Smoking: E-Cigarettes

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct. The Cochrane review concluded that the quality of the evidence overall is low because it is based on only a small number of studies. The National Institute for Health Research has recently commissioned a large randomised control trial to examine the efficacy of e-cigarettes compared with nicotine replacement therapy when used within the UK’s stop smoking services. That project is due to end in 2018 and will certainly improve our current understanding.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we need a public health education campaign to persuade people that there are absolutely no health benefits whatever, or indeed any merit, in becoming addicted to nicotine, and that the promotion of devices such as e-cigarettes should be purely for the purposes of encouraging people to be weaned off their addiction to tobacco with nicotine, as tobacco is still killing nearly 300 people every day in this country?