E-cigarettes on prescription

Until a few years ago, it seemed that we were slowly winning the war against the public's addiction to smoking, or more precisely, to inhaling the nicotine (and, incidentally, tarry bodies) contained in the smoke. Even the incidence of lung cancer has begun to decline. But about this came a new invention: e-cigarettes: devices that allow the ingestion of nicotine by inhalation without tarry bodies. This obviously reduces (if not eliminates) the risk of causing lung cancer although it still leaves an increased risk of myocardial infarction and stroke. It also causes other lesser-known health effects. The invention was intended to help people addicted to smoking cigarettes to quit, and was originally advertised as such.

But what is becoming increasingly apparent is that the invention has actually proved to be a "game changer," that is, it has restored the upward trend in societies' addiction to nicotine. Thanks to social media marketing aimed at teenagers, in which e-cigarettes are chalked up as something safe on the one hand and "cool" on the other, the invention has once again attacked the same target group as the famous "Marlboro cowboy" before. That is, young people. Moreover, it turned out that for many of these people it did not become a way to turn away from "real" cigarettes, but just the opposite: a ladder to them.

As a supporter of the free market economy as a matter of principle, I fear that the only way to cut off the aforementioned target group from falling into addiction en masse is to impose access restrictions, that is, to leave e-cigarettes as a cure for nicotinism in already addicted smokers, a cure prescribed by doctors by prescription and available only in pharmacies.