Vaping ‘significantly less harmful’

Public Health England and 12 other UK public health organizations have agreed that vaping is significantly less harmful than is smoking.

‘Since 2000, smoking among adults in England has fallen by one third and among children by two thirds,’ the organizations said in a joint statement. ‘Yet almost one in five adults continue to smoke, with higher rates in the more deprived communities meaning that they bear the majority of the harm caused. There is a strong public health consensus on tobacco control, embodied in the landmark report Smoking Still Kills.

‘We all agree that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful than smoking. One in two lifelong smokers dies from their addiction. All the evidence suggests that the health risks posed by e-cigarettes are relatively small by comparison but we must continue to study the long-term effects.

‘And yet, millions of smokers have the impression that e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as tobacco. Over 1.3 million UK e-cigarette users have completely stopped smoking and almost 1.4 million others continue to smoke. We have a responsibility to provide clear information on the evidence we have, to encourage complete smoking cessation and help prevent relapse to smoking.

‘The public health opportunity is in helping smokers to quit, so we may encourage smokers to try vaping but we certainly encourage vapers to stop smoking tobacco completely…’

The organizations who signed the statement were: Public Health England, Action on Smoking and Health, the Association of Directors of Public Health, the British Lung Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the Faculty of Public Health, Fresh North East, Healthier Futures, Public Health Action, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal Society for Public Health, the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, and the UK Health Forum.

The full statement is at: file:///C:/Users/George/Documents/July%2013/UK%20E-cigarettes_joint_consensus_statement_2016.pdf.