Flood of anti-science is trapping smokers with deadly cigarettes

An anti-science campaign that misrepresents the risks of safer smoke-free nicotine products is trapping millions of smokers with cigarettes that will ultimately kill them, international experts warn today.

The alert comes as major new research shows that more than half of adult smokers in the UK wrongly believe vaping is as harmful as, or more harmful than, smoking cigarettes – and that number is growing.

Those misconceptions make smokers less likely to switch to products that expose them to far fewer toxic chemicals than cigarette smoke.

The findings, published by the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), found that 52% of smokers believe vaping is as harmful as smoking – almost double the number from a decade ago. Among smokers who have never tried vaping, the figure rises to 61%.

Fewer than one in three smokers correctly recognise that vaping is less harmful than smoking. Strikingly, the survey also found that some people had tried to quit vaping by returning to cigarettes.

Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden, said the findings should serve as a warning to governments, health authorities and the media.

“Millions of smokers are making life-and-death decisions based on information that is simply wrong,” he said. “When people believe there is little difference between smoking and vaping, many decide they may as well carry on smoking.”

Decades of research has shown that the vast majority of smoking-related disease is caused by breathing in the toxic chemicals released when tobacco burns.

A major independent review by King’s College London concluded that people who vape are exposed to a fraction of the harmful chemicals found in cigarette smoke.

“Nobody should tell smokers, directly or indirectly, that vaping carries the same risk as smoking,” said Dr Human, a former secretary-general of the World Medical Association.

“That claim ignores the evidence and keeps people smoking cigarettes that are far more likely to cause cancer, heart disease and lung disease.”

Dr Human said Sweden had shown what happens when smokers receive accurate information and access to safer alternatives.

“Sweden has reduced smoking to below the internationally recognised smoke-free threshold and has the lowest rates of tobacco-related disease in Europe,” he said. “That progress came because public health policies supported adult smokers switching to lower-risk alternatives.

“Scaring smokers away from safer smoke-free products simply protects the cigarette market and traps people with the deadliest form of nicotine ever invented.”

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