World Health Organization cautions against claims made by ‘electronic cigarette’ manufacturers

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an attack on advertisers who are claiming that an electronic cigarette - a battery-powered product usually made of stainless steel and resembling a real cigarette - is a safe or legitimate nicotine replacement therapy for smokers trying to quit.

The WHO says marketing which claims the product helps smokers break their addictions to tobacco, implying that WHO regards it as a legitimate nicotine replacement therapy like nicotine gum, lozenges and patches, is simply not the case.

Dr. Ala Alwan, Assistant Director-General of WHO’s Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster says the electronic cigarette is not a proven nicotine replacement therapy and there is no scientific evidence to confirm the product’s safety and efficacy.

The WHO is calling for advertisers to immediately remove from their web sites and other informational materials any suggestion that WHO considers it to be a safe and effective smoking cessation aid.

The electronic cigarette aims to convince smokers they are puffing on a real cigarette which needs no lighting and produces no smoke.

The device instead has a chamber for storing liquid nicotine in various concentrations, which produces a fine, heated mist, which is absorbed into the lungs.

The electronic cigarette is sold in China, where it was developed in 2004, and in a number of other countries, including Brazil, Canada, Finland, Israel, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

However the WHO says it has no evidence that the product helps people quite smoking and there is no known research showing that it is a safe and effective nicotine replacement therapy.

Douglas Bettcher, acting director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative says that the only way to know if the product works is to test it and if marketers of the electronic cigarette want to help smokers quit, then they need to conduct clinical studies and toxicity analyses and operate within the proper regulatory framework.

Bettcher says until that is done the WHO cannot consider the electronic cigarette to be an appropriate nicotine replacement therapy, and certainly cannot accept false suggestions that it has approved and endorsed the product.

The WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation is set to address the electronic cigarette, among other topics, when it meets from 12 to 14 November in Durban, South Africa.