E-cigarettes: a consumer-led revolution

E-cigarettes are used by millions in the UK, but information about them is sometimes conflicting. So what is the current evidence on them?

It has been described as a 'disruptive technology' potentially capable of breaking our fatal relationship with tobacco. So the setting for a public debate on e-cigarettes - a museum part-funded by the tobacco industry, in a city home to the global headquarters of one of the largest tobacco manufacturers - was perhaps ironic. Yet on Wednesday evening, I found myself at the M-Shed in Bristol, watching just that: a debate about whether e-cigarettes could be part of the solution to the tobacco epidemic.

To mark the launch of a new Integrative Cancer Epidemiology Programme, linked to the Medical Research Centre Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, Professor Marcus Munafi^2 (Professor of Biological Psychology at the University of Bristol) and Professor Linda Bauld (Professor of Health Policy at the University of Stirling), both collaborators of mine, discussed e-cigarettes. Professor Gabriel Scally (Public Health Doctor and former Regional Director of Public Health for the South West of England) chaired the discussion.