The Indian government’s own disastrous experience with bans of various substances and services in the past should categorically advise it against such a move in the future. Yet, it is planning to go down the same route again with the case of “e-cigarettes” also known as Electronic Nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). A ban on ENDS, however well-intentioned, will put several former smokers at a greater risk of limiting their access to no-tar alternatives and will end up defeating the larger public health objectives.
In a landmark 200-page report titled “Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction”, the Royal College of Physicians in the UK concludes that e-cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking, nor do they result in normalization of smoking. They find that the available evidence indicates that “e-cigarettes are being used almost exclusively as safer alternatives to smoked tobacco, by confirmed smokers who are trying to reduce harm to themselves or others from smoking, or to quit smoking completely”. Importantly, they further categorically find that the long-term harm caused by e-cigarettes is less than 5 percent compared to other tobacco products.
