Could Save Nearly a Billion Lives, More than Half of those in Asia
(Hong Kong – 24 August, 2016) A new working paper from Reason Foundation examines how vaping, which is estimated to be 95% safer than smoking, could extend and improve the lives of smokers. But it warns that those benefits will be lost if governments in Asia and elsewhere continue to impose undue restrictions on vapor products. A November meeting in Delhi of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control presents an opportunity for governments to commit to a more positive approach towards vape products.
Vaping is displacing smoking and, if not subject to unnecessary and counterproductive regulations or bans, has the potential to improve and extend the lives of “hundreds of millions” of people in Asia alone, according to a new Reason Foundation working paper that compares the health effects of vaping to smoking, examines the rate at which adult smokers have been switching to vaping and the effect the availability of vape products has on rates of smoking.
Asia has the highest number of smokers yet, ironically, in the continent where the “electronic cigarette” was invented, vaping has not yet taken off because of bans and other egregious regulations. Many countries in the region have prohibited them (Singapore, Thailand) or de facto prohibit them as unlicensed medicines (Australia, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan). Still others are uncertain how to regulate them (China, Indonesia). By contrast, other countries, such as the United Kingdom, have avoided over-regulation and as a result vapour products have become popular and innovation has been rapid, resulting in dramatic public health improvements.
“If product quality and diversity continue to increase and costs continue to fall, within 20 years vaping could cut smoking rates by 50 percent or more. In 30 years, vaping might eliminate smoking altogether. If that were to happen, it would effectively save most of the billion lives — and perhaps eight of the 10 billion life-years — that might otherwise be lost to smoking,” the Reason Foundation working paper, The Vapour Revolution, concludes.
The research by Julian Morris, vice president of research at Reason Foundation, and Dr. Amir Ullah Khan, a noted Indian economist, shows how vape technologies have developed, their potential to improve lives and their policy implications.
Morris and Khan explain that rapid innovation, driven by competition in a relatively unregulated market, has resulted in vape products that are attracting millions of smokers to switch from
cigarettes. Considered 95 percent safer than smoking, vaping enables smokers to live longer, healthier and more productive lives. Economies also benefit from increased economic activity and lower health care costs. With continued innovation, the authors expect vape products entirely to replace smoking within three decades.
“In less than 10 years, vape products have seen a dramatic increase in quality, efficacy and safety, while prices have fallen. Already, millions of smokers have switched,” said Dr. Amir Ullah Khan, co-author of the paper. “Vaping now has the potential to prevent over a billion smoking- related deaths, extending the lives of smokers and potential smokers by perhaps 10 billion years.”
The authors warn, however, that continued innovation and these massive health benefits may be thwarted by regulations, especially if promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO). Excessively restrictive regulation of vape products will drive up costs, reduce choice, and undermine competition and innovation. While some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have encouraged innovation by avoiding over-regulation, others have already banned the technology or imposed excessive restrictions.
WHO plays a key role providing guidance to countries on tobacco control policies with its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global treaty. Unfortunately, to date, WHO has been hostile to the health benefits of harm-reduction products like vaping, instead focusing only on getting smokers to quit entirely. When WHO hosts the seventh conference of the parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Delhi this November, Morris and Khan say it should abandon this so-called ‘quit or die’ approach and embrace the potential of vape technology and innovation to reduce smoking and improve health outcomes.
“The WHO’s FCTC should change its approach to vape products, recognizing their life-saving potential,” said Julian Morris, co-author of the report. “At the very least, WHO should include in its deliberations some of the many health experts whose research shows that these vaping innovations can, and do, save lives.”
