To me they represent a stunning breakthrough that can substitute for smoking with virtually no risk, at low cost, with no public spending, no NHS resources and without coercion or prohibitive legislation.
According to Goldman Sachs they are one of eight ‘creative destroyer’ technologies, giving people much of what they want from smoking but without the harm. To the cigarette-based business model of Big Tobacco, they promise a Kodak `moment.
The greatest risk to these developments is heavy handed regulation: over regulate the disruptive much safer entrants, and you implicitly protect the far more dangerous incumbent, as tellingly explained in this memo from a fake PR company, Satanica.
We’ve just published an article proposing bespoke solutions to the regulation of e-cigs, this is a must-read for all stakeholders: https://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/sci-tech/2014/01/do-we-need-a-new-settlement-with-europe-or-just-a-better-sausage-factory/
