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It seems that in the last 12 months, the number of electronic cigarette shops in Spain has plummeted from around 3,000 to just about 300. These numbers come from the country’s national e-cig trade organization ANCE. The reason: pharmaceutical company lobbying and media attacks against electronic cigarettes.

ANCE vice president Alejandro Rodríguez chimed in on massive decline of the market. “There has been a very intense attack by pharmaceutical companies which has generated bad publicity in the media.”

This wasn’t the only reason for the sudden decline however. It appears the number of e-cig shops grew a bit too much in very little time. At 3,000 stores across the country, Spain had roughly one store per 65 square miles. Focusing further on city environments, one could even find areas with two or three shops in rather close proximity.

The combination of the two has hammered the industry there and presumably even sent some e-cig users back to tobacco cigarettes. You can read more about the decline right here.

Spain’s government has not issued any formal regulations for electronic cigarettes, but for some time, their popularity there has been exploding. This seems to have led to some fairly heavy-handed anti-e-cig efforts by pharmaceuticals companies that were losing sales of their smoking cessation products.

Numbers across Europe have indicated that electronic cigarettes are causing a decline in smoking cessation sales. Though cessation products are supported as “approved” by many government regulatory groups, it appears the general public is starting to realize that they don’t really work. Studies have found that their success rate in real world situations is no more than that of quitting cold turkey and long-term smoking remission is close to 99%.

If nothing else, this seems to have led pharmaceutical companies to fight e-cigs as aggressively as possible.