Britain’s drug regulators have given the go-ahead for a British American Tobacco vaping device to be sold as a quit smoking aid, the first such product to be given a drug license in the UK, according to a story by Kate Kelland for Reuters.
The decision to license BAT’s e-Voke product means it can now be prescribed on the state-funded National Health Service for patients trying to give up smoking.
‘We want to ensure licensed nicotine-containing products – including e-cigarettes – which make medicinal claims are available and meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and efficacy to help reduce the harms from smoking,’ the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement.
The statement said the e-Voke license was granted ‘recently’, and a spokesman told Reuters it was issued ‘towards the end of last year’.
BAT said in a statement on its website that it was ‘currently evaluating plans to commercialise’ e-Voke, which uses cartridges containing pharmaceutical grade nicotine.
The MHRA said it would ‘continue to encourage companies to voluntarily submit medicines license applications for e-cigarettes and other nicotine containing products as medicines’.