Report Concludes Vaping Could Save Seven Million Lives Over Just Ten Years

JIMMY HAFREY FEB 27,

A brand new study says if vaping was properly supported it could dramatically reduce the number of tobacco-related deaths a year.

Smoking continues to kill more people every year than any other preventable cause, making it as important as ever we have effective harm reduction and smoking cessation tools. Despite being only a little over ten years old, modern vaporizers have proven to be invaluable in this fight according to a growing pile of peer-reviewed research. Despite this growing consensus among academics, the majority of legislators and parents remain skeptical of what effect e-cigarettes are really having.

That’s why it’s great to see another piece of evidence published which strongly suggests the value vaping provides far outweighs any potential downsides. While it’s unlikely to have a significant impact by itself, it shows a growing sentiment among public health experts that smoking is much worse than vaping and should remain the primary focus of smoking cessation programs. So as the debate over how to regulate vaporizers continues, supporters now have another solid piece of research which proves the risk is well worth it.

The New Report

The report was conducted by a team of researchers hailing from several respected institutions and schools, led by Dr. David B. Abrams of New York University. The team wanted to understand the real-life impact of accepting vaping compared with continuing to treat it as merely an alternative forms of tobacco, as is currently the norm in America. To do this, they went back over years of reports and data to uncover any relevant connections and trends. The team ultimately concluded that if most cigarette smokers switched to exclusively using a vaporizer, it would save an estimated 6.6 million lives over ten years, resulting in 86.7 million fewer life years lost due to smoking.

While this was their most shocking revelation, it wasn’t their only one. The team first established vaping is a worthwhile endeavor in virtually all scenarios. In fact, the team concluded that only their most unreasonable simulations found the effect of vaping to be a net negative for public health, with most seeing it as a significant gain. They also made a strong argument for the often uncomfortable truth about the nature of vaping, “Even if the risk of harm to some youth who otherwise would not have smoked is marginally increased, such risks must be weighed against the substantial and immediate benefits of displacing smoking with safer nicotine products among both youth and adults.”

In Support Of Vaping

Aside from this latest report, we already have a robust list of evidence supporting many aspects of what makes vaping an effective harm reduction and smoking cessation tool. For starters, we can say with near certainty that vaping is much safer than smoking. In fact, going back as far as 2015 we got a report from Public Health England which concluded vaping is at least 95% saferthan smoking. Backing up these findings have been many reports over the last three years which also indicates e-cigarettes significantly reduce your exposure to harm, including a report published in December which concluded vapor has around 93% fewer toxicants than cigarette smoke. But perhaps most impressive is the report which found the excess lifetime cancer risk of a smoker is roughly 57,000 times higher than a demographically similar vaper.

Going past the harm reduction value and there’s still a lot of reason to support vaping. For instance, a report by researchers at the University of Louisville concluded that not only is vaping a useful smoking cessation tool, but it’s more likely to be successful than anything else, including prescriptions drugs. But for many, one of the biggest reasons to question the value of vaping is their impact on teens. Luckily, we have a report of over 60,000 students which concluded only between 0.1% and 0.5% of non-smoking teens are ever picking up a vaporizer full time. Which means a lot less are ever turning to combustible cigarettes.

Implications

Studies like these are increasingly vital in the fight for vaping rights. Most experts can now agree that vaping has plenty to offer society, but now the question is what are the unintended consequences and are they worth the price? Evidence like this which looks directly at this question is our best chance to look into the future and see what sort of impact our policy choices will have. With the debate over the value of vaping reaching a head, its never been more critical for the vaping community to band together to help teach those in our lives about what e-cigarettes have to offer. If we ever want to end the smoking epidemic once and for all, this report indicates we must utilize vaping to its full potential.