ASH dominating the debate on vapes again. Why it’s not helpful
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - more vaping 'information' winding me, up with the perspective of ASH and Public Health England Tobacco Control group dominating the debate, let alone the UK based tobacco companies needing to chase out the Chinese disposables manufacturers so they can have the sector to themselves for their refillables which are pretty much identical and as cheap when buying online.
Here's are the problems with this:
1. The starting point is always smokers, look at the intro. No-one talks about preventing the creation of a brand new industry which involves inhaling chemicals into the lungs, may of which have only been tested for ingestion if at all.
2. They are not comparable. Vapers inhale almost constantly. That's the point of the design. You don't stub it out, go off and do something and then have another. Being addicted to something to this extent brings mental health problems in its own right and should be enough for strenuous prevention.
3. Harms are only compared to smoking, not to others areas of inhalation, such as air pollution, which is the biggest worldwide killer of them all. We know inhaling anything into the lungs is a very bad idea. The author of a meta study said vaping should be compared to breathing fresh air, not to smoking.
3. Statistics about vaping harms are about vapes now, compared to smoking now which has been going much longer. Vape ingredients have evolved a lot since the initial studies were done (estimates of 10-40,000 different flavours ) I have not yet seen anything which compares vapes to cigarettes when they were first introduced or considers the array of chemicals now used. A hospital respiratory doctor Joe met says he is seeing lung anomalies earlier in the usage cycle than they saw with smoking, is this true?
5. 74,600 people died of smoking in 2019, if vapes are only x% safer (it its unclear) than cigs, how many deaths per year is it acceptable to then expect in non-smokers after a similar period of constant vaping? 5? 50? 500? 5,000?
6. This is being promoted to help smokers quit, understandably. We agree with this strategy, but there are ways of doing this which do not put the rest of society, starting with children and young adults at risk, which are not considered.
7. Are they really serious? The price increases is coming in 2026. That's quite enough time to get a good number of new customers addicted to nicotine and have it take root as a mainstream addiction like booze or gambling. Two years is too late.
8. And they are dithering about flavours and colours and standardised packaging, there are no plans it appears to stop marketing and promotion to all adults.
9. Smokers we speak to don't want the health of another generation on their conscience and actively want the government to stop this new industry in its tracks whilst also allowing them to use them as a transition to stopping.