NHS Prescription E-cigarettes – More Reactions
The news the UK Government is considering NHS prescription e-cigarettes has been picked up by the world’s mainstream media.
So far there’s been few opponents to the idea, and the UK retail trade says it will be ‘good for the industry’.
Trade magazine Better Retailing spoke to a number of shop keepers and all seemed keen on the idea – of course any licensed vape product would probably only be available from pharmacies.
However the retailers say it would mean more smokers making the switch and may lessen the negativity around vaping.
Avtar Sidhu, of St. John’s Budgens in Kenilworth, near me in Warwickshire, said:
There has been loads of conflicting and negative messaging over the years regarding vapes, so it’s great that the UK government has come out with some positive rhetoric.
It gives consumers confidence, raises its [vaping category] profile, and helps turn it into a mainstream product.
Tobacco is still huge in comparison to e-cigarettes, and while vaping has been chipping away at it, I think this is a catalyst for it to really flourish and grow.
The fact it’s going through the NHS is good for the whole category and industry.
It’s morally the right thing to do.
We’ve been trying to guide people off cigarettes and this legitimises it.
A lot of people who have thought about it will turn to it. This will work in the favour of the retailers who view this as an opportunity.
Great points.
Professor Nick Hopkinson, a consultant physician at the Royal Brompton and medical director at Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation, spoke to Sky News saying:
I’m still suspicious of licensed vape kits, but have to admit the debate is certainly keeping the UK at the top of the tobacco harm reduction tables.
If current smokers see the news of NHS prescription e-cigarettes becoming a possibility, then yeah let’s hope millions more make the switch.
As to if we ever see such a product…it’s a only a possibility at the moment.
So…what are your thoughts?
Should we see NHS prescription e-cigarettes?
Do you class the vape device your using as a ‘medicine?’
Over 3.5 million of us here in the UK didn’t need a prescription to quit smoking via vaping…
A Vape Tax Not A Vape Ban For Malaysia
Malaysia looks likely to impose a vape tax rather than an outright ban on e-cigarettes.
However anti-vape groups in the country are furious and are calling for a government re-think.
It was back in 2019 the Malaysian Government looked at banning all things vape and that was on the back of the so called EVALI outbreak in the USA.
We now of course know that had absolutely nothing to do with nicotine based vaped and was of course due to contaminated and illicit bought cannabis pens.IQOS Stubbed Out In the USA
It’s a story I’ve been following for a while and it’s now true that IQOS will be banned from sale in the USA by the end of November this year.
The move stems for a court battle between IQOS owners Altria and British American Tobacco [BAT].