Products seen as alternative to smoking

While President Donald Trump has vowed to “do something very, very strong” after hundreds of reported cases of lung illnesses related to electronic cigarettes, public health officials in the U.K., the biggest market in Europe for the products, endorse vaping as a way to wean people off smoking.

It’s the prevailing view across Europe, where authorities are more sanguine because the ailments popping up in the U.S. mostly have been linked to vaping liquids laced with cannabis, which is off limits in much of Europe. Use among European teenagers is also much lower than in the U.S., as is the nicotine content in popular vaping products.

“If you’re a smoker and you have not stopped smoking, try vaping,” Martin Dockrell, head of tobacco issues at Public Health England, said in an interview posted on his Twitter feed this month. The government agency repeatedly has said vaping is 95% less harmful than cigarettes.

The response to the vaping crisis underlines a deeper difference in the two regions’ approach to smoking alternatives. U.K. health bodies are leading a push for acceptance of products such as Imperial Brands’s Blu and British American Tobacco’s Vype as a way to get people to quit smoking, which is linked to cancer, heart disease and other ailments. Conversely in the U.S., which has seen countless tobacco lawsuits over the past decades, cigarette alternatives are feared to be a possible gateway into smoking.

What aligns both regions is that smoking rates have fallen, while vaping numbers have climbed. In the U.S., about 13% of the population smoked cigarettes last year, down from some 18% in 2013, according to Euromonitor International. In the U.K., the rate has come down to 14% from 19%, while declines have been slower in countries such as France and Germany.

The U.K. is Europe’s No. 1 vaping market, with 6.3% of the adult population using such devices, but far fewer British teenagers vape than their counterparts in the U.S. About 1.6% of British 11to 18-year-olds said they used e-cigarettes more than once a week, according to a Yougov survey published by anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health in June. The Health & Human Services Department said Wednesday that the proportion of regular vapers among U.S. high school students has risen to one in four, citing preliminary data from a new survey.

U.K. authorities said they received seven reports in 2019 of adverse reactions suspected to have been caused by vaping, with no fatalities.

Europe’s effort to push cigarette smokers toward vaping and heated tobacco devices is rooted in a public health approach called harm reduction that gained acceptance in the 1980s for prevention of HIV and other diseases among sex workers and injecting drug users. The approach seeks to diminish the impact of risky behaviors by promoting infection-blocking tools such as clean needles and condoms. The strategy contrasted with efforts like the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign championed by Nancy Reagan.