If you smoke cigarettes chances are you can expect a short life with health issues. If you want to try to quit smoking, you will find it easier to quit if you turn to ecigs. Vaping is not completely harmless, but it is much, much healthier for you than smoking.
Nothing containing nicotine is completely harmless, but it is a certainty that vaping is enormously less harmful than smoking regular analogue cigarettes. This is pretty much common knowledge at this point. Public Health England, Cancer Research UK, the UK Gov website, RCP and NICE all say that vaping is much less harmful than smoking cigarettes, and that vaping can be a good way to quit smoking. The PHE review suggests that e-cigarettes are about 95 per cent less harmful than real cigarettes, and even the NHS now advertises vaping and ecigarettes as a good way to quit smoking, even featuring these devices on their last Stoptober campaign. There is even talk about ecigarettes being allowed on prescription by the NHS soon for people trying to quit smoking cigarettes. This is completely un-surprising to people in the vaping industry, e-cigarette liquid contains far fewer of the harmful chemicals that are in cigarettes. Currently eliquid containing nicotine has to pass TPD (tobacco products directive) to be on sale, that requires each flavour of eliquid to be tested by a certified lab 6 months in advance of being on sale. The lab tests both liquid and vapour, making sure there are no known carcinogens included (carcinogens are chemicals which are known to cause cancers). Usually the only toxic chemical in eliquid is the nicotine. Cigarettes however have 70+ different carcinogenic chemicals, making it pretty obvious how dangerous they can be for long term usage.
Most studies that demonise e-cigarettes are fraudulent, or do not take the most simplest variables into account and appear very bias. The studies that show harm to humans are usually in massive extreme doses no vaper would ever have, or testing ecigarette vapour without also testing cigarette smoke side by side. Professor Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at Stirling University, when asked about ecig studies like this, said that they are of limited practical use and hold no usable or tangent data due to the bias of these so called scientific studies.
The constant supply of studies like this, and the headlines they understandably create by the media looking for a horror story, is having an effect on public perception. Dr Suzi Gage, an epidemiologist at Liverpool Uni, said: “People used to understand they were less harmful than cigarettes, but they’re less sure now. The message has been diluted.”
A survey for the anti-smoking charity ASH found that in 2013, just 7 per cent of the population believed e-cigarettes were as harmful as smoking. But now, that number has reached 26 per cent. Only 13 per cent believe, correctly, that it is a lot less harmful. The situation has got so bad that CRUK is piloting a major public information campaign to remind people that “vaping is far less harmful than smoking”.
This is a problem. Some reports try and give real advise and have the best of intentions, but ill-advised attempts to regulate e-cigarettes and prohibitions on smoking them in various public places are creating a perception that they are as harmful as cigarettes. They are not – not by a very long way.
The rise of the e-cigarette has helped millions of people quit. This is a provable fact, the fall of cigarette sales are consistently uniformed with the rise of ecigarette sales, showing that when people buy e-cigarettes, regular cigarette sales plummet. If you do not listen to newspapers, fraudulent studies or even the vape shops that stand to profit, unbiased information is still available. For instance go on Facebook or Twitter and ask the public who vape, the regular users that quit smoking using these devices, they will all give a similar story. They smoked, they quit with e-cigarettes, now they have much more money in the bank, are healthier, and no longer cough like they did when they smoked. So if you are thinking about quitting with ecigarettes don’t take our word for it, go ask the people who matter, the actual people who have used these devices for many years now and have quit smoking using them. Smoking is really, really bad for you. Vaping is much less so. Taking up ecigarettes if you have struggled to quit before could easily save your life, and we think it’s a crisis that people are led to believe differently.