Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2014. This news piece covers Spain’s planned amendments to its consumer and anti-smoking laws. The unsourced market figures (almost 3,000 million euros worldwide, 500 million in Europe, more than 7 million e-cigarettes sold in Europe) are from that time, and CiU, one of the parties mentioned, no longer exists.
The profitable electronic cigarette business is starting to come under attack from Spain’s main political parties (PP, PSOE and CiU). The electronic cigarette is currently an industry worth almost 3,000 million euros worldwide and 500 million euros in Europe alone, where more than 7 million electronic cigarettes are estimated to have been sold already.
At a time when e-cigarette shops and franchises are opening everywhere, the Ministry of Health has decided to treat the electronic cigarette as just another tobacco product. It has therefore agreed to amend the Consumer Protection Law and the Anti-Smoking Law, banning its use in schools, hospitals, public transport, outdoor public places near children’s playgrounds, public administration buildings and places where there are under-18s, as well as putting restrictions on advertising the product.
The electronic cigarette has proved to be a serious threat to the tobacco industry, so much so that the tobacco brands themselves have been forced to create their own electronic cigarettes so as not to miss out on this growing market, which Goldman Sachs considered one of the 6 industries of the future worth investing in for the long term.
Electronic cigarettes will have to state clearly and forcefully that they contain nicotine and that the product is highly addictive, just like tobacco. The National Electronic Cigarette Association (Asociación Nacional del Cigarrillo Electrónico) has said it agrees with including the warning, provided governments go no further against the product.
The future of the electronic cigarette will depend to some extent on the debate over whether it is considered a therapeutic product or just another tobacco product.
For Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London, the electronic cigarette will save millions of lives. Even though there are still no reliable studies on how harmful or beneficial the e-cigarette is, he is clear that however bad it might be, it will always be 99% less harmful than a traditional cigarette. That assumes we are talking about e-cigarettes in which we “vape” nicotine, without forgetting that there are also nicotine-free e-liquids, which the evidence shows should not be considered tobacco products but therapeutic products for quitting smoking.
The war on the e-cigarette has begun, and it seems the only real concern about this product is that it is working: people are smoking less tobacco and, further down the chain, governments are starting to lose revenue from tobacco taxes.
Will its sale end up being banned outside pharmacies, as already happens in some countries?
Further reading
Featured image: Coastal Elite from Halifax, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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