Cancer Research Charity Supports Vaping as Healthier Alternative to Smoking
Yorkshire Cancer Research, A UK-based charity dedicated to preventing cancer deaths, has been heavily promoting e-cigarettes use as a considerably less harmful alternative to tobacco smoking.
Each year, Yorkshire record around 4,500 cases of cancer linked to smoking. These are all cases that could be prevented if people simply quit the dirty habit, but as we all know, that’s much easier said than done. Yorkshire Cancer Research has been funding research into ways of preventing diagnosing and treating cancer for years, and it seems to be heavily banking on vaping as a way of cutting cancer deaths in the the UK county.
Vaping is already the most popular way of quitting smoking in the United Kingdom, but recent data shows that the number e-cigarette users has plateaued in recent years, mainly due to misinformation and myths that claim vaping is just as bad, if not worse than smoking. That is simply not in line with scientific evidence, so Yorkshire Cancer Research recently set out to bring some clarity into the public space.
The cancer charity recently released a YouTube video titled “Vaping Demystified“, in which dozens of experts and researchers debunk some of the most common misconceptions surrounding vaping, including the effect of nicotine on users’ health, and the impact of e-cigarettes on our health, compared to smoking. It’s a laudable endeavor, so if you have a half an hour available, I highly recommend you watch it.
One of the most common misconceptions regarding electronic cigarettes is that we just don’t know very much about them, or their long-term effects. In reality, e-cigarettes are one of the most heavily researched innovations of our time, and while not all studies are of the highest quality, the general consensus is that vaping is orders of magnitude safer than smoking.
E-cigarettes have been around since 2003, and contrary to popular belief, they were not invented by Big Tobacco, but by a Chinese doctor who had lost his father to a smoking-related disease and who, as a smoker himself, wanted to avoid the same outcome. Tobacco companies were actually heavily opposed to vaping in the early days, but decided that a “if you can’t beat them, join them” was a much more lucrative approach. But just because cigarette companies are involved, doesn’t mean vaping is bad.
In Vaping Demystified, experts tackle myths like ‘vaping causes popcorn lung’, ‘vaping is linked to heart attacks‘, ‘e-cigarettes are pushing youth to smoking‘, among many others, and show that when “you excavate the science, you find there’s nothing there”.
But that’s because, like this eye-opening short documentary, the scientific evidence about vaping and its impact on our health don’t make news line in mainstream media publications. On the other hand, articles about the EVALI epidemic (which turned out to be unrelated to e-liquid vaping), or shady studies that put e-cigarettes in a bad light, are promoted as facts.
For example, you may have read that second-hand vapor is extremely harmful to bystanders, but scientific research has found no evidence of this. The only category that appears to be affected by vapor is asthma-sufferers, who are known to be very sensitive to a number of environmental irritants.
“The evidence is clear that vaping is far less harmful than smoking. Switching completely can improve the health of smokers substantially, compared to continuing to smoke,” the Yorkshire Cancer Research website reads. “Vapor does not cause harm to others around you. This is in contrast to secondhand smoke from smoking, which is very harmful to the health of others.”
The charity even has an official statement on vaping products, where it explains in great detail why it chose to back the use of e-cigarettes as a considerably less harmful alternative to tobacco smoking.
“The public’s perceptions on the harmfulness of vaping products are not in line with the evidence, which may stop smokers from switching to vaping products to help them stop smoking,” the statement reads. Vaping products are far less harmful than smoking. Switching completely from smoking to vaping is likely to convey substantial health benefits over continued smoking.”
The Vaping Demystified video put out by Yorkshire Cancer Research has been very well received by both the vaping community and notable figures involved in e-cigarette research, but at the time of this writing it only has 9,000 views. That’s respectable, don’t get me wrong, but we need this kind of content to go viral, if we are to have any chance of combatting the widespread misinformation in this field.
