A groundbreaking 200-page report that supports e-cigarettes as a tool to quit smoking and demolishes several vaping myths in the process has been released by one of the world’s most prestigious medical organizations.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the most respected medical institution in the United Kingdom, concluded e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than regular cigarettes and are likely to be hugely beneficial to public health.
Patricia Kovacevic, general counsel and chief compliance officer for U.S.-based Nicopure Labs, summarized the report’s key areas: “The Royal College of Physicians findings are clear: 1. E-cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking. 2. Their use does not result in normalization of smoking. 3. Among smokers, e-cigarette use is likely to lead to quit attempts and eventually successful smoking cessation. 4. Possibility of long term harm cannot be entirely dismissed but it is likely to be very small, and substantially smaller than that arising from smoking. These findings should weigh heavily here, in the U.S., against the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) decision to issue a deeming rule that may decimate the vaping industry.”
Titled “Nicotine without smoke
: tobacco harm reduction,” the report is one of the most comprehensive ever published examining e-cigarettes and could be a game changer for health officials and politicians all over the world, according to an article published in The Daily Caller.
The RCP’s seminal 1962 report, which demonstrated the link between smoking, lung disease and bronchitis spurred the U.S. Surgeon General to publish the historic 1964 “Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States.”
The RCP’s new report tears apart scare stories, including the ever-more popular idea that vaping is somehow a gateway to smoking. “To date, there is no evidence that any of these processes is occurring to any significant degree in the UK,” said the report’s authors.
Contrary to the claims of some public health activists in the U.S., the RCP is clear: e-cigarettes can help smokers kick their habit for good. “Among smokers, e-cigarette use is likely to lead to quit attempts that would not otherwise have happened, and in a proportion of these to successful cessation. In this way, e-cigarettes can act as a gateway from smoking.”