YOU have no doubt seen someone on the street surrounded by a sweet-smelling cloud. A vaper. Globally, this is becoming an increasingly familiar sight as more and more people take up the habit. The question on everyone鈥檚 lips is, just how bad are these e-cigarettes for your health?
Answers are finally emerging, as we discover in our cover feature 鈥淗ow bad is vaping for your health? We鈥檙e finally getting answers鈥�. As the health effects of vaping are becoming clearer, governments around the world are grappling with how to regulate the use of these products and what goes into them.
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Some countries prohibit vaping altogether, while others allow unfettered sales. In between these extremes is a patchwork of enacted and pending legislation. Australia recently took steps to eradicate vaping except among former smokers trying to quit, deeming it a pharmaceutical product rather than a recreational one. Japan takes a similar view. China, swathes of Europe and several parts of the US and Canada have limited the sale of flavours to tobacco only.
In the UK, the government has just closed , which includes proposed measures to crack down on youth vaping. That might include restrictions on certain flavours, for instance.
Many of these restrictions are aimed at preventing young people from getting hooked on nicotine, on the assumption that it will make them susceptible to smoking. However, emerging evidence suggests that this assumption is wrong. Any small gateway effects may be outweighed by the number of people moving from smoking to vaping 鈥� and while vaping clearly causes immediate damage to people鈥檚 health, it seems to be less harmful than smoking.
What we have now is a global experiment with an imperfect smoking cessation device. Which regulatory approach to vaping will produce the greatest public health gains? It won鈥檛 take long to see results and we will be keeping a close eye on what emerges from the fog.
