The latest supermarket reports out of Great Britain show that e-cigs and vapor products are the fastest growing segment on the market there. This is while the 2015 sales prediction for e-cigs from Wells-Fargo s respected tobacco analyst, Bonnie Herzog, is for over $3billion, as compared to last year s (2014) $1.7B.
It seems highly likely that vaping is slowly but surely replacing smoAt the same time, the UK s Smoking Toolkit Study reported a sudden (over the past 2 years) surge in successful smoking cessation rates there (quit rates). In 2011, the quit rate in the UK was 4.6 percent; over the next three years, the rates were 6.2 percent, 6.1 percent, and an amazing 7.5 percent in 2014.
As ACSH advisor Dr. Mike Siegel puts it in his well-respected Tobaccoanalysis.Blogspot:
Of course, this is merely an ecological analysis. However, the pattern of these trends seems far too striking to be explained alternatively. The working hypothesis, it seems, should be that electronic cigarettes have played a major role in enhancing smoking cessation, both by stimulating quit attempts and improving success in those quit attempts.
The irony of this story is that policy makers in the UK wanted a virtual ban on electronic cigarettes, and health groups and many anti-smoking advocates in the U.S. favor policies that would put a huge dent in the growth of the electronic cigarette market (at the expense, of course, of increased tobacco cigarette sales).
This is probably the most profound example in my career of public health groups supporting policies that are antithetical to the overall goals of public health.
I couldn t have said it better myself!