One of the major causes of cancer is smoking. Out of the 1.3 million people who die from cancer per year 700,000 are associated with smoking. The European Parliament’s Special Committee (BECA) recently also acknowledged that ‘tobacco use, in particular cigarette smoking is the main risk factor for cancer death in Europe’. So, the question arises: how to best tackle smoking?

For several decades, both governmental and non-governmental agencies have used various public health policies to stem the tide of smoking, including taxes, bans on advertising, promoting various patches, gums, and therapies to deliver nicotine in an alternative form that is less harmful to hopefully former smokers. Unfortunately, many of these alternatives have not proven to be entirely successful, especially when compared to the efficacy of vaping.

To succeed in its mission, the EU institutions must be brave enough to endorse new approaches. Policymakers must recognise the benefits of vaping, and its potential to massively reduce the harm of smoking. Policymakers cannot ignore the facts any longer.

According to Public Health England, vaping is 95 percent less harmful compared to smoking and the cancer risk relative of vaping to smoking is 0.4 percent. The additional lifetime cancer risk for an e-cigarette user is 0.0095 percent compared to 2.4 percent for a smoker. Currently, 140 million people in the European Union still smoke and many of them struggle to quit. Therefore, we need every possible method available to them to make quitting easier.