Will smokers be ‘parked on’ nicotine for life due to e-cigarettes and vaping?

So called “Safer nicotine delivery systems” – such as e-cigarettes – were first supported by those in the medical and scientific establishment who realized, in the late 1990s-early 2000s, that nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) based programmes were failing to significantly reduce smoking rates. Ironically, some of the people who so vociferously support e-cigarette use are those who were responsible for the conception and implementation of the failing NRT-based programmes and policies of the past.

Having failed with the policy of using nicotine to cure addiction to nicotine, they concluded that the real problem was that nicotine addicts were simply not getting large enough or frequent enough doses of nicotine from nicotine patches or gum as they simply weren’t efficient or effective enough at delivering the drug.

The creation of a harm reduction strategy for smokers was therefore born entirely from these people’s spectacular failure to help smokers to stop smoking with NRT programmes and products they themselves supported and devised over two decades. The pharmaceutical industry and the tobacco industry, and others with vested interests, delight at the prospect of a continuous, never ending “harm reduction strategy” simply because it doesn’t require the addicts to stop taking the drug. They get to supply nicotine for the rest of the addict’s life.

The fact is, the idea of using safer electronic nicotine delivery systems to deliver nicotine in a cleaner and possibly less harmful way seemed appealing to many. If permanently converting smokers of normal cigarettes to less harmful e-cigarettes could be achieved, it was thought that tens of millions of lives could be saved.

Even I – as someone who has dedicated my life to freeing addicts from nicotine – was hopeful that, in spite of the negative aspects of nicotine addiction continuing, it might have been a price worth paying if tens of millions of lives were saved or at least significantly lengthened. Unfortunately – a vast majority of people who attempt to switch to e-cigarettes continue to also smoke conventional cigarettes – with any “harm reduction” element much reduced or eliminated altogether.

Even for those few who might become solely addicted to e-cigarettes – there remains a number of significantly negative factors for the addict and their families if they remain addicted to nicotine. No-one enjoys being a slave to drug addiction and it affects family and loved ones accordingly. In my following blogs I’ll look more closely at that and also at who the winners are in the ‘nicotine gold rush’.

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From the desk of John Dicey, Worldwide CEO & Senior Facilitator, Allen Carr’s Easyway