Leading New Zealand academic says the World Health Organisation’s approach to vaping will protect the cigarette trade and cause more harm than good

In a comment published in the Lancet today, Emeritus Professor Robert Beaglehole says the World Health Organization (WHO) needs to embrace the potential of vaping to dramatically reduce the harms of smoking.

The latest WHO report on tobacco has rejected the role of vaping in helping people quit smoking. Beaglehole, a former Director of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion at WHO, says: “It is disappointing that in its latest report, WHO is clinging to outdated ideas around smoking cessation. The rapid rise of smokefree nicotine products, especially vaping, is the most disruptive influence on smoking in decades and WHO should be embracing innovations that could save lives, not rejecting them”.

Beaglehole says that there is broad scientific consensus that non-combustible tobacco products, such as vaping, are substantially less harmful than smoking by up to 95%.

“People smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar. Electronic vaping products (e-cigarettes) deliver nicotine through a heated aerosol that contains nicotine, and flavourings; it is inhaled much like smoking but without the damaging by-products of burnt tobacco.

The key to the public health impact of vaping will be the willingness of more smokers to switch the way they use nicotine rather than to quit completely.”

As New Zealand prepares to regulate vaping and other smokeless nicotine products Beaglehole offers some words of caution: “Vaping and other smokefree products have the potential to reduce the enormous harm of smoked tobacco. The stakes of getting policy responses wrong are high, especially if an overly restrictive approach stops millions of the world’s smokers from accessing safer alternatives”.

“If we get this wrong and treat vaping products like smoked tobacco, we only serve to protect the stranglehold of cigarettes on the world’s nicotine users. It will be costly mistake, counted in even more needless deaths from smoking”.

Vaping in New Zealand Facts

• Daily prevalence of e-cigarettes for New Zealand adults is 2.6%^[I].
• Data from the Health Promotion Agency’s healthy lifestyles survey found that 47% of adult vapers are former smokers, 50% are current smokers and only 3% are never smokers^[ii]
• Fewer than 2% of Year 10 students in New Zealand use e-cigarettes daily^[iii]
• Year 10 students who smoke are more than 4 times more likely to try and e-cigarette than students who have never smoked.
• Less than 1% of Year 10 students who have never smoked vape daily.

About the paper authors

· Emeritus Professor Robert Beaglehole (New Zealand)

Professor Beaglehole directed the WHO Department of Chronic Disease and Health Promotion between 2004 and 2007. He founded ASH in 1982 and now chairs the organisation which actively supports the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Goal. He is Professor Emeritus of the University of Auckland and was awarded the ONMZ for public health with Ruth Bonita.

· Clive D Bates

Clive Bates is Director of Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Blair’s Strategy Unit as a senior civil servant and worked in senior roles in government and regulators, and for the United Nations in Sudan.

· Emeritus Professor Ruth Bonita

Ruth Bonita is an Emeritus Professor at the University if Auckland and former Director of NCD Surveillance at WHO between 1999 and 2007. Since 2008, she has been a teacher and consultant in global public health. Together with Robert Beaglehole, she was awarded an ONZM for public health.

· Ben Youdan

Ben Youdan is the former Chief Executive of the UK’s national No Smoking Day campaign until 2007 when he moved to New Zealand. He was the Director of ASH New Zealand from 2007 to 2013, and currently works as an independent health advisor.

The authors do not have conflicts of interest with respect to tobacco, e-cigarette or pharmaceutical industries and confirm no issues arise with respect to Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC.