Regulators should "hold their fire" on licensing e-cigarettes because it could cause the death of millions of smokiers, preventative health experts have warned.  

The MHRA's plans to license e-cigarettes as medicines by 2016 could have severe unintended consequences at a time when a "realistic opportunity" was emerging to resolve the tobacco problem, argued international academics in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, published today (July 23).

The arguments for consumer safety, the need for precise product labelling and the need to compete with nicotine-replacement therapies on equal terms lacked merit, argued the academics, led by Peter Hajek, director of the tobacco dependence research unit at the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine, Queen Mary University of London.

Academics claimed that arguments for consumer safety, the need for precise product labelling and the need to compete with nicotine-replacement therapies on equal terms lack merit	More on e-cigarettes Pharmacists continue to stock e-cigarettes despite      MHRA warnings PSNI 'strongly recommends' pharmacists do not       stock e-cigarettes The smoking gun? MORE NEWS
	There was no "credible risk" that e-cigarettes could poison the user and there were few cases of people, particularly children, taking up e-cigarettes if they had never smoked before, they said.

Professor Hajek and peers argued that licensing would hinder further development of e-cigarettes and drive costs up. This could leave the market open to large tobacco companies becoming the "only players with sufficient resources", he warned.

"Mandatory medicinal regulation is not required for public safety and can harm public health by restricting the ability of e-cigarettes to compete with cigarettes in the market place... and have the potential consequences of disease and death in millions of smokers," they concluded.  

Also writing in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal today, Nathan Cobb, of the department of pulmonary and critical care at Georgetown University's Medical Centre in the US, argued that a fixation on the regulation of e-cigarettes was a "distraction born of commercial interests" and that there should be more focus on other nicotine-replacement therapies.

The MHRA announced its plans to license e-cigarettes as medicines in June, following concerns about their safety and widely varying nicotine content. A C+D poll, carried out earlier this month, found that 35 per cent of pharmacists will continue to stock e-cigarettes.