Spotting the potential for e-cigarettes

in Blog with 0 Comments

Over two years since he first called for e-cigarettes to be considered as an effective tool to help smokers quit, Birmingham Director of Public Health, Dr Adrian Phillips, welcomes a major new report from the Royal College of Physicians on the potential for ‘vaping’.

So the world is catching up with Birmingham!  We have been advocating vaping as a means of reducing some of the harms of tobacco smoke for years. The simple fact is that its tobacco smoke that kills, causes lung cancer and all the other nasty effects.  Now another body,  the Royal College of Physicians, have followed Public Health England in recognising the benefits, without being dismissive of  any possible harms. But they are likely to be at least 20 times better than tobacco smoke.

But you already know this – just  walk across the city centre and you see loads of people in Birmingham vaping.  You aren’t wrong.

Now I am not saying that addiction to nicotine is good – it’s just that I want to reduce the harms from cigarettes, and so do you, that’s why so many smokers now vape.

Sure – I could say its cheaper and you don’t need to throw away “big nub-ends” when the crafty fag break finishes.  Its more convenient, and the rest.  No – it just doesn’t have tobacco smoke, its that simple.

So big news, but old news.  Still, good news that the great and the good are catching up!  Tobacco smoke kills.

Every year over 1,500 people die in Birmingham from a smoking related disease and smoking is directly attributable to:

  • 1 in 4 of all cancers
  • 1 in 5 deaths from cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke)
  • 1 in 3 of all deaths from respiratory disease

Tags: , , ,


Top