Working Paper Available Online:
The full report, The Vapour Revolution: How Bottom-Up Innovation Is Saving Lives, by Julian Morris and Amir Ullah Khan is online at: http://reason.org/studies/show/vapour-revolution-working-paper http://reason.org/files/vapour_revolution_working_paper.pdf
For further information or to interview the authors, contact:
Simon Lee +852 9388 5895
Email: simon.lee@advb.com.hk
About the authors
Julian Morris is Vice President for Research at Reason Foundation. Julian graduated from Edinburgh University in 1992 with an MA in economics. He has an MSc in environment and resource economics from University College London, an MPhil in land economics from Cambridge University, and a law degree from the University of Westminster. Julian is the author of dozens of scholarly articles on the relationship between institutions, development and environmental protection, and the editor of several books, including Sustainable Development: Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty (Profile Books, 2002). Prior to joining Reason, Julian was Executive Director of International Policy Network, which he cofounded. Before that, he ran the environment and technology programme at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Dr Amir Ullah Khan has a PhD in Economics and Business Studies from the Jamia Millia University. He has worked as Researcher for the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the UNDP at Project LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy). He then was Academic Head at the Indian School of Finance and Management, after which he worked with Encyclopædia Britannica as executive director and editor. He is senior policy advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Khan is currently a member of the Board of Governors at the Presidency University, Bangalore. He is also a member in the Telangana Government’s Commission of Inquiry on Socio economic conditions headed by G Sudhir. He has been a senior fellow at the India Development Foundation and Adjunct Professor of Business and Law at the Edith Cowan University. He teaches at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, the Manipal Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi.
About Reason Foundation
Reason Foundation is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Reason Foundation produces respected public policy research on a variety of issues and publishes the critically acclaimed Reason magazine and its website www.reason.com. For more information please visit www.reason.org.
Notes for editors
• The first vape product was an “electronic cigarette” developed by Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik in 2003.
• Subsequent competition among producers in a relatively unregulated marketplace, combined with user modifications, information sharing, and standard setting has resulted in dramatic improvements in the quality and effectiveness of vape products – and reduced cost.
• Smokers appear to be switching to vaping at a rapid rate, with new devices attracting additional converts year-on-year.
• By 2014, over 6 million people in Europe alone had switched from smoking to vaping.
• Asia-Pacific is home to more than half the world’s smokers.
• According to research conducted by Ipsos in 2015, a large majority of Asian smokers surveyed said they would consider switching to e-cigarettes if they were legal, met quality and safety standards, and were conveniently available.
• Smokers who vape but do not quit smoking, tend to reduce their cigarette consumption.
• In the UK, the proportion of people who vape exclusively has increased, suggesting that as products improve, people are more likely to switch entirely to vaping.
• The vapour produced by heating e-liquids in a vape device contains only a tiny fraction of the number of chemicals in tobacco smoke—and most of those chemicals are harmless.
• The best estimate so far produced puts the risk posed by vaping at approximately 5% that posed by smoking. In other words, vaping with e-liquid is at least 95% safer than smoking.
• People who both vape and smoke (“dual users”) experience dramatic reductions in markers for tobacco use, suggesting that even dual use is healthier than exclusively smoking.
• Contrary to some reports, the availability of vape products appears to reduce smoking initiation among young people.
• Over the course of the next two to three decades, vaping might gradually replace smoking altogether, thereby saving most of the billion lives—and perhaps 8 of the 10 billion life years—that otherwise would be lost to smoking over the coming century.
• Innovations have resulted in vape products that are more effective, safer, and less costly.
• Innovation has been far more rapid in jurisdictions where vape products are regulated as consumer products than in more heavily regulated jurisdictions.
• New products, including fourth generation “mods,” a new generation of cigalikes, and vape devices that heat tobacco without burning it, offer enormous potential to attract smokers to these much less harmful alternatives.
• If innovation is to continue to deliver better, safer, less expensive products—and thereby attract more smokers to switch—it is essential that producers, retailers and consumers be free of excessive regulatory intervention.
• The World Health Organization and its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) exert considerable influence on domestic policies towards tobacco in many countries. In 2014, at the 6th Conference of the Parties to the FCTC, parties left open how best to regulate vape products.
• Since 2014, the evidence of public health benefits from vape products has been mounting — as documented in this study.
• It is important that governments meeting for the seventh Conference of the Parties to the FCTC, which will take place in Delhi in November 2016, take on board this new evidence and support policies that do not impose unnecessary impediments to the development, promotion, sale, and use of vape products.
