Summary of excellent BBC doco on Vapes

Addiction Economy Thought For Today - in case you didn't get chance to catch this film on BBC 3 last night, here are a few things to know. Really nicely done and worth pointing your young people towards.

Jordan North is a cheery northerner, going round the country to find out if he should give up vapes or not. Here are the things which stuck out for me:

* On the pack it says the ingredients are vegetable glycerine, propylene Glycol, natural and artificial flavours, nicotine, benzoate. These have been declared safe for eating, but not for inhaling. What it doesn't list are the numbers of compounds which are also in there, but not on the pack.

* 'I just thought it was just flavoured water and a bit of air', says Jordan after the chemist showed him what else was in a mainstream legal vape 'if you were to list every single chemical in the vapes you would probably find hundreds of thousands. None of these have been tested for inhalation.

* Illegal puffs are worse. Not just because they have so much nicotine - up to 300 cigarettes per vape, but also high levels of metals, including nickel and lead from the degrading of the cheap materials. Very bad.

* Off he then goes to Trading Standards. Who are totally swamped by illegal vapes, as yet unable to dish out fines, and only confiscating the vapes. There is so much money to be made from these that even when fines are given, which is rare, it's often seen as just the cost of doing business.

* He then looks at supply chains, including some rather shocking TikTok's of supposed employees testing the vapes by puffing them, sometimes 6 at a time. Not least of course the rather gross aspect that someone might have already puffed your vape, but also if true the horrible effect on the employees of production methods in China. No surprise.

* Off he then goes to get his own health tested, to find he has reduced lung function from vaping.

* A quick zoom with Australia where vapes are banned, shows that the underground vaping industry is flourishing and they aren't hard to buy there. (Joe Woof is going there in three weeks and will report back!)

* He then shows the latest WHO global study which says that vapes are not effective for quitting tobacco at a population level. Ouch.

* Finally an interview with someone his age who has been diagnosed with COPD probably caused by vaping.

So he decides to give up!

It seems to us mad that vapes are now becoming a mainstream recreational product when by far the biggest causes of death are from inhaling something other than fresh air into the lungs. Air pollution followed by smoking are the biggest causes of preventable death ever - together killing 16 million people PER YEAR.

I did some research on The Precautionary Principle once, if there was ever a compelling case for precautionary action it should be with vapes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xj1p/jordan-north-the-truth-about-vaping