Vaping is not smoking
Staff Reporter, Dhaka
Emerged as one of the most effective quit smoking tool, vape is often mistaken as another form of cigarette, albeit in electronic form. Although often viewed merely as an electronic version of tobacco cigarette, vaping is actually surprisingly distinct, belonging to its own category. But in reality there are little similarities between the two. In terms of health impacts, vaping is 95 per cent safer than the cancer causing cigarette. And in mechanisms they are completely different in how the smoke is created and what elements make up the smoke.
Vapes are battery-powered electronic devices that heat a solution and produce an inhalable vapour. Due to absence of smoke in vapes, it does not produce tar or carbon monoxide like regular cigarettes. Vapes heat a liquid containing nicotine, which produces a vapour that is inhaled, hence the name vape. But misconception persists among general public that vaping is the same as regular cigarettes. Research by reputed studies repeatedly showed that vaping is almost certainly far less harmful than smoking, owing primarily to the fact that they do not contain tobacco, which is the single biggest preventable cause of death worldwide. Vapes do contain nicotine however, nicotine is not responsible for the major health harms that causes from smoking.
Studies shows that people that switch fully from tobacco to vaping have reduced exposure to the harmful chemicals found in regular cigarettes. This led the UK government to officially adopt vaping as a tool for quitting smoking. As vaping continues to help people quit cigarette smoking, it is increasingly being viewed as a very effective quitting and harm reduction tool. Harm reduction advocates recommend that vaping should be used by cigarette smokers in order to quit, but should never be used by people who havent smoked.
People like me who advocate vaping do not recommend vaping to non-smokers. It is specifically a device to be used as an aid to quit smoking, said Dr Mithun Alamgir, a harm reduction advocate, who is a professor and the Head at the Department of Community Medicine at Enam Medical College.
But at the same time, said Dr Alamgir, it is important to understand the differences. Vaping is not smoking. It does not have all the carcinogens that cigarettes have. It does not have thousands of different chemicals that enter your body when you inhale smoke by burning tobacco, he said.
There are however some concerns that it may be used as a gateway for the youth to cigarette smoking. But studies done in the Uk suggests that only current or ex-smokers are regular users of vapes. Experimentation with vapes in never smokers remains low and coincides with the continuing decline in youth smoking.
Dr Alamgir says that it makes little sense to ban vapes because they will be a gateway to cigarettes, which is more harmful than vaping! Of course, you should have a very strong regulatory framework and implementation so that kids cant buy these products. Vape is meant for smokers who want to quit and use this as an aid for doing so. But if you say vape should not be allowed because they can lead to cigarettes, then why do you allow cigarettes in the first place? he said.
A study by the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, PHE, ASH and DECIPHer Centre at the University of Cardiff found that levels of regular vaping in young people who have never smoked remain very low, demonstrating that the majority of young people who experiment with vaping dont go on to use them regularly. In the UK a patient is categorized as a non-smoker if they only use vapes and doesnt smoke tobacco at all.
Vaping is also different from smoking because of the second-hand smoke impact. Unlike tobacco cigarettes, there is no good evidence to suggest that second-hand vapour from a vape user is dangerous to others. With no combustion and a lack of second-hand smoke harm, vaping is increasingly being recognized as completely different from smoking, as opposed to a different kind of smoking mechanism.
