspicions. Health charities in America express their concern over the toxicity of the liquid in e-cigarettes, though they admit that most come from 'accidental ingestion' of the liquid. And then there's the pressure applied from tobacco company giants, such as Phillip Morris, maker of the internationally favoured Marlboro cigarettes and owner of 50% of the US's tobacco market. Morris overtly supported the FDA's Tobacco Act as it means he alone will fly through the FDA approvals, and with a tobacco giant as rich and stealthy as that, e-cigarettes will barely get a look in.
It took hundreds of years to unearth the magnitude of the dangers of tobacco, so understandably people are worried about the unknown long-term effects of smoking e-cigarettes. But according to reports from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is responsible for 480,000 deaths per year in the US. It seems about time that the US put its extensive resources to use and put health before wealth.