This is atrocious!
Research also shows that while vapes are less harmful than tobacco products, they can have negative effects on health.
The link here goes to a literature review which claims nicotine vaping is responsible for EVALI, lipoid pneumonia and bronchiolitis obliterans (popcorn lung). These claims are false.
In 2024, the number of people who vape in Great Britain exceeded the number of people who smoke for the first time.
Is this a bad thing? The BMJ article uses ONS data, available here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/adultsmokinghabitsingreatbritain/2024
We can see from this that smoking rates continue to fall, quit rates have risen sharply and the proportion of vapers who are ex-smokers has increased. Could it be that people are using vapes as intended - to quit smoking?
Vaping is increasing among 11-to-17-year-olds and among those who have never smoked.
No it isn't. The link here goes to ASH's 2025 stats on youth vaping, which shows that in this age group, ever vaping has plateaued since 2023, current vaping has plateaued since 2022 and the proportion of never smokers who currently vape has fallen sharply since 2023. ASH have just released their latest stats which shows a continuation of these trends: 6% currently vape, 2% vape daily, 1% of never smokers currently vape.
https://ash.org.uk/resources/view/use-of-e-cigarettes-among-young-people-in-great-britain
Evidence suggests that actions by some regions to ban certain e-liquid flavours can reduce vaping. However, evidence also suggests that banning e-liquid flavours may have unintended consequences, including more people buying and using illicit and/or vaping unregulated products.
The authors fail to mention the other unintended consequence highlighted in the linked study - banning flavours led to an increase in smoking.
I don't have time to go through every link in detail. Not all of them are to scientific studies - the authors have linked to a guardian article and a general interest journal for the US veteran community among others.
Many of the links go to literature reviews of some quite old research. Some of the literature reviews reference other literature reviews and you have to dig quite deep to get to the actual science. At one point I ended up at that 2015 experiment where they fired a CE4 at 5 volts and discovered it chucked out a load of formaldehyde (no shit!). There were a couple more recent examples of the same error - pushing coils way past the point they would be tolerable to vape.
Data on how these compounds cause smoking-related diseases has led scientists to infer that, since higher-temperature vapes create more toxic aerosols, it is reasonable to assume that vapes with more powerful device settings are likely to be more harmful.
Like the articles they link to, the authors show a deep misunderstanding of the normal operating conditions of various vape setups.
Some of the linked research was irrelevant to the UK, e.g. the ethanol study from 2017 which looked at eliquids from the US, and the evaluation of cinnamaldehyde from Australia which noted that it was probably banned in the UK.
The biggest question I have is why this 'rapid response' ignores the vast body of research produced by public health england between 2015 and 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nicotine-vaping-in-england-2022-evidence-update
Basically, if it was published before 2022, PHE will have considered it because their literature reviews were exhaustive, and their conclusion in 2022 remained as it was in 2015 - while not completely harmless, vaping poses only a small fraction of the risk of smoking.
On the upside, we were treated to a cute diagram of a gen 2 device. I can't remember when I last saw one of these but I'm pretty sure they never had microprocessors in the tank!