IBVTA statement on unpublished study reported in the media this week
A story published in The Mirror in the last week includes claims that vaping may be more harmful than cigarettes.
The research announced is neither peer reviewed nor published, and will certainly be questioned by experienced researchers in this area of study. While the longer-term effects of vaping cannot be well-known for some years, this study does not seem as if it will add much to the subject in any meaningful way.
Its prematurely announced conclusions are likely to mislead many vapers to return to smoking and prevent current smokers from trying vaping.
It might be that vapers and smokers, and of course long-term nicotine gum users, have similar levels of arterial stiffening due to nicotine. However, that does not mean that the products are equally risky, as arterial stiffening is not the most important threat to smokers’ health.
Most researchers agree that in the long term, smokers commonly suffer from respiratory conditions, often COPD and lung cancer, and cancer in other organs. These are believed to be caused by high levels of carcinogens and toxins in tobacco smoke, delivered directly to the lungs. Those carcinogens are either not present, or in a small number of cases present but at very much lower levels, in vape emissions. The dangers for someone who keeps vaping in the longer term are consequently likely to be very different from smokers. In the short and medium term all reputable UK public health bodies agree that vaping is much less harmful than smoking, and is an effective way of quitting.
As Dr Sarah Jackson, Principal Research Fellow in University College London’s Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group and President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s European Chapter (SRNT Europe) has pointed out on social media, “Incredible to see scientists publicising findings of an unpublished and seemingly unfinished study in this way. Evidence requires scrutiny – particularly when it directly contradicts a wealth of published literature. This will fuel misperceptions and keep people smoking longer.”