allowed to go back to what it was doing prior to the TRPR changes , and advertise like any other business .”
Public Health England and the latest Stoptober Campaign
October proved a momentous month for vaping . Not only did the Vaper Expo UK put on another record-smashing show for the global industry , but vaping gained mainstream recognition and appreciation with the endorsement of Public Health England as a recommended smoking cessation aid for the first time . “ It was fantastic and we ’ re delighted that we were able to work with Public Health England and arrive at a situation where they were supportive of vaping openly for the fi rst time , and that they could partner with us to produce some collaborative material . IBVTA have had a perfect opening Stoptober , our members all saw an upturn in sales . The key thing Stoptober has managed to do this year is counter the negative views out there about vaping . Unfortunately , negative views persist among the general public . You ’ ve heard it all before : too many feel that vaping is just as bad as smoking , or even more harmful . “ Stoptober gave smokers and existing vapers renewed confi dence in vaping ; not only is vaping a good thing to do , but now enjoys endorsement from major public health organisations in the UK , and as a result of that this Stoptober can be described as pro-vaping and a major boost for sales . Even better is remembering that each one of those sales means a smoker has substantially improved their situation .
What we have to do now is build on that going forwards and recognise the huge opportunity . There may be three million vapers , but there are still nine million smokers in the UK . That ’ s a vast potential market for all the businesses represented at the Vaper Expo and beyond . We must always encourage giving smokers the confi dence to switch .”
Future plans for the IBVTA
“ It ’ s always good to come to the Expo , especially on the heels of our Stoptober successes . Looking ahead , we ’ re already preparing for our next conference which will be in Reading in April . There ’ s a huge amount of work going on in the meantime ; we ’ ve got a number of exciting projects in the pipeline which we ’ ll be releasing in due course . We ’ re also strengthening our relationship with Westminster . “ All of our members have submitted a tremendous amount of data to the MHRA as part of the TRPR process . We decided to analyse that data and compare it to smoking , in order to objectively answer the question of “ just how safe is vaping ?” And that data gave us a very promising fi gure , and put us in a position where we could say vaping could be as low as 1 % of the harm of smoking . Not just 95 % safer but 99 %. And we presented that data in Parliament on Wednesday 25 October to an audience of MPs and members of the House of Lords . This is all the data we ’ ve had to do , we assembled it for the TRPR , we ’ ve got it all together and it shows that vaping is signifi cantly less harmful . And regulators , government MPs , Lords and the general public can put their confi dence in vaping if they choose to make the switch .”
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