UK
The British Psychological Society (BPS) says e-cigarettes should be promoted as a method of stopping smoking. This is the key message from BPS’ recent report “Changing Behavior: Electronic Cigarettes” published in early October 2017. The report, a behavior change briefing, aims to provide guidance and education to those involved with smoking cessation.
Dr. Lynne Dawkins, co-author of the report and associate professor at London South Bank University, said, “For smokers trying to quit, e-cigarettes are more attractive than traditional smoking cessation methods, such as nicotine replacement therapy, and at least as effective. There is also mounting evidence that they are much safer than tobacco smoking. As a consumer product, although most stop smoking services (SSS) are not currently able to supply these, we recommend that they endorse them and support their use by smokers trying to quit.”
The report also recommends improving education about the relative harms of smoking, nicotine, and e-cigarettes; combining existing best practices and NHS SSS with the most popular quitting method (e-cigarettes) to increase attractiveness of SSS and further boost success rates; offering e-cigarettes and technical support as part of SSS and funding the services to support smokers to quit; using policy interventions and fiscal measures to raise the cost of smoking and reduce the cost of e-cigarettes; continuing to increase taxes, smoke-free regulation, and purchasing barriers for cigarettes but regulate the reduced risk product less heavily; for e-cigarettes, avoid taxation and ‘vape-free’ legislation and promote unrestricted advertising of factual information; regulating to promote product development – allowing e-cigarettes to further evolve and improve so they are safer, more appealing, and satisfying for more smokers; and investing in research to continue to explore the effects of e-cigarettes on smoking cessation and to determine which factors promote a successful transition.