Fancy a smoke? Try an e-cigarette, says government

The government's "nudge unit" wants to encourage the use of smokeless nicotine cigarettes, banned in many countries around the world, in an attempt to reduce the numbers killed in the UK by smoking diseases each year.

The Cabinet Office's behavioural insight team - better known as the nudge unit - wants to adopt the new technology because policy officials believes the rigid "quit or die" approach to smoking advice no longer works.  Rather, they want nicotine addiction to be managed to help smokers who otherwise won't quit - an approach the unit believes could prevent millions of smoking deaths.  Ten million people in the UK smoke, and smoking claims 80,000 lives a year.

John Britton, professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, and, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, told the Guardian that on top of current smokeless range - which included electronic or "e-cigarettes" that simulate smoking by producing an inhaled mist - there are three or four device in different stages of developement.  But he said the companies have been reluctant to develop this technology because they had expected it to be as tightly controlled as pharmaceutical drugs.

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By Allegra Stratton, political correspondent
The Guardian, Wednesday 14 September 2011