Britain’s drug regulators have given the go-ahead for a British American Tobacco (BAT) e-cigarette to be sold as a medicine for quitting smoking, the first such product to be given a drug licence in the UK.

The decision to licence the e-Voke product means it can now be prescribed on the NHS for patients trying to give up smoking.

“We want to ensure licensed nicotine-containing products – including e-cigarettes – which make medicinal claims are available and meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and efficacy to help reduce the harms from smoking,” the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said on Monday.

It said the licence was granted recently and a spokesman told Reuters it was issued towards the end of last year.

Many experts think e-cigarettes, which heat nicotine-laced liquid into an inhalable vapour, are a lower-risk alternative to smoking, but since they are relatively new products, there is little long-term evidence on their safety.

Public Health England has said it considers e-cigarettes to be at least 95% safer than tobacco cigarettes, which cause lung cancer and many other diseases.

BAT said in a statement on its website it is “currently evaluating plans to commercialise” e-Voke, which uses cartridges containing pharmaceutical-grade nicotine.

More than 2 million adults use e-cigarettes in Britain, about a third of whom are ex-smokers and two-thirds current smokers, according to Ash, the anti-smoking charity.

Big tobacco firms, including BAT, Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco, are jostling for position in the emerging vaping market, which is estimated at about $7bn (£4.75bn) for 2015.

The MHRA said it would “continue to encourage companies to voluntarily submit medicines licence applications for e-cigarettes and other nicotine containing products as medicines” and hoped to see more e-cigarettes and next generation nicotine delivery products submit applications in future.