Smoking: Vaping

Earl Cathcart Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I think that the noble Lord is making the point that we need a balanced approach. We want to emphasise the relative health benefits, but we must also recognise that harmful effects can come from nicotine in itself. Obviously, we want to get to a position in which people are not smoking and not taking nicotine at all, and the relative benefits of the different ways people can go about that are taken into account. I think that the UK has a sensible approach. I am afraid that I do not have the date when the Public Health England report will be published, but I will write to the noble Lord with that information.

[Earl Cathcart (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Ridley said, vaping has been hugely successful in getting 2.8 million Brits—myself included—off smoking tobacco. Snus, however, has been even more successful in reducing tobacco use in Sweden: 5% of Swedes still smoke tobacco, compared with 16% of Britons and 24% across the EU states. Given the success and safety of snus, why can we not use it in this country?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend is quite right to point out that vaping is a British success story as an anti-smoking aid, and it has made a huge contribution not just to noble Lords but to around 2.5 million e-cigarette users, half of whom used to smoke. There is, of course, as he will no doubt be aware, a court challenge going on at the moment. It is under consideration by the CJEU, and we expect a judgment in the summer of 2018, so I am unfortunately not in a position to comment until we have that judgment.