I should say at the outset: vaping is almost certainly less bad for your health than smoking (particularly cigarettes) BUT the 95% figure? The one cited with such authority? Mostly nonsense
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Let's set the scene. It's quite hard to estimate the health impacts of vaping vs smoking. There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly because lung cancer and COPD take a while to develop and vaping is relatively new
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So, all estimates of how good/bad vaping is come from preliminary research (although this is changing - some great work coming out in the last few years)
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Now, that being said, let's kick off with the 95% figure. It is UBIQUITOUS. Every single pro-vaping advocate uses it. All. The. Time.pic.twitter.com/QHfwyw1fNh
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Here's the pyramid of evidence. At the top, above all of this, is a review of reviews - meta-research into a specific topic. You'd usually assume that a figure like this would come from research of that calibrepic.twitter.com/xsLL2TEX7W
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Perhaps more importantly, what do you think it's based on? When someone says "95% safer", what do you think they are referring to?
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Fun fact: the 95% figure, cited EVERYWHERE, is essentially expert opinion If you look back at the hierarchy of evidence, that's right on the bottom
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What actually happened is that in 2014 a group of experts (and health consultants, oddly) got together over 2 days, and scored different nicotine products in terms of harmspic.twitter.com/BDCaImK4l0
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A year later, Public Health England affirmed in their report on vaping that there was no evidence to contradict this figure, and started using it broadly
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And remember, this figure is broadly interpreted as vaping being 95% safer FOR USERS. FOR YOU. Which is, sadly, complete nonsense
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You see, this is a trick question. What the group of experts actually considered was all of this and morehttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1006322730852061185 …
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They thought about crime, about death, about impairments to life, about cost, societal damage, environmental issues and morepic.twitter.com/Y9O1NqR8Uy
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When you split this up into societal vs indivudual harm, a good 33% of that 95% is harm TO SOCIETYpic.twitter.com/N4QZGIlsc1
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So, BY THE STUDY THAT THE FIGURE IS BASED ON, we are now down to "vaping is likely 60% safer than smoking cigarettes" But wait, there's more
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If you look here, you'll notice that smoking cigarettes is the most harmful, but other forms of tobacco are MUCH lower This is because of the various fields that the group includedpic.twitter.com/Wzqe7WtIaY
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So, again FROM THE STUDY THE 95% FIGURE CAME FROM, it's also possible to say that cigars are 85% safer than cigarettes. That chewing tobacco is 90% safer. That smoking a pipe is still 80% safer! This is ~clearly nonsense~
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The point is that these figures are not about harms TO YOU. They are talking about harms more generally - fair for a public health organisation, but very misleading for individuals
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It's also worth noting that, again BASED ON THIS STUDY, there are a number of options that are actually BETTER THAN VAPINGpic.twitter.com/TJCmjAa3GT
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There's also emerging evidence that vaping might not be the silver bullet for smoking cessation many people want it to be i.e. https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/18240/3/Missing%20Elephant_in_room.pdf …
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So, the "95% safer" figure is: a) based on the lowest quality of evidence b) NOT about individual harms c) a bit outdated d) doesn't put vaping at the top anyway
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To sum up: vaping is almost certainly better for your health than smoking cigarettes How much? No one really knows What we do know is that the "95% safer" figure is both wildly misleading and not based on good evidence
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Even based on the original study providing the 95% safer figure, cigars score almost as well as vaping! It is an interesting hypothesis, nothing more
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Vaping is less bad for you than smoking cigarettes. How big this difference is is very hotly debated. Is vaping harmless? Is it like comparing Coke to Diet Coke? Is it like comparing Coke to fruit juice? We just aren't really sure what the answer is yet
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P.S. Several people have raised this as an issue, so I'll add on - VAPING IS DEFINITELY SAFER THAN SMOKING The question is how much, how you quantify that, and how we actually got the 95% figure
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P.P.S Yes, I'm aware that there has been further research on vaping (including systematic reviews etc). The point is that this research is mostly preliminary, and the 95% figure was essentially taken for convenience's sake as the best guess. Except, it wasn't really a great guess
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