While lawmakers and multi-million dollar anti-vaping groups in the United States continue to spread misinformation about reduced risk tobacco alternatives and seek to deny adults trying to quit smoking the opportunity to save their lives, Public Health England earlier today completed it’s latest analysis on all the scientific data as it relates to vaping and its efficacy in helping smokers quit. Their conclusion – based on science and not the emotional rhetoric favored by US activists – is clear: Vaping, which is 95% safer than combustible tobacco, remains the best possible way for smokers to quit, and the evidence for this just keeps growing.
Some of the findings included:
- Vaping is positively associated with quitting smoking successfully. In 2017, over 50,000 smokers stopped smoking with a vaping product who would otherwise have carried on smoking
- Quit rates involving a vaping product were higher than any other method in every region in England
- The 3 systematic reviews consistently found vaping products containing nicotine were significantly more effective for helping people stop smoking than NRT. This finding was supported by 2 non-randomised studies that reported higher quit rates among people using a vaping product who attended a stop smoking service, compared with those who used NRT.
- Most young people who had never smoked had also never vaped. Between 0.8% and 1.3% of young people who had never smoked were current vapers.
The update also expressed serious concern that “perceptions of the harm caused by vaping compared with smoking are increasingly out of line with the evidence” and this is “discouraging smokers from using vaping to quit”.
Professor John Newton, Director of Health Improvement at Public Health England specifically stressed: “For anyone who smokes, particularly those who have already tried other methods, we strongly recommend they try vaping and stop smoking”
With evidence of the effectiveness of vaping now beyond all doubt, it’s time lawmakers stopped trying to tax and regulate a life-saving product out of existance, and actually let smokers quit.