London businessmen say they have between their lips a cure for what the U.N. calls “one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced”.
Electronic cigarettes are the future, they argue. Cheaper, cleaner and cooler than smoking, “vaping” – using a vaporiser to inhale nicotine infused with exotic flavours ranging from pina colada to bubblegum – will spell the end of tobacco.
The top tobacco companies are now placing bets on e-smokes, which some analysts predict may outsell conventional cigarettes in 10 years, raising the counter-intuitive prospect that Big Tobacco could actually help people quit smoking.
Celebrities like Bruno Mars and Courtney Love are also endorsing them, a further inducement to makers of iconic cigarette brands like Marlboro and Camel to invest.
Yet e-cigarettes are far from universally accepted as a public health tool; regulators are agonising over whether to restrict them as “gateway” products to nicotine addiction and tobacco smoking, or embrace them as treatments for would-be quitters.
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