Public Health England insists e-cigarettes are 95% safer than smoking

England’s public health agency has reiterated its claim that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking, in a new campaign to encourage smokers to quit in January.1 A film, part of the Health Harms campaign, features Lion Shahab, a leading smoking cessation academic from University College London, and the GP Rosemary Leonard carrying out an experiment in which bell jars filled with cotton wool balls capture the smoke from a month’s worth of cigarettes and from electronic cigarettes. A 2018 survey of US teenagers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 28.9% of 12th graders had used any form of nicotine product in the previous year, up from 23.7% in 2017.4 The prevalence of vaping in this group rose from 15.2% to 25% over the same period, showing that “teens are clearly attracted to the marketable technology and flavourings seen in vaping devices,” said Nora Volkow, director of the US National Institute of Drug Abuse. “The failure of the health and social care system to provide this is a national scandal,” said Hopkinson, “and government pronouncements that they are prioritising ‘prevention’ while smoking cessation services and other aspects of public health are actually being cut, are simply absurd.