Doctors have an ethical obligation to want the best for their patients’ health, which means that they’re constantly advising in this matter. This is no different when it comes to smokers.
Doctors are obliged to give smokers information about cessation programmes and assist them to quit if they wish to do so. Vaping was added to this list in some countries with great results. The smoking rate drastically dropped in countries like the UK and US where vaping is either endorsed or where nicotine containing e-liquids are freely available.
The above hasn’t had any impact on the tight laws in places like Australia where its looking at banning e-cigarettes all together. This is despite the country seeing a massive increase of 21 000 smokers between 2013 and 2016. This means that the country is home to 2.4mill smokers even though it has the most expensive cigarette prices in the world and plain packaging. Recent studies showed that Australia officially surpassed US in smoking numbers.
Australia is working towards a smoke-free society through vigorous regulations on tobacco products and wrongfully including e-cigarettes in the same legislation. It’s surprising, given its big smoking problem, that they’re not studying areas such as the UK which had a big drop in smoking since endorsing vaping.
Findings by the Public Health England (PHE) earlier this year proved that vaping is 95% safer than smoking. Vaping was also found to be the most successful and popular cessation device. Because of this, doctors across the world are advising their respective governments to make e-cigarettes accessible to smokers as a way to quit smoking and potentially save millions of lives.
New research emerges on a weekly basis these days that confirms that vaping is safer than smoking. We hope that more countries will embrace the research and strive towards smoke-free societies in the long term.