Major smoking companies are likely to be cheered by independent research which has proclaimed e-cigarettes are 95 per cent less harmful than their tobacco-based cousins.
Not only that, but the review, published by Public Health England this week, even suggested vapour-based cigarettes have the potential to help smokers quit. The conclusions are likely to be a sigh of relief for tobacco businesses - which are staple components of many investors' portfolios - as they build up their e-cigarette businesses. A spokesperson for British American Tobacco (BAT) said the research was "an incredibly important milestone" for this increasingly important product line.
Evidence also showed almost all of the 2.6m adults using e-cigarettes in Great Britain were current or ex-smokers, which it added provided "reassurance" that very few adults and young people who had never smoked were becoming addicted to e-cigarettes.
