We don’t yet have good longitudinal studies, and the short term effects are already pretty bad, so in my opinion there’s no reason to believe claims that vaping will not have serious long-term effects.
If smoking rates dropped to zero but vaping rates are as high as smoking rates were previously, are we better off? What about if vaping rates are 50% higher? Where is the break even point that we have undone all the benefits?
I don’t think we can answer this yet. Initially (some years ago now) the Ministry of Health was pushing vaping as a smoking alternative, citing 95% less harm. My gut feel is we will find this to be quite wrong.
We don’t yet have good longitudinal studies, and the short term effects are already pretty bad, so in my opinion there’s no reason to believe claims that vaping will not have serious long-term effects.
I guess the question is “how bad?”
If smoking rates dropped to zero but vaping rates are as high as smoking rates were previously, are we better off? What about if vaping rates are 50% higher? Where is the break even point that we have undone all the benefits?
I don’t think we can answer this yet. Initially (some years ago now) the Ministry of Health was pushing vaping as a smoking alternative, citing 95% less harm. My gut feel is we will find this to be quite wrong.