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British American Tobacco (BAT) just received approval to sell and market its Voke Nicotine Inhaler as a medicinal product in the UK. The Voke is a cigarette-shaped inhaler that sprays a nicotine mist into a user’s mouth rather than using heat and electronics to produce vapor the way electronic cigarettes do. With a license as a medicinal product, the Voke can be sold explicitly as an approved medical product and can be prescribed by doctors.

Analysts expect the Voke to hit the market in the first half of next year. You can read more about it here.

Nicotine inhalers have had very little success in the past. They appear to be capable of offering a more precise dose of nicotine than electronic cigarettes — though this is a very debatable argument. However, the lack of anything remotely smoke-like entering or exiting the mouth and lungs means they don’t really simulate the experience of smoking the way e-cigs do. And while this inhaler is shaped like a cigarette, there is more to quitting than just handing something shaped like a cigarette to a would-be quitter.

One wonders how long BAT has been seeking medicinal product licensing for the Voke. At a glance, early mentions of the product that I can find go back to as early as July 2012. This could easily mean that BAT has been working on this for close the 3 years or more. This also means the Voke could already be 3 years out of date.

Licensing as a medicinal product likely means a couple things. One, it’s likely to be expensive — not just because the process to become approved is expensive, but also because they can claim hey, you don’t know anything about the other stuff, whereas we’re approved! Second, it’s likely to provide such a sterilized experience and be so branded as a Therapy that it will turn off many smokers who are tired of being berated with anti-tobacco efforts that treat them like helpless addicts.

But really, the biggest issue I have with this is the double-edged benefits BAT will get out of addicting people to smoking and then selling a product that helps them quit. This is like a candy company offering dentistry or an oil drilling outfit getting paid to clean up its own oil spill.