Is smoking or vaping worse for you? It depends who's asking

Research suggests vaping is one of the best ways to help smokers quit the habit. But that doesn't mean it's a harmless alternative to smoking

- Hayley Bennett

Smokers are increasingly unconvinced of the benefits of switching to e-cigarettes, or 'vaping' - using an electronic device to heat a liquid that contains nicotine and inhaling the vapour (as opposed to breathing in the smoke from burning tobacco). Last year, over a third of smokers surveyed in England thought vaping would be more harmful to their health than smoking – up from 12 per cent four years earlier - while another third thought vaping would be just as bad.

This is despite scientific evidence from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) showing the effects of smoking on our health, and a Cochrane review from 2022 that suggests vaping helps more people to quit than other nicotine replacement products. So, the perception of vaping is important because, as scientists established this year, smokers who think vaping is less harmful are more likely to switch.

While there are known health impacts of both vaping and smoking, many experts agree that vaping reduces harm compared to smoking. According to the National Health Service, for example, vaping exposes people to fewer toxins, and at lower levels, than smoking.

“It’s not that we think e-cigarettes are totally safe, but smoking is uniquely deadly and kills one in two regular users,” says Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, whose work in health policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in the US, focuses on tobacco control and e-cigarettes. “So, when we're comparing most things to smoking, most things come out looking better.”