United Kingdom’s leading medicines regulator has classified e-cigarettes as medical devices.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says e-cigarettes could be marketed as smoking cessation aids, opening the way for prescription use by Britain’s National Health Service.
Prior to MHRA’s decision, e-cigarettes could not be recommended by general practitioners because they were not licensed. Now, e-cigarettes will be able to more fully compete with traditional quitting remedies such as nicotine gum and patches.
The U.K. has been one of the most bullish countries on the public health benefits of e-cigarettes, with an independent study from Public Health England claiming they are 95 percent safer than tobacco and could be a “game-changer” for getting people to quit smoking. Around 20 percent of British adults smoke.
The report adds that there is a substantial body of high-quality evidence that e-cigarettes are an effective tool for getting smokers to kick their habit.
“In the year up to April 2015, two out of three people who used e-cigarettes in combination with the NHS stop smoking service managed to successfully quit,” the BBC reports.
MHRA’s decision to grant a license to British American Tobacco which sells e-Voke e-cigarettes could prove a profitable one for the company. An e-Voke starter kit costs close to $30, with fresh cartridges costing almost $15.
Prime Minister David Cameron voiced support for e-cigarettes toward the end of 2015, saying they’re a “legitimate” path for people to quit smoking.
A conservative member of Parliament asked him to highlight “the role that e-cigarettes can play in helping people to give up tobacco for good.”
“I think we do need to be guided by the experts,” Cameron said. “We should look at the report from Public Health England but it is promising to see that over all, one million people are estimated to have used e-cigarettes to help them quite or have replaced smoking with e-cigarettes completely,” Cameron told the House of Commons on Dec. 17.
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