Expert Reaction to the ASH Teen Factsheet

A year ago, Professor Peter Hajek, Professor of Clinical Psychology, and Director, Health and Lifestyle Research Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, said: “The level of misinformation about health risks of vaping is alarming. E-cigarettes are a major breakthrough in public health. They are helping smokers quit on an unprecedented scale and help substantially with eliminating smoking-related cancer, heart disease and lung disease.

“The progress would be faster though if media did not consistently promote misinformed stories that put smokers off moving over to vaping. A correction to this trend is urgently needed.”

Action on Smoking and Health published a press release titled “Four in ten smokers wrongly believe that vaping is as or more harmful as smoking”. In it, the charity spoke about evidence-based strategies to help achieve the government’s 2030 smoke-free ambition.

Hazel Cheeseman, Deputy Chief Executive of ASH, argued that the Government’s approach would be undermined, “if smokers don’t try vapes due to safety fears or stop vaping too soon and revert to smoking.”

She acknowledged, “that vaping poses a fraction of the risk of smoking.”

Twelve months later and both Cheeseman and Action on Smoking and Health support a proposed Tobacco and Vapes Bill that will restrict access to flavours, ban single-use products, hide vapes away like cigarettes, ban colourful packaging and limit product designs.

How is this not making vapes look as dangerous as smoking?

This year the situation worsened, highlighted by a report from University College London. In a study funded by Cancer Research UK, researchers looked at survey responses from 28,393 smokers in England between 2014 and 2023.

The headline finding: “In June 2023, 57% of respondents said they thought vaping was equally as harmful as smoking or more harmful, while only 27% thought e-cigarettes were less harmful.”

Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson said: “This misperception is a health risk in and of itself, as it may discourage smokers from substantially reducing their harm by switching to e-cigarettes. It may also encourage some young people who use e-cigarettes to take up smoking for the first time, if they believe the harms are comparable.”

Harking back to the release of ASH’s findings a year ago, Dr Sharon Cox said: “The evidence on vaping for smoking cessation is clear and strong, it is far safer to switch to vaping nicotine than it is to continue smoking combustible tobacco. Plus, these products are more effective than other available products in helping people to quit smoking. However, it is the poor reporting of studies, as well as poorly conducted studies, which has led to widespread misperceptions. Consequently, we are losing out on the net population health win that these products can offer. This trend needs to be stopped and reversed.”

The benefits of vaping are the same for adult smokers as they are for teen smokers. Vaping works because we can personalise our experiences with nicotine strength, flavours and the volume of air in the draw.

Restricting those, and adding on a swathe of other restrictions, will do nothing but emphasise that vaping is in some way dangerous – as dangerous as smoking. 

The measures Action on Smoking and Health is pushing for are misguided and the unintended consequences are plain to see. At a moment in time when we need experts to be speaking out, we are hearing nothing – why?

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.