I keep one tucked in my bra for sneaky puffs in the car, planes... even at parents’ meetings. My kids have given up telling me off
‘The doctor tells me vaping for five, ten or 15 years is going to cause lung damage ’
companies were outraged). But my kids hated it.
So the rise of vaping — then universally presented as a safe, sensible alternative to smoking that would help addicts like me to quit — came at just the right time.
It felt like nothing short of a miraculous solution.
My first vape, bought at County Mall shopping centre in Crawley, West Sussex, in 2013, gave me a kick at the back of my throat, like a real cigarette. It was love at first puff and I transitioned straight from Marlboro Lights to e-cigs without regret or cravings.
The American Tobacco flavour was instantly pleasurable, didn’t smell and could be smoked without shame or embarrassment.
For six years, I have happily puffed away at my vape, believing it was one vice that couldn’t do much harm. It’s cheaper than buying cigarettes, but if you incessantly suck away, like I do, still costly. One estimate puts the annual cost of smoking ten at day at £1,800, and the cost of vaping for a year at around £300, including the e-cig and all the accessories you need.
I’ve never done the maths, but I buy my filters online at £8 for five, and each filter lasts half a day.
While I’ve never kidded myself for a moment that it looks cool, it was a no-brainer to trade looking momentarily chic for lifelong better health and glowing skin.
I look forward to it after meals, am convinced it sharpens my concentration and admit it’s as much an emotional crutch as it is a physical dependency.
But no love story lasts for ever. And I’ve decided I can no longer live in denial, so to work out the truth I spoke to Dr Nick Hopkinson, a reader in respiratory medicine at Imperial College and chair of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
‘My advice to any smoker wanting to quit would always be to try medicinal nicotine replacement products and get support via counselling, because those methods are known to be effective and safe,’ he says.
‘But some people prefer vaping because it’s more easily accessible or they’ve tried everything else.
‘Vaping is not completely safe, but the level of harm to the lungs is probably no more than about five per cent that of smoking.
‘Obviously, the best thing your lungs can breathe in is clean air. But if the choice is between vaping and smoking, vaping is the best option.’
That makes sense to me. If I stopped vaping, there is a good chance I’d soon be back to smoking — and no doubt ten times more than I used to, thanks to my intensive vaping habit.
Of the 3.6 million vapers in the UK, 54 per cent are former smokers, while 40 per cent do a bit of both. Six per cent have never smoked. But we’re not in the clear just because we’re vaping to escape a worse habit.
‘Laboratory work suggests e-cig vapour could irritate the cells in the lungs,’ continues Dr Hopkinson. ‘There’s no doubt that vaping for five, ten or 15 years is going to cause some lung damage in the long term such as inflammation or scarring.
‘For example, long-term vaping may increase the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), though to much less extent than cigarettes.’
And what does Dr Hopkinson think of the U.S. horror stories about vaping? Secretly, I’m very much hoping he’ll dismiss them as a moral panic or political hype. No such luck.
‘The outbreak of acute lung disease in the U.S. is something we ought to be taking very seriously,’ he says. ‘There’s evidence that at least 80 per cent of cases have been in people who have been vaping cannabis oil, and there may be other specific chemicals involved.
‘Lungs are not designed to inhale oil, the cells in the lungs take up the oil and that also causes scarring and inflammation.
‘The fact we have much tighter regulation in the UK means that thankfully, the likely culprit, a chemical called vitamin E acetate, isn’t present. This is probably why we haven’t seen the same problems here.’
But he warns that growing use in the UK means we could see such cases in those using vapes to illicitly consume cannabis.
I have vaped for a long time now with no apparent side-effects — except that my desire to smoke tobacco has completely gone. In fact, I much prefer my e-cig to a Marlboro Light, which now smells utterly repellent to me. That in itself is a marvel given how I used to crave them.
So I can’t help feeling betrayed by the news that even this last little pleasure is no longer harmless. After all, I’ve already given up so many things I love in the name of staying healthy.
I exercise regularly, use natural products on my face, eat healthily, and drink loads of water and herbal tea. I’ve stopped indulging my sweet tooth, which reached such epic proportions after I quit smoking that my family would find wrappers virtually everywhere — stuffed down the sofa, scattered about the car, in coat pockets.
BUTTEr is another thing I have had to moderate. Gone are the days when I would dollop half a pound in my baked potato. It’s now a drizzle of olive oil and some saintly cottage cheese.
Sadly, it seems vaping must now be next on the list of endless compromises.
‘If you’ve managed to quit smoking by switching to vaping, it’s best to try to quit that, too, in the long term,’ Dr Hopkinson advises. ‘But not at the expense of going back to smoking, which is much more dangerous. And if you don’t smoke, stay away from vaping.’
There you have it. Of course, I am cross with myself for being so reliant on a bit of plastic and I keep telling myself that one day I will give up. One day, one month, one year, I will, I will stop.
And when I finally manage it, the only vice I’ll have left is an unhealthy love of chocolate — oh, and eating snacks in bed. There is nothing more delightfully decadent than munching through a packet of Twiglets and reading late into the night.
Funnily enough, this habit irritates my children far more than my vaping, even though it doesn’t affect them at all.
Tough luck kids, that’s one last, little pleasure I’m determined to keep.