Vapouround magazine Vapouround Magazine Issue 26 | Page 70

N F E R F E AT U R E S H SAFER IS SAFE ENOUGH Why has the media become so hung up on whether or not vaping is safe? It’s far safer than smoking, which, for a smoking alternative, is safe enough. Words: Phoebe Fuller You’d be hard pushed to fi nd anyone in this industry who would advocate for non-smokers to take up vaping. E-cigarettes are a necessary alternative to combustibles for most of us, while for others they have taken on a secondary appeal as an interesting pastime. The common thread among most vapers is that they’re consuming nicotine in a way that is undoubtedly safer than getting it from tobacco. Yes, e-liquid does contain chemicals; but it’s a far cry from the some 60 cancer-causing chemicals found in cigarettes. Let’s focus on the big one: tar. Tar is what happens when tobacco smoke cools and condenses. It is the sticky brown sludge that coats the lungs of a smoker and eventually causes respiratory failure, cancer or both. E-cigarettes do not produce tar and therefore they don’t lead to tar build up in the body. E-cigarettes also do not produce carbon monoxide and are free from the harmful chemicals and compounds which are produced when cigarettes are burned. 64 VM26 Public Health England (PHE) have long attested to vaping being 95 percent less harmful than smoking and, in the midst of lung illnesses falsely attributed to vaping in the US, they’ve remained steadfast on that assertion. But the key word here is ‘safer’ because no one - not PHE, the NHS or any vaping association - has declared vaping to be completely safe; only safer than cigarettes. And, in the context of being better for you than puffi ng on a product as harmful as a cigarette, safer is safe enough. However, Greg Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, says that people are often hardwired to ignore this distinction. He says: “In general, many people think of risk as fi tting into one of two boxes: safe or not safe. When people think of having sex using a condom, wearing a seatbelt or undertaking other harm-reduction measures, they’ll assign it a value of ‘safe.’ “But when you add to that the fact that vaping is primarily done with nicotine, a substance for which people have rampant misperceptions, it makes accurate and truthful understanding about