‘Vaping proven less harmful than smoking’

VAPING has been proven significantly less harmful than smoking cigarettes, based on numerous scientific evidence in the United Kingdom.

In a statement, the UK Vaping Industry Association cited evidence saying that “while vaping is not entirely risk-free, it is significantly less harmful than smoking – which claims around 80,000 lives every year in the UK alone.”

The UKVIA issued the comments after the vaping industry and vapers were excluded from discussions during the committee stage of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the UK Parliament.

It said the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) maintains that “vapes are at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes.” The UKVIA adds that vaping poses a “small fraction of the risks of smoking” and that “completely switching from smoking to vaping conveys substantial health benefits over continued smoking.”

England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Chris Whitty, acknowledged that vaping is “much safer” than smoking, calling the switch a “positive health move,” the UKVIA said.

Research conducted by Brunel University London concluded that the National Health Service “could save more than half a billion pounds per year if just half of England’s adult smokers switched to vaping,” the report added.

A 2019 investigation into reports of vaping causing lung illness in the US found that the cases stemmed from contaminated, illegal products containing THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, not legal nicotine vaping products.

Alice Davies, a health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said “headlines could be misleading as these cases were due to contaminants in illegal products and not linked to regular nicotine vaping.

“There was no similar outbreak in the UK and the chemicals of concern are banned in the UK.”

The OHID Nicotine Vaping in England: Evidence Update said there were “lessons to be learned from the mislabeled US EVALI (electronic cigarette or vape associated lung injury) outbreak’ and that communications about EVALI should clearly separate vaping these illicit substances from nicotine vaping.

Cancer Research UK confirmed that “there have been no confirmed cases of popcorn lung reported in people who use