Balfour et al., “Balancing Consideration of the Risks and Benefits of E-Cigarettes,” American Journal of Public Health 111, September 2021.
- In September, fifteen former presidents of the highly regarded research institution, Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) co-authored a paper endorsing the benefits of e-cigarettes in reducing smoking deaths.
- The paper concluded that vaping is likely far less hazardous than smoking and warned that policies intended to reduce youth vaping risk could have a negative impact on the number of adults using vaping to quit.
- The authors firmly believe that vaping can benefit public health, given substantial evidence which shows that vaping can reduce the harms of smoking.
- They assess four categories of evidence, all of which demonstrate that vaping is beneficial for smoking cessation: (1) the results of randomised trials, (2) population studies, (3) cigarette sales, and (4) the unintended consequences of policies restricting vaping.
- They advise national governments to pursue a more “sensible mix of policies” in order to both reduce youth vaping and increase the potential for smoking cessation.
