Claim hospital vaping ban sends mixed message
BANNING people from using e-cigarettes in hospital grounds sends a mixed message about their dangers, a public health expert has warned.
Smoking was banned in all Scottish hospital grounds in 2015, but individual health boards can choose whether to allow “vaping” – using electronic cigarettes which give smokers a vapourised nicotine fix without tobacco.
NHS Fife and Lanarkshire have banned vaping, but NHS Tayside is now set to follow NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian by lifting the prohibition.
Professor Linda Bauld, of Stirling University, said there was little evidence to support a ban and warned that it could discourage smokers from quitting cigarettes.
Writing in an article for the journal, Tobacco Control, Prof Bauld said: “By treating e-cigarettes like tobacco, and banning them in certain places, it gives a message to the public about them being as dangerous as smoking.
“When people made some of these early policies, it was a bit of wild west out there. We need to be shaping these choices based evidence.”
The Royal College of Physicians previously said the risks on new from vaping were less than five per cent of those linked to traditional cigarettes.
However, public health experts from Sydney University, Australia writing in an accompanying editorial in the Tobacco Control journal warn that claims vaping emissions are benign are based on “gossamer-thin evidence”.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said ecigarettes are not “risk-free” and has said it will “continue to monitor emerging evidence on e-cigarettes”.