Starting next year in Australia, access to e-cigarettes and related products containing liquid nicotine will require a prescription. And this seems like good news.
Because the supposed benefits of electronic cigarettes do not stand up to exhaustive analysis .
Few quality reviews
There have only been a small number of quality reviews on the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes for the entire population (rather than for individual people).
CSIRO analysis and reviews by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have found that the evidence for e-cigarettes helping people quit smoking is inconclusive. The reviews also found that e-cigarettes are harmful in and of themselves and are associated with increased tobacco and nicotine use in young people .
A 2017 review by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia drew similar conclusions .
The Australian regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration or TGA, has also found no evidence to support the sale of e-cigarettes as a ‘therapeutic good’ . The TGA has also found no evidence to relax existing poison safety controls that require a physician to authorize access to liquid nicotine.
Despite claims by the e-cigarette industry and further promotion that ‘e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful’ than smoking traditional cigarettes, there is also no scientific basis for such claims .