Public Health England (PHE), the largest English public health organisation, made up of 5.000 scientists, researchers and public health experts, wrote it clearly in the independent study that compiles existing knowledge on electronic cigarettes: e-cigs are about 95% safer than tobacco products and have the potential to help people quit. Furthermore, we read, despite the affirmations and alarmism of some for which there is still no scientific evidence, there is currently no evidence to demonstrate that electronic cigarettes are a gateway to smoking for young people or non-smokers.
“At the moment 80.000 people [in England] die every year as a result of cigarette smoking. If every smoker switched to e-cigarettes, the number of deaths would drop to 4.000 every year. But that's a conservative estimate. It could be many, but many less than 4.000”, writes the PHE report.
Words he even spoke on Hon Lik, the Chinese pharmacist inventor of the electronic cigarette, today head of the research and development division of Fontem Ventures, the first multinational to launch e-cigs in Italy (with the JAI brand and soon Blu eCig) in the last months. “Years ago, when I started studying the various prototypes of nicotine delivery devices, this was what I had imagined. That is, public health experts would one day recognize the potential of these tools to reduce the number of smokers and the impact of smoking-related diseases,” said Hon Lik. "This is the ultimate reason why I created the electronic cigarette, and for this reason today is a beautiful day for me, because I see my dream also recognized by official channels".
The #changeverse e-cig?
Revolutionary statements those expressed by the English institution, which really could change the approach of health institutions, and not only, with regard to e-cigs, also given that, in the coming months, Governments throughout Europe will have to transpose Directive 2014/40 on tobacco products into their respective legislation, which risks giving a fatal blow to electronic cigarettes , as we have already seen following the publication of the choices of the Spanish Ministry of Health.
But will the scientific evidence deriving from the PHE report have consequences in a country like Italy that has already known these things for two years? “If all those who smoke traditional cigarettes started smoking tobacco-free cigarettes (e-cigarettes) we would save at least 30.000 lives a year in Italy and 500 million worldwide. Today we are therefore debating the most serious health problem of our century: the cessation of smoking". These are the words, practically identical to those spoken by PHE, del prof. Umberto Veronesi, world-renowned oncologist and former Minister of Health, who did not find positive responses from the Government, which indeed in recent years has done everything to crush the e-cig sector. Another aspect that Prof. Veronesi had immediately framed.
“The fashion for the e-cig has recently deflated and many shops have closed because the government is 'rowing against' and, having introduced a tax of 58% [subsequently replaced by Legislative Decree 188/2014 with one of the same level, Editor's note], has made many manufacturers disappear. Of course, the State earns more with traditional cigarettes, without thinking, however, that every year it spends three billion euros to treat the 50 tumors that develop in Italy due to smoking. The hundreds of tobacco-related deaths each day are ignored and their pain is ignored. Even our state, through the monopoly on cigarette packets, profits from this tragedy".
It was November 2013, and after almost two years nothing has changed in Italy, except that in the meantime the State has lost over 200 million euros due to a tax that has now prompted 80% of consumers to buy all abroad, with the imaginable consequences for Italian companies and shops.
Ball to the Minister of Health
Always the prof. Veronesi two years ago spoke of a Minister Lorenzin "e-cigarette enthusiast”. An enthusiasm that, however, does not shine through at all draft released by his Ministry which transposes in Italy the EU Directive that will condition the market in the coming years. In fact, apart from the aspects relating to traditional cigarettes (shock images, etc.), the text drawn up by the Ministry is extremely punitive towards electronic cigarettes, even going beyond the provisions of the Directive itself (e.g. on distance and cross-border sales) . But most amazing thing, especially for the known aversion of Minister Lorenzin to everything related to smoking, is the absence or almost no rules for the so-called "heat-not-burn" (defined by some as "heat-and-burn", however), on which the only existing study, carried out by a competitor, must be said, says that instead there is combustion. These in fact, at the time of the enactment of Directive 2014/40 were only a product of perspective.
Our country is therefore the global front in terms of regulation (and taxation), on which much of the future of the tobacco industry is at stake. A situation which therefore imposes on the Government the duty to intervene with precise rules (for example on the control of scientific studies, on closures to protect children, etc.) also initiating a public debate which has so far been absent, beyond the economic interests in field. But, if, as Minister Lorenzin once said, "the MEF decides on taxes" - even if they mean health policy and not just fiscal policy - it would truly be a unique case in the world if, through the transposition of a Directive, Italy became the first State in the world to favor one tobacco product, with all the consequences connected to it, over another such as the 95% safer e-cig.
