Vaping and your health: what the evidence says
Less harmful than smoking, not harmless. A plain summary of what UK health bodies say about vaping, and why stopping eventually is still the goal.
You’ll hear a lot of confident claims about vaping, in both directions. Here’s what the UK’s health bodies actually say, in plain language, with links so you can read it for yourself.
Far less harmful than smoking
Cigarettes release thousands of chemicals when they burn; many are poisonous and up to 70 cause cancer. Most of the harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, including tar and carbon monoxide, aren’t in vape aerosol.1
In 2022, UK experts reviewed the international evidence and found that in the short and medium term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking.3 Cancer Research UK puts it simply: research so far shows vaping is far less harmful than smoking, and there is no good evidence that vaping causes cancer.2
But not harmless
Both the NHS and Cancer Research UK are equally clear that vaping isn’t risk-free, and that we don’t yet know its long-term effects because vapes haven’t been around long enough.1 2 Nicotine itself is highly addictive.1 That’s why children and people who have never smoked shouldn’t vape at all.
The NHS’s summary: the healthiest option is not to smoke or vape, so if you’re vaping to quit smoking, aim to eventually stop vaping too.1
If you still smoke as well
Vaping only delivers its full benefit if you stop smoking completely.1 If you do both, stopping the cigarettes is the biggest win available to you, and the body starts recovering quickly. According to the NHS, within 48 hours of your last cigarette carbon monoxide in your blood falls to the level of a non-smoker’s, and after a year your risk of a heart attack has halved compared with a smoker’s.4
Vaping is one of the most effective tools for getting there: the NHS says you’re roughly twice as likely to quit smoking with a nicotine vape as with other nicotine replacement products like patches or gum.1
So when should you stop vaping?
When you’re confident you won’t go back to smoking. That’s the one condition that matters. Cancer Research UK notes that the most important thing is not smoking, and vaping can help with staying off tobacco.2
When you’re there, a gradual taper is a gentle way to finish the job. Vaping usually costs less than smoking,2 and stopping altogether costs nothing at all.