Commenting on the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announcement on nicotine regulation, Professor John Britton, chair of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group, said:
We welcome this decision. Electronic cigarettes and other nicotine-containing devices offer massive potential to improve public health, by providing smokers with a much safer alternative to tobacco. They need to be widely available, and affordable to smokers.
However, it is also important that these products provide nicotine as safely and reliably as possible, and are marketed and sold responsibly. These proposals provide those safeguards in a framework of permissive regulation that affords plenty of time for manufacturers to comply. This is a pragmatic yet radical approach that could spare millions of smokers from premature death.
Visit the MHRA website for full details of the announcement.
For further information, please contact Andrew McCracken on +44 (0)203 075 1354 / 07990 745 608, or email andrew.mccracken@rcplondon.ac.uk