Some Evidence Supporting Vaping From Cancer Research
It’s a widely supported fact that smoking cigarettes is the largest cause of preventable death in the world. Beyond the risk of heart attacks, strokes, respiratory diseases like COPD and emphysema and diabetes, cigarettes are the leading cause of many cancers.
“Globally, tobacco causes eight million deaths per year. That's one death every five seconds.”
As we know, cigarettes are highly addictive and one of the hardest things to do is to break free from smoking. Over the last 10 years, many smokers have been able to stop smoking cigarettes by switching to e-cigarettes. Now e-cigarettes do still contain nicotine, so the addiction to nicotine is still there, but e-cigarettes don’t have the 4,000 chemicals or 50 known carcinogens that are found in traditional tobacco products.
Using e-cigarettes to quit smoking tobacco or reducing a nicotine addiction is proactively supported by Cancer Research UK saying that “the evidence so far points towards them (e-cigarettes) being a far less harmful alternative to tobacco”.
Despite that fact that e-cigarettes are a relatively new product, the process of regulation and studying the effectiveness of helping people quit has been a major focus of leading public health groups in the EU and UK recently. One of these studies funded by Cancer Research UK found that adult smokers who swapped traditional cigarettes for e-cigarettes for a 6 month period found to have dramatically lower levels of cancer-causing substances and toxins in their bodies compared to those who continued to smoke tobacco. But the study did show that it was important to completely cut out tobacco and use e-cigarettes exclusively, rather than cutting down the number of cigarettes and using e-cigarettes together.
The study proved that swapping cigarettes for e-cigarettes meant the user is not exposed to the same levels of toxins, chemicals and carcinogens that are known to lead to the development of various cancers. The importance of reducing the exposure of these toxins and chemicals in any product is vitally important to reduce the cases of cancers in the UK.
It is important to note that Cancer Research UK believes that any regulated and safe products like e-cigarettes or other nicotine replacement therapies which help as many people to quit smoking will have a positive addition in reducing the risk of cancers caused by cigarettes. They do state that the best thing to do would be to quit completely if you can, but if using a quit smoking aid like NTR or e-cigarettes helps you to cut out tobacco completely, then encouraging vaping should be embraced. This recommendation is based on the caveat that vaping products must be regulated and controlled to ensure the safety of the products and ensuring access by children and those under 18 years old is restricted.
As seen in the US where the lack of regulations is having negative consequences on the vaping industry, to the point where many states are banning the sale of e-cigarettes, there has been a massive uptake in vaping by teenagers. However, this same issue has not happened in the UK or the EU due to the extensive regulatory guidelines that have been in place since 2016. So the regulations in the UK has restricted and discouraged teenagers from taking up vaping compared to the US.
The finding of this study from Cancer Research UK proved beyond a doubt that a regulated e-cigarette industry with safe vaping products can result in a significant drop in the cancer-causing toxins that are found in cigarettes. Regulated e-cigarettes and vape juice in the UK do not have any vitamin e acetate. The use of e-cigarettes should be promoted through public health policies due to their usefulness in harm reduction.
A policy adviser with the charity recently said that “The evidence is showing e-cigarettes can help beat the tobacco epidemic. And when they have the potential to save millions of lives, should we just sit back and wait"? But to get to the truth, let’s focus on the reputable and research-based information to help dispel the myths about the benefits of vaping. Firstly, let’s review some of the main findings from medical groups like Cancer Research UK and Public Health England to get a clear and concise picture of how a properly regulated vaping industry can have a positive impact on reducing smoking rates and help people to quit.
