More and more experts around the world are joining the initiative to use electronic cigarettes as a way to combat smoking.
As they did recently in the United States, this time it has been health professionals in Australia who have advised the population to give up tobacco cigarettes and switch to electronic cigarettes, as it will potentially save more lives in the country. Health experts have gathered in Melbourne, Australia, to discuss how e-cigarettes can help tobacco smokers kick their habits.
Australia's experts are not the only ones in the world to get on board. Hayden McRobbie, a professor at Queen Mary University in England, said that if smokers cannot quit tobacco smoking, they could switch to vaping, since e-cigarettes may still have nicotine, but they do not damage the lungs as conventional cigarettes do.
On the other hand Colin Mendelsohn, a professor at the University of New South Wales, said that e-cigarettes containing nicotine allow users to replicate the same smoking experience as regular cigarettes, but without the harmful effects of toxic fumes.
McRobbie added that the move might not save the Australian government's health budget in the long run, but at least it will save more lives in the country. The effects of e-cigarettes "are not entirely clear," he continued, but there is general agreement that their benefits outweigh the harmful effects of conventional cigarettes.
In Australia, the sale of e-cigarettes containing nicotine is not allowed, but there are many people who import them from outside the country. New Zealand, however, plans to legalize their sale and regulate them as consumer products by next year.
Using data from the 2014 and 2015 National Health Interview Survey, they found that more than half of e-cigarette users were able to quit smoking in the past five years, compared with 28 percent who never used e-cigarettes.
They also found that e-cigarettes were the best predictor of quitting smoking and that daily e-cigarette users are three times more likely to quit smoking than non-users of e-cigarettes.