Will Sajid Javid’s ‘vaping revolution’ bring us closer to the nicotine endgame?

According to the Sunday Times today:

England will become the first country in the world to prescribe e-cigarettes on the NHS to help smokers quit as part of plans to increase life expectancy for the poorest.

The headline ‘Sajid Javid plots vaping revolution to help poor live longer’ seems a bit over-dramatic to me, not least because reports that e-cigarettes could be made available on prescription have been doing the rounds for years.

The suggestion that e-cigarettes might be offered on prescription was even floated by the Government last year:

E-cigarettes could be prescribed on the NHS in England to help people stop smoking tobacco products, as Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid welcomed the latest step forward in the licensing process for manufacturers.

See: E-cigarettes could be prescribed on the NHS in world first.

The proposal was hailed by many vaping advocates but I’ve always been opposed to the idea and I’m not alone. Writing in the Telegraph in 2015, and speaking on GB News last year, the IEA’s Chris Snowdon made the reasonable point that if you can afford to smoke then you can afford to vape.

This is so self-evident it staggers me that so many vaping advocates support the idea of e-cigarettes on prescription because it removes one of the most powerful arguments in favour of e-cigarettes - namely, that vaping has empowered many smokers to quit on their own terms without the need for smoking cessation services or any other form of government intervention.

Furthermore, why should the taxpayer pay for smokers to switch to e-cigarettes, even for a limited period? As a non-smoker I can think of many better things for the Government spend my taxes on and prescribing e-cigarettes to smokers doesn’t strike me as the best use of public money.

My second thought is, be careful what you wish for. If e-cigarettes are increasingly perceived as a medicinal rather than a recreational device it wouldn’t surprise me if it reduced their attraction to many smokers including would-be quitters.

In the hands of the NHS e-cigarettes could have all the allure of the cheap state-funded spectacles many children of my generation were forced to wear in the Sixties and Seventies.

Instead of being an enjoyable device in their own right, there is danger, I would have thought, that e-cigarettes will simply be added to the list of quit smoking aids alongside nicotine patches and gum.

That, by the way, is why I found it hard to applaud when Sainsbury’s announced they were relocating e-cigarettes from behind the counter to the ‘heathcare’ aisle and next to smoking cessation products.

As I wrote at the time (‘Beware anti-smoking campaigners and their siren pro-vaping voices’, July 2019):

If vaping is to have a long-term future, reduced risk products like e-cigarettes should be given similar status to alcohol and caffeine products. They must be recognised as a recreational, not a healthcare, product.

Vaping bodies fought hard to prevent e-cigarettes being licensed as a medicinal device yet e-cigarettes are now being sold alongside nicotine patches and gum.

What next? Will the sale of e-cigarettes eventually be restricted to pharmacies like Boots?

I’ve written about this many times and nothing will change my mind that e-cigarettes have a limited future unless vaping advocates challenge the narrative that e-cigarettes are no more than a smoking cessation tool.

I understand why they won’t (they are desperate to appease public health campaigners who only see vaping as a short-term ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of smoking) but it strikes me as ultra cautious and ultimately self-defeating.

At some point someone has to make the case for vaping as a legitimate long-term habit or activity in its own right, in the same way that Forest defends an adult’s right to smoke on the grounds of choice, personal responsibility and pleasure.

Instead everyone is expected to persist with the pantomime that the only people who should ever vape are smokers and ex-smokers.

The message this sends out in these risk averse times is damagingly ambiguous because it invites politicians and public health activists to see vaping as something to be feared, regardless of the evidence.

After all, if even the vaping industry says that non-smokers should never vape, what does it say about the product?

Anyway, don’t expect anything to happen any time soon in the way of medically approved e-cigarettes.

According to E-Cigarette Intelligence we can expect ‘a wait of at least 18 months to two years before a licensed e-cig hits the pharmacy shelves – even if any manufacturer accepts the government’s invitation to develop one.’

The same article, published on November 4, 2021, quotes public health minister Maggie Throup:

“Ministers from my department have long been clear … that we support e-cigarettes as part of a gateway process for stopping smoking …

“Having e-cigarettes as a licensed product will enable them to be available on prescription, which I know will give health professionals greater confidence in their use.”

However:

“To achieve a licence, a product would need to meet the standards of quality, safety and efficacy expected of a medicinal product.

Significantly she added:

“E-cigarettes are just a gateway to stopping smoking completely. That is the ultimate goal. We want to ensure that people go from smoking to e-cigarettes, and then to no smoking (sic) at all.”

Ignore the conflation of vaping with smoking. As E-Cigarette Intelligence points out, what she clearly means is: eradicate smoking (with the help of e-cigarettes), then eradicate vaping.

If that’s the endgame (or ‘vaping revolution’) Sajid Javid is planning I think we should be told.