Keep calm and vape on: UK embraces e-cigarettes, US cautious

While U.S. scrambles to crack down on vaping, Britain has embraced electronic cigarettes as a powerful tool to help smokers kick habit. Royal College of Physicians explicitly tells doctors to promote e-cigarettes "as widely as possible" to people trying to quit. Public Health England's vice is that vaping carries a small fraction of risk of smoking. U.S. public health officials have taken a more wary approach, and have been slow to regulate e-cigarettes. That caution turned to alarm, though, with an explosion in teen vaping, prompting federal government and some states to take steps to ban fruit and minty flavors that appeal to youths. And w, with hundreds of U.S. cases of a mysterious lung illness among vapers, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that people consider t using e-cigarettes, especially those with THC, compound that gives pot its high.

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US t welcoming e-cigarettes

U.S. reaction is "complete mness," said Dr. John Britton, director of U.K. Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at University of ttingham. " reality with smoking is, if you tell people to stop vaping, y will go back to tobacco and tobacco kills." Regulations about e-cigarettes vary by country, making for a patchwork of policies. More than 30 countries ban e-cigarettes outright; India halted sales this month. Many European countries including Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products, subjecting m to strict controls. y are mostly sold as consumer products in Britain and France, under more lax rules.

Since arriving in U.S. in 2007, e-cigarettes have been largely unregulated. U.S. Food and Drug ministration didn't get power to do that until three years ago and is still working out details. Black market versions, meanwhile, have flourished. Appearing before Congress last week, U.S. FDA's acting commissioner was pressed to explain ncy's position. Several lawmakers suggested e-cigarettes should be completely removed from market. "We do t consider se products safe, we think y have harm," said Dr. Ned Sharpless. "We do t think really anyone should be using m or than people using m in place of combustible tobacco."

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Dangers of vaping compared to cigarettes

In Britain, a review by Public Health England, an ncy similar to CDC, concluded that vaping is about 95% less dangerous than smoking. A leing British anti-tobacco charity, Ash, even called for e-cigarettes to be licensed as medicines and provided free to smokers trying to quit by Britain's government-funded health system. "We need rical solutions to stop smoking and one option is providing smokers with e-cigarettes so y can get nicotine y need without tobacco smoke," said Britton. "We have a much more relaxed attitude to people being dicted to nicotine on basis that nicotine itself isn't particularly hazardous."

E-cigarettes and or vaping devices typically heat a solution containing nicotine into a vapor that's inhaled. amount of nicotine varies widely: Some countries set limits on amount. re's cap in U.S. And surge in U.S. teen vaping brought warnings from health officials that nicotine can harm a teenr's still-developing brain. "What's right for England might t be right for U.S.," said Ryan Kennedy of Institute for Global Tobacco Control at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Compared to United States, England has h historically higher rates of tobacco use and a "deeper comfort" with idea of substituting a less harmful habit for a dangerous one, Kennedy said. British health officials have been able and willing to strictly regulate e-cigarettes while promoting m as a stop-smoking tool.

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black market of vaping

In U.S., meanwhile, rapid rise in e-cigarettes' popularity among teenrs, a thriving black market for vapes containing marijuana extracts and illness outbreak have muddied public health mess recently, Kennedy said. Ar key difference is vertising. Unlike in U.S., Britain has tight regulations on vertising vaping; all TV, online and rio marketing is banned, explained Linda Bauld, a public health professor at University of Edinburgh. "E-cigarettes are promoted to middle-d smokers as a way to quit and imaging from our annual quit campaign is usually all men with beards, so it looks pretty boring," she said.

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