Following the publication in the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ) of the latest study on Formaldehyde in e-cigarettes there has been a slew of criticism of the methodology of the study, which calls into question the both the competency of the researchers and the ethics (or lack of) behind it's publication.
NNA is proud to support a new initiative from Spain, which aims to gain support from medical professionals for the use of e-cigarettes as a reduced harm alternative to smoking. Here, Carmen Escrig of EFVI Spain tells us more about the MOVE campaign and how it came about.
When I was a student, I joined an anarchist group. I enjoyed the beer-drinking, the producing, on an old Roneo printer, of smudgy political flyers, the screenprinting of posters that we’d go out and fly-post after dark (taking care not to get caught with wallpaper paste all over our hands). Part of me thought privately that if any of the group found a burglar had trashed their home, they wouldn’t hesitate to call the maligned police, but I did unswervingly believe one principal tenet: that the end justified the means.
Older and more respectable now, I manage a Stop Smoking Service for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. In early 2013, we started to realise that the numbers of people using our service were falling sharply, despite years of success in delivering an excellent model for helping long-term smokers kick the habit. The phones stopped ringing, people did not turn up to appointments, and if they did start treatment, they would more often than not drop out of it early.
Read more: Could electronic cigarettes help to end the smoking epidemic?
Let us start by getting any conflicts of interest out of the way.
I am Simon Thurlow. I am an Information Security Professional. That means I spend most of my working days travelling around the UK and Europe designing or proposing Information Security solutions for clients of the IT company that I work for. I am married with 3 grown-up children (23, 22 and 18). I smoked for over 30 years. A few years ago I had a Myocardial Infarction (that almost succeeded in killing me) and was told that my smoking habit was to blame. I discovered eCigarettes as a way of quitting smoking.
Changes to the rules on the advertising of e-cigarettes on TV meant a busy day for NNA's Lorien Jollye on Monday..
Read more: A busy day with the media for NNA's Lorien Jollye
NNA Associate and Leicestershire Stop Smoking Services manager Louise Ross was asked to address pharmacists at the conference on Saturday on the subject of e-cigarettes. Louise was joined on the platform by vapers, who were able to share their personal experiences with delegates. Read on for Louise's account of the event, and for some wonderful news about the first quarter success rate of her ecig friendly service.
When Kent & Medway PCT asked for input from a vaper for their conference on smoking cessation within mental health facilities NNA trustee Sarah Jakes was only too happy to oblige. Here are Sarah's impressions of the day.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), in conjunction with the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), held a symposium on ecigs. They only invited speakers who were hostile to harm reduction for smokers, as Sarah Jakes reports.
A leaked memo from the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently suggested that ecigarettes should be classified as Tobacco Products and would therefore be subject to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The suggestion, if adopted, would require Governments that have signed up to the FCTC to take active steps to reduce the use of ecigs, to ban advertising completely and to place restrictions on the ecig industry's access to legislators. In short, it would treat ecigs as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution to Smoking Harm.
We wrote to the Director General of the WHO, Dr Maragret Chan, to ask her to consider the potentially enormous public health benefits of actively encouraging smokers to switch to ecigarettes. Click "Read more" to see the full text.
Read more: NNA letter to the WHO regarding ecigarettes and FCTC
Louise Ross (aka @grannylouisa on Twitter) is the manager of Leicester's Stop Smoking Service, which we believe is the first UK SSS to support the use of ecigarettes by its Service Users. She is also a passionate advocate of ecigs for harm-reduction and has worked with many vaping activists to spread the good word. Here, she shares her personal thoughts about working with vapers to influence decision-makers in public health and politics.
Regular readers will know that some of us went to Warsaw last week, for the Global Forum on Nicotine. Here, Sarah Jakes writes about her impressions from the event.
With so much debate and discussion about ecigarettes, its easy to forget that other harm-reduced options exist. We wanted to know more about smokeless tobacco use from a consumers perspective
and David Czekaj (@analoguebetter on Twitter) kindly wrote this guest blog for us.
Read more: Smokefree Tobacco alternatives - A consumer's journey
Recent events attended by NNA have sparked considerable debate among the vaping community. Sarah Jakes (NNA Trustee) explains why "You've got to be in it, to win it".
Read more: Sleeping with the enemy (or as I prefer - you've got to be in it to win it)
NNA Trustee Sarah Jakes on the All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting on Ecigarettes, held on Tuesday 10th June 2014.
Read more: “E-Cigarettes: Gateway to Addiction or Cessation? Establishing an APPG Position".
On Friday, the NNA submitted its response to the CAP consultation on ecig advertising. We support the proposed rules, in principle, but there are several potential issues arising from the use of vague, ambiguous terminology.
Read more: NNA(UK) response to CAP consultation on ecigarette advertising
New estimates double size of US e-cigarette market; increasing importance of refillable and modified devices
Read more: New estimates double size of US e-cigarette market
Update - Global Forum on Nicotine, 27-28th June 2014, Warsaw: Conference topics, speakers, and outline programme announced