Does vaping save lives? Well, according to research carried out by the eminent British medical body the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) it seems finally the answer to that question’s been proved to be yes – yes, vaping does save lives.
Because the organisation’s recently discovered that, of all people in the UK who have tried to quit smoking by taking up the NHS’s ‘Stop Smoking’ programme and, in so doing, moved on to e-cigs, around two-thirds of them (66%) succeeded in giving up. Thus, public health is improving and people’s lives are being saved via vaping.
In fact, in the 200-page report the RCP has compiled based on its research, it doesn’t just suggest you might turn to vaping to quit smoking, it also claims that vaping doesn’t encourage non-smokers to pick up a smoking habit when they’ve never previously done so.
Additionally, the report looked at the potential effects of long-term e-cig use and whether any of them may be harmful for vapers. The conclusion it came to here, like it or not, is right now it’s too soon to draw up a long-term outlook – presumably because e-cigarettes and their usage simply haven’t been around long enough. That said, the RCP claims that according to data currently available, health risks from vaping appear to be no higher than about 5% of those attributable to smoking.
Indeed, this evidence is backed up by similar research conducted by UK Government agency Public Health England, which stated last year that vaping’s ‘around 95% safer than smoking’. This will surely only help convince more of the 8.7 million smokers nationwide to switch to e-cigarettes as a sensible alternative.
As will the fact that, while vaping gives users the nicotine hit they enjoy, it doesn’t contain the nasty, harmful ingredients residing in many other tobacco products including cigarettes. And for that reason, vapers don’t face the threats to their life expectancy that smokers whom are yet to switch to e-cigarettes do. Indeed, the RCP has also said stated that once a smoker hits the age of 35, for every subsequent year they remain hooked on tobacco they can expect three months to be knocked off their life.
To sum up then, vaping is a significant, positive alternative to turn to for those who are concerned about their health and wish to quit smoking. It carries very few of the health concerns often attributed to and spoken of in the same breath as tobacco-smoking. Plus, most importantly of all, of course, taking up e-cigarettes appears to be turning more and more people away from conventional cigarettes and helping them to give them up altogether. Vaping is here to stay; it’s doing us good – it’s even saving lives!