Both experts recognised e-cigarettes have a role to play in tackling smoking, which is the biggest killer in the UK. Professor Peter Hajek, an independent author of the new review, told a briefing in London that nicotine on its own is much less poisonous than previously believed. As e-cigarettes grow in popularity, many governments around the world have tried to restrict their use, largely through media campaigns.

Despite being far less harmful than smoking, vaping has come under fire in the past, being accused as a “gateway drug” which leads young people on to cigarettes. As a matter of fact, the study is so conclusive that some officials are even considering the recommendation of e-cigarettes to doctors as a means to help smokers quit smoking (with a less risky alternative).

Public Health England (PHE) says it hopes that e-cigarette prescriptions will be possible once medicinally regulated products arrive on the market. However we still have concerns about the impact on the population of e-cigarettes and support the need for better regulation and restrictions on advertising, particularly to young people. One in five people now think they are as harmful or more harmful than tobacco and which could preventing people form quiting.

Fiona Johnstone, Wirral’s Director of Public Health said she welcomed the report: “It recognises the potential that e-cigarettes have in helping someone to stop smoking”.

In England there was a decline in smoking over the last decades, however still there are more than eight million smokers.

But Public Health England’s findings state that vaping is around 95 per cent less harmful than smoking.

Its report highlights evidence that some of the highest successful quit rates are for smokers who use an e-cigarette and also receive additional support from their local stop smoking services. Another study from the University of Southern California found teens were more than twice as likely to use conventional tobacco products after trying e-cigarettes as were those who did not experiment with them.

The battery-powered devices, which simulate the feeling of smoking but with nicotine inhaled in a vapour, could be a “game changer in public health”, according to study co-author Professor Ann McNeill of King’s College London.