Global ignorance on vaping isn’t getting any better

WHO jumps the shark on vaping cancer risks.

The World Health Organization has long had a reputation for bias against tobacco harm reduction, but tobacco experts were left stunned this week when the organisation’s latest report on global smoking made the wild claim that vapour products don’t reduce the risk of cancer compared to smoking.

There’s now a large body of research on the health impact of vaping, and it’s overwhelmingly positive. E-cigarettes have now been on the market for close to 15 years, and if they posed any major health risks we should be seeing signs of that by now. That’s not what researchers are finding. Major reviews of the literature find that if a smoker switches to vaping they eliminate at least 95% of the health risk.

Basic toxicology tells us that reducing exposure to carcinogens reduces the risk of cancer. Almost none of the carcinogens present in cigarette smoke exist in e-cigarette vapour, and any that remain are found at far lower – usually trace – levels. Faced with this well-established reality, any claim that vaping doesn’t lower cancer risks needs to be backed up by some very convincing new evidence, and the WHO hasn’t provided any.

The report also claims that teen vaping increases the chance of smoking later. This is an embarrassingly common mistake that mixes up correlation and causation. It’s like arguing that drinking beer makes you more likely to drink vodka later. It doesn’t; it’s simply that beer drinkers will probably like other alcoholic drinks too.