I joined so I could read the entire article,glad I did as they refer to having "monitored social networking sites" where they saw our tweets demanding no ecig ban and yet they still conclude the article with...
Public health implications
Large numbers of smokers switching from tobacco to safer nicotine sources has the potential to bring substantial public health gains. However, our audit shows that the commercial exploitation of e-cigarettes is threatening this promise in three ways.
Firstly, e-cigarettes are being promoted as lifestyle accessories using a combination of evocative advertising, sponsorship, and celebrity endorsement, all of which have an obvious appeal to young people. This risks non-smokers being pulled into nicotine use, a danger that is exacerbated by the development and promotion of products for first time use. Furthermore, many of these products replicate cigarettes so closely, both in appearance and how they are consumed, that vaping looks just like—and hence models—smoking. Even when the behaviour is unequivocally vaping, it still models the idea of nicotine self medication by inhaling a vapour into the lungs, along with the implication that there is another more dangerous way of doing this. This suggests the potential for e-cigarettes to inadvertently promote smoking.
Secondly, the marketing of e-cigarettes risks undermining wider tobacco control policies. The visual similarity between conventional and electronic cigarettes, as well as between smoking and vaping, means that e-cigarette advertising and point of sale activity can be mistaken for (the now outlawed) tobacco promotion. Similarly, the promotion of dual usage undermines one of the key health benefits of smoke-free legislation—the stimulus it gives smokers to quit.
Thirdly, the tobacco industry is moving into the e-cigarette market and using e-cigarettes and harm reduction to build links with public health, policy makers, and other stakeholders. This process is accelerating: a wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco announced plans to license an alternative nicotine delivery device with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. This is jeopardising Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires that development and implementation of public health policy should be completely protected from industry influence.13
These problems demand a swift regulatory response. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s decision in June to regulate e-cigarettes as medicines acknowledges the need for controls, but these cannot wait for the three years it has proposed. Specifically young people need protection, marketing must to be tightly reined in, existing tobacco control policy reinforced, and the tobacco industry explicitly excluded from the policy making arena. One obvious first step would be to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products.
