Vape or not to vape

Your editorial comment “Jury is out on e-cigarettes” (28 July), suggested that new research from the University of Stirling should lead us to question their role in helping to end smoking. We disagree.

This study doesn’t prove that trying vaping caused young people to smoke, and the authors of the research were careful to point that out in their article.

Many other factors are likely to account for why these teenagers tried one or the other, in either order. The study also couldn’t assess how many young people who said they’d tried smoking in the study went on to become regular smokers. All these factors, and others, mean the study does not prove that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking.

In Scotland the rates of regular smoking amongst teenagers in Scotland continue to decline. When e-cigarettes began to become popular, around 2010, 13 per cent of 15 year-olds in Scotland were smokers. By 2015, this figure was now down to 7 per cent, and is just 2 per cent in 13-yearolds. If e-cigarettes were causing tobacco use in young people, these trends would be reversed.

Just as important is what is happening amongst adult smokers. Recent surveys suggestthat 1.5 million adults have stopped smoking in Great Britain while using e-cigarettes. The availability of these products may have contributed to the fact that the United Kingdom now has the second lowest rate of smoking in Europe, with the decline being particularly rapid in recent years when e-cigarettes were available.

There are plenty of things we don’t know about e-cigarettes, and that’s why Cancer Research UK is funding research on this topic. But all the evidence we’ve seen to date suggests that they are far less harmful than smoking. By exactly how much remains to be seen, but in the meantime, e-cigarettes may provide one alternative for smokers who are struggling to move away from tobacco.

There is a problem, though. An increasing number of people don’t know that they are less harmful – and media stories on this topic may be contributing to that. A recent survey we funded found that three times as many adults said that they thought vaping was as harmful as smoking in 2016 as in 2013 when this survey question was first asked. These misperceptions may mean smokers don’t try these products, but keep smoking instead.

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of cancer, and kills more people in Scotland than anything else we can prevent. We must do everything we can to help smokers to stop. That includes being clear about the evidence on e-cigarettes. To do otherwise may cost lives. PROFESSOR LINDA BAULD

Cancer Research UK, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh