We love e-cigarettes – of course we do or we wouldn’t be selling them, selecting only the best mods and e-liquid flavours for our online and in-store customers and helping some of the 4 million plus vapers in the UK to get access to the finest quality vaping products and accessories. But, according to current affairs magazine Spiked, the situation in the US seems infinitely more hazardous for their electronic cigarette market than it is over here.

quit-smokingWe thought we had it tough here in the UK. Yes, we’ve seen waves of support for the anti-vaping camp – the breweries laying down the law in their pubs and restaurants, public transport telling us where we can and cannot vape (because staff may be confused as to whether customers are smoking or vaping) or even the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose contested reasoning was behind their suggestion to ban electronic cigarettes in public places, to name a few. Thankfully there are also plenty of medical and political figures ready, willing and able to expose the flaws in their logic and promote vaping as the tobacco addiction cure opportunity that it truly can be for so many people.

The problem in the US, according to Spiked, is that the massive power of tobacco and pharmaceutical (who produce other, arguably far less successful but politically endorsed, tobacco substitute remedies) companies means that the future for vaping across the pond looks bleaker than it should.

The blame, we’re told, lies firstly with policy – in the form of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which has been ineffective at curbing the might of the tobacco industry, but now makes it next to impossible for new nicotine containing substitutes to be introduced. Secondly, with big business – in the form of the very lucrative taxes acquired from tobacco and pharmaceutical companies. Finally, with a fear of the unknown – as opposers roll out the usual, though statistically unsupported, arguments of e-cigarettes encouraging new smokers, especially the young, and questions over safety.

The lifeblood of any industry is its ability to innovate, to move with the times and to engage with its public by bringing out better and better products. If this is significantly restricted, then this effective quitting tool, that has helped so many where all other means have failed, may go the same way as the reported 480,000 Americans each year who pass into history as they lose their fight against smoking related illnesses. Let’s hope that does not happen here.