TOBACCO POLICY SPECIAL
Amanda Sandford, research manager at campaigning charity ASH (Action on Smoking & Health), talks to NHE about the regulatory and ethical situation on cigarette replacement technologies, including e-cigarettes.
S
mokers seeking to quit have more op- tions than ever before thanks to new
technology and medical developments. One option which has attracted much in- terest is e-cigarettes: rechargeable elec- tronic devices designed to mimic cigarette smoking, in which a vapour containing nicotine is heated up and inhaled. They are designed to replicate the smoking act as much as possible, while being much less harmful than inhaling tobacco, as they do not contain the thousands of poisonous chemicals found in tobacco smoke.
Promoting the use of such devices as an alternative to cigarettes is a legitimate pub- lic health message, according to Amanda Sandford, research manager at ASH.
She said: “We support a policy of harm reduction. The ‘old view’ of smoking was crude – quit or die. Basically, you either quit smoking and lived a longer life, or you carried on smoking and ultimately died from it.
24 | national health executive Nov/Dec 11
“Both the tobacco industry and pharma- ceutical industry recognise that there are, or should be, alternatives for smokers who want to carry on using nicotine but in a safe way. We know that smoking is so incred- ibly hard to quit – it can often take three or four attempts or more, and some peo- ple never do manage it. They are lifelong smokers, often reluctantly, but find it too hard to quit.
“It seems to us the ‘quit or die’ approach is inappropriate and unjust, from a public health perspective – but the options avail- able to smokers at the moment are quite limited. There are nicotine replacement therapies available, but they are principally designed to help people stop smoking – al- though some are now licensed for use to help smokers reduce consumption.
“Patches and gum can be used to help smokers in times when they can’t smoke, for example when they are in work or in- doors in any public place, and to help them,
Colby Cosh
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