Health professionals are to be told they can allow patients who have trouble giving up smoking to use electronic cigarettes, it was announced today.
The advice comes in draft proposals from the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the official advisory body to the NHS.
NICE recommends a raft of measures to help smokers who are struggling to quit.
It says tobacconists should sell nicotine-containing products that can be used instead of cigarettes.
And professionals working with smokers should be ready to encourage them to use patches, pills or lozenges if it will make a difference.
It says advisers can say electronic cigarettes are "likely" to be less harmful than cigarettes – but they should also point out they are not a regulated medical product so there is no guarantee of their quality.
NICE says it is the smoke in cigarettes rather than the nicotine that causes ill-health – but warns that nicotine can be addictive.
Professor Mike Kelly, of NICE, said: "Whatever approach people wish to try, they should be advised that there are no circumstances when it is safer to smoke than to use nicotine replacement therapy products and experts believe that lifetime use of NRT will be considerably less harmful than smoking.
"Among the provisional recommendations, this draft guidance says that health professionals should advise people who smoke and want to try cutting down to quit, or smoke less, that this is easier when using licensed nicotine-containing products.
"Advisers should also reassure people that licensed nicotine-containing products are a safe and effective way of reducing the harm from cigarettes, and that nicotine replacement therapy products have been shown as safe for up to five years’ use."
The guidance was welcomed by the Royal College of Physicians.
Professor John Britton, who chairs its tobacco advisory group, said: "Smokers smoke for nicotine, and since tobacco smoke is by far the most harmful available source of nicotine, switching to alternatives as a short- or long-term substitute is the obvious healthier choice.
"We would encourage all smokers to take up the opportunities presented by this guidance, and if they can’t quit using nicotine altogether, to switch as much as they can to an alternative nicotine product."
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