E-cigarettes 'should be banned indoors': Global health watchdog issued warning over 'toxicant'



New report by U.N. agency raises fears over safety of electronic devices

Says their use should be regulated and sales to minors banned



Still unclear whether exhaled vapour poses health risk to bystanders



WHO fears competition for market share may be compromising safety



There are fears that e-cigarettes still carry the risks of passive smoking, a new report warns

Electronic cigarettes should be banned from indoors and face a raft of new curbs over safety fears, the World Health Organisation insisted yesterday.

It claims they pose a risk to bystanders of ‘toxicant’ emissions and warns there is limited evidence they help smokers quit.

A report by the organisation, which is the public health arm of the United Nations, says legal steps need to be taken to end the use of e-cigarettes in public indoor spaces and workplaces – and to ban sales to children.

It recommends stopping manufacturers advertising the devices as ‘smoking cessation aids’ until they provide scientific evidence, and calls for rules against fruit, sweet or alcoholic-drink style flavours which may encourage younger smokers.

Vending machines offering the products should be removed ‘in almost all locations’, the report says. It warns that e-cigarette vapour could raise background air levels of toxicants and nicotine which may not be acceptable to ‘involuntarily exposed bystanders’.

WHO adds that few studies have examined whether the devices, invented in China in 2003, are effective in helping tobacco smokers to quit, though one trial found they work as well as nicotine patches.

Around 2.1million Britons use battery-powered e-cigarettes, which allow users to inhale nicotine but avoid the harm caused by tobacco smoke.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency decided they must be regulated as medicines to make them ‘safer and more effective’, but this is not due until 2016. Some experts have expressed concerns about chemicals in the liquid.

The new report also recommends preventing manufacturers from marketing e-cigarettes as 'smoking cessation aids' until they provide scientific evidence to back the claim

E-CIGS 'MORE TEMPTING TO YOUNG NON-SMOKERS'

Electronic cigarettes may be more tempting to non-smoking youths than conventional cigarettes, U.S. researchers warned yesterday. And once young people have tried e-cigarettes they are more inclined to give regular cigarettes a try. The report, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, backs up the argument that electronic cigarettes encourage youth smoking. The study, based on youth surveys, found that more than a quarter of a million youngsters who had never smoked used an electronic cigarette in 2013. This was a threefold increase from 2011. Those who had tried e-cigarettes were nearly twice as likely to say they would try a conventional cigarette in the next year compared with those who had never tried an e-cigarette, according to the study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

But a major scientific review last month, which looked at 81 studies of e-cigarettes, found they caused less harm than smoking.

WHO appears to have ignored appeals from experts to ‘resist the urge to control and suppress e-cigarettes’.

In an open letter in May, 53 researchers and public health specialists warned against over-regulation, saying the devices could be a ‘significant health innovation’ and that classifying them as tobacco ‘will do more harm than good’.

Professor Gerry Stimson, of Imperial College London and public health campaign group Knowledge-Action-Change, accused WHO of ‘cherry-picking’ the science.

He said it was ‘exaggerating the risks of e-cigarettes, while downplaying the huge potential of these non-combustible low-risk nicotine products to end the epidemic of tobacco-related disease’.

‘WHO claims e-cigarettes are a threat to public health, but this statement has no evidence to support it, and ignores the large number of people who are using them to cut down or quit smoking completely,’ he added.

Action on Smoking and Health said it could not back any plans to add e-cigarettes to smoke-free laws. The charity’s Hazel Cheeseman said there was ‘no evidence of any harm to bystanders’, adding: ‘Smokers who switch to using e-cigarettes … are likely to substantially reduce their health risks … and research suggests that they are already helping smokers to quit.’

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘We have already set out our intention to change the law to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to children under 18.’