What are e-cigarettes?
E-cigarettes are devices that provide an experience close to that of smoking. They do this by creating vapour that usually, but not always, contains nicotine.
While e-cigarettes now come in many different shapes and sizes, all e-cigarettes have:
- a battery to provide power
- a cartridge, pod or tank which holds e-liquid
- a coil which heats the e-liquid turning it into vapour
The liquid in an e-cigarette, called e-liquid, contains propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerine (VG) and flavourings. Most e-liquids also contain nicotine.
Why do we recommend e-cigarettes?
It’s safer than smoking….
The big problem with tobacco cigarettes is the smoke. When you burn tobacco and create smoke, you also create tar and dozens of cancer-causing carcinogens. These tar and carcinogens are the cause of smoking diseases.
Nicotine doesn’t cause smoking diseases and some scientists believe its effects are similar to caffeine.
When vaping first became popular, many people worried that we didn’t know enough about them. Fortunately, public health experts now have more than a decade of studies to analyse.
Public Health England reviews these studies every year. It now believes that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking cigarettes, and that the risk of cancer is 0.5% that of smoking.
It’s also encouraging to start seeing the results of longer term studies.
Professor Riccardo Polosa looked at how vaping would affect the lungs of a small group of non-smokers who had started vaping. He followed the group for three and half years. At the end of the period there was no sign of any harm to lungs.
Polosa also looked at what happened to people who had smoking diseases, such as asthma and high blood pressure, when they switched to vaping. His studies showed that switching to vaping could reverse some of the harm of these diseases.
It can help you stop smoking
Since vaping became popular, millions of people have quit smoking with electronic cigarettes.
Indeed, when one stop smoking service introduced electronic cigarettes, they found those using them were 20% more likely to quit than those using nicotine cessation aids. Public Health England estimates that if you use e-cigarettes, you are one and a half times more likely to be successful than if you quit cold turkey. If you use e-cigarettes AND receive behavioural support from stop smoking services or your local vape store, you are three times more likely to be successful.
It’s cheaper
The average cost of a pack of cigarettes is now well over £10.00 – meaning smoking could cost you thousands of pounds a year.
In contrast, a good starter kit can cost you less than £20.00, and an average vaper can spend £10.00 or less a week on e-liquid. These gains soon mount up – we even know of one smoker who was finally able to buy a house when she switched from smoking to vaping.
Finally
Many users also report that vaping is more enjoyable than smoking.
There are thousands of different flavours and hundreds of different devices to progress to once you have made the switch. The best thing is that if you get bored of a flavour, you can change it without worrying about changing the strength. You can also try many different devices, which offer both different ways to vape and different styles.
