UK Vaping Industry Association Director General John Dunne has called on the government to allow the sector to inform smokers that vaping is much less harmful than cigarettes, following the release of a major new report from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
The latest ASH Smokefree GB analysis revealed that the number of smokers who wrongly believe that vaping is as or more harmful than smoking has doubled in four years – at 43% now compared with 22% in 2019.
John said: “It is abundantly clear that the lack of knowledge amongst smokers about the relative risks about smoking and vaping is a public health issue that the government can no longer ignore.
“The ASH report highlights that misleading and inaccurate stories and headlines about vaping in the mainstream media plays a huge part in this knowledge gap which is preventing smokers switch to a much less harmful alternative to cigarettes.
“The public needs to know that the scare stories regularly reported in the mainstream media are simply not true and we urgently need an antidote to this highly damaging misinformation.
“The industry is not permitted to make health claims about the relative harms of smoking and vaping but keeping the public in the dark about this means hundreds of smokers continue to needlessly die in the UK every day because they don’t have the information they need to switch.
“We must be allowed to set the record straight and the government should launch a nationwide public information campaign so that the relative risks of smoking and vaping are accurately communicated.”
Official government figures show that vaping is 20 times less harmful than smoking, but for the first time ever, the most common view among the public is that e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as combustible cigarettes.
The August 2023 Smokefree GB report said: “The likely driver for this change in public perception was significant media coverage of injuries to health in the US from products banned in the UK.
“This year’s significant drop in public understanding that vaping is less harmful than smoking could be linked to widespread media coverage of youth vaping which has not always clearly distinguished the differences between the harms from smoking and vaping.”
Key findings from the ASH report include:
- Four in ten smokers (39%) in Great Britain now believe vaping is as or more risky compared with smoking up from a third last year
- 8 million smokers (27%) have never tried vaping even though it’s a very effective quitting aid
- The most accurate risk perceptions are among the 2.7 million ex-smokers who vape and 2.9 million ex-smokers who are ex-vapers, 75% and 45% of whom correctly believe that vaping is less harmful than smoking.
Alongside the 2023 data on adult vaping, ASH has also published a ‘myth buster’ which common misrepresentations of the evidence on vaping and provides evidence that:
Vaping is NOT more harmful than smoking,
Vaping is NOT more addictive than smoking,
Vaping is NOT a proven gateway into smoking,
Nicotine DOES NOT damage young people’s brain development.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Fact Sheet: Use of e-cigarettes (vapes) among adults in Great
Britain. August 2023.
ENDS