A major shift in the governments anti-smoking policy has been quietly announced, allowing nicotine products to be sold as a long-term substitute for smoking, not just as an aid to quitting.
The announcement acknowledges that some smokers are nicotine junkies, who find it close to impossible to give up the addictive element in cigarettes.
While nicotine is highly poisonous in large quantities, medical nicotine is relatively safe. It is the smoke and tar in cigarettes, not the nicotine, that causes the toll of deaths and ill-health.
The change is quietly noted with no fanfare towards the end of a new anti-smoking strategy published on Monday which aims to halve the proportion of the population who smoke to 10 per cent by 2020.
In what is known as a
harm reduction approach, the government recognises that people have different levels of addiction to cigarettes and so different methods will be used in future including using nicotine replacement therapy for extended periods of time.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has already granted a licence for the Nicorette inhalator for longer term use as a safer alternative to smoking and is inviting manufacturers of other gums, patches, nasal sprays, inhalators, tablets and pastilles to follow suit. The agency said it is also encouraging the development and wider availability of safer nicotine delivery medicines.
Allowing nicotine to be actively marketed for longer-term use and not just as a short-term quit smoking aid, has been controversial as some see it as encouraging or endorsing drug addiction.
But the move was welcomed on Sunday by Action on Smoking and Health which has been campaigning for the change for some time.
This is quite a substantial shift in policy, and important one, a spokesman said. It is the first time the government has come out and said it supports a
harm reduction strategy, and not just a quit smoking approach.
The new strategy announced on Monday contains few other new elements beyond those already announced, although Andy Burnham, the health minister, said the government will consider forcing cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging and extending the ban on smoking in public places to the entrances of buildings.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
