E-cigarettes should be prescribed by GPs on the NHS because they are 95% less harmful than tobacco, according to a government health body.
Public Health England said there was a public perception that e-cigarettes are almost as harmful as cigarettes, but that this was not the case.
It said it wanted to see smokers take up “vaping”, as the practice is known, in order to reduce the thousands of people who die each year from tobacco-related disesase.
Doctors are currently unable to prescribe or recommend e-ciagrettes because none of the products are licensed for medicinal purposes, although this situation might change soon.
Professor Ann McNeill, of King’s College London and an independent author of the Public Health Engalnd review, said e-cigarettes could be a “game changer in public health”.
Professor Kevin Fenton, director of health and well-being at PHE, said people who use e-cigarettes to help them to quit smoking would see the best results if this was carried out in conjunction with their local stop smoking services.
“The best thing that a smoker can do is to quit and to quit forever and that there a range of tools which are available to help all smokers quit,” he said was the message PHE wanted to get out.
“For some people who may find it difficult to quit using traditional methods, the e-cigarettes may provide a new tool – another tool – for them to switch from smoking which we know is significantly harmful to a method which is significantly less harmful.”
