Vaping ISN’T as bad as you think! Deluded smokers ‘risk lives’ by refusing to switch to e-cigarettes, experts say

VAPING isn't as bad for you as you think, scientists say.

The misconception that vaping is as harmful as tobacco smoking is common, with four out of ten people mistaking them for being equally as bad.

And that belief is particularly pronounced in smokers and ex-smokers, a study funded by Cancer Research UK has found.

"Tobacco cigarettes kill over half of those who smoke long-term, yet very few people know that nicotine is not the direct cause of smoking-related death and disease," said lead researcher Dr Leonie Brose.

"We found those people who think nicotine is to blame for harms from smoking are more likely to think e-cigarettes and NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) are just as bad as smoking."

Only 57.3 per cent of the 1,720 UK smokers and UK smokers correctly said that vaping was less harmful than smoking, while 21.8 per cent said it was equally as harmful.

In fact, researchers from King's College London found that knowledge about smoking and vaping was actually dropping; more people seem to think that vaping is equally or worse for you than smoking today than they did six years ago.

Knowledge about nicotine was particularly poor, with nearly nine out of ten misattributing a greater portion of the risk in smoking to nicotine, and nearly four out of ten wrongly believing nicotine is what causes cancer from smoking.

Smokers who have never vaped were more likely to have misperceptions about nicotine and the relative harm of e-cigarettes and NRT compared with tobacco cigarettes.

On the other hand, smokers who had tried vaping or were regular vapers were more likely to say that a very small portion of the health risk in cigarettes comes from nicotine.

Dr Brose said: "It is possible that smokers may not try e-cigarettes or NRT due to inaccurate beliefs about nicotine and vaping.

"A lot of public discussion and media reporting focuses on harms from vaping, but we rarely see any reports on how deadly smoking is - 1500 people die from smoking-related illness every week in England alone.
"Correcting misperceptions around nicotine may help smokers move towards less harmful nicotine delivery methods."

Previous research by the same team found that smokers who thought vaping was less harmful than smoking were more likely to try e-cigarettes.

The authors are planning a study to see if they can persuade smokers to switch to vaping if equipped with better knowledge about nicotine, smoking and vaping.

Professor Linda Bauld, Cancer Research UK's prevention expert, said: "While nicotine is addictive, it's the cocktail of 5000 different chemicals released during smoking that damages our DNA and can cause cancer.

"Nicotine products have been proven to help smokers quit and they're most effective when combined with behavioural support from Stop Smoking Services.

"It's vital that smokers aiming to quit have accurate information to help them find the best way to stop."

Responding to the new study, Martin Dockrell, Tobacco Control Lead at Public Health England, said: "There is still work to do to reassure smokers that vaping, while not risk-free, is much less harmful than smoking.

"If you smoke, switching to an e-cigarette could save your life."

Prof Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said:

“This is an important study with serious implications for public health. Vaping poses only a small fraction of risks of smoking, but over the past few years, we have seen a barrage of misinformation about e-cigarettes that has been persuading smokers that vaping is dangerous and that they should stick to smoking.

"Some ‘fake news’ are of little importance, but this study shows that fake news on the dangers of e-cigarettes did penetrate the public consciousness and are likely to be harming public health.

"Health organisations and responsible media now face an urgent task to correct this misinformation.”

A report by PHE published in 2015 found that e-cigs were so much less harmful than smoking, that they could pave the way for the real "game changer" in regards to helping prisons go smoke-free.