E-Cigarette sales record high, but do they work?
January 16, 2012
The VIP Electronic Cigarette is an alternative to smoking conventional cigarettes. Despite companies marketing e-cigarettes as smoking alternatives, many smokers using e-cigarettes no longer use tobacco at all. VIP ran a poll in 2011 asking customers if they still smoked regular tobacco cigarettes or had quit the habit. The results were extremely positive with 84% of smokers quitting completely and 16% cutting down.
One ex-heavy smoker and now a regular VIP customer is Debbie Baker, “I’ve been using the VIP e-cig for 12 weeks now and not touched a normal cigarette since. Used to smoke 30 a day and had done so for 35 years. This is an excellent product and I cannot ever imagine going back to normal cigarettes now,” says Debbie. There are many more customer testimonials and reviews on the VIP website and Facebook confirming the success of this ingenious smoking alternative.
January is the most popular time of year for smokers to make the resolution of quitting smoking usually by some form of NRT (nicotine replacement therapy). The industry is worth £150m in the UK – £520m in the US. However, scientific reports show that nicotine replacement therapy offers no advantage in keeping smokers off cigarettes in the long term. The government realise NRT may not be the right choice for every smoker and e-cigarettes could provide an alternative to managing nicotine intake effectively.
The government’s ‘nudge unit’ encourages the use of electronic cigarettes in a bid to reduce smoking-related deaths. The Cabinet Office’s behavioural insight team, known as the nudge unit, is in favour of adopting the e-cigarette technology. Policy officials now acknowledge that the traditional “quit or die” approach is failing British smokers. The focus moves towards managing nicotine addiction to help smokers who otherwise would not quit using conventional forms of NRT.
The E-cigarette delivers bursts of nicotine to the smoker without tobacco, carbon monoxide or tar but does not fall under the NRT category or MHRA control. The VIP E-Cig is purely marketed as a smoking alternative. Availability and cost are key concerns of the government and to millions of smokers worldwide who have already switched to e-cigarettes.
