I don't have an opinion regarding the health effects of vaping. I'm not a smoker or a vaper and never have been.
The reason I despise vapes - to be specific, what were previously single-use vapes and which are now vapes that pretend to be reusable but which are in fact still single-use - is the level of waste they create.
To be clear: a vape is a battery and an LED wrapped in metal and plastic. It is a battery-powered consumer gadget.
However, people treat them and dispose of them in the same way they treat cigarette butts (which incidentally are also a littering eyesore).
And unlike cigarettes, throwing used vapes in the bin leads to potentially dangerous and expensive fires at rubbish depots.
Then there's the discarded empty plastic vape juice cartridges: the cardboard box that the vape comes in: the sealed plastic or foil bag inside that: and the paper instruction leaflet that's also included.
Vapes are harmful e-waste and also a litter multiplier.
If people want to vape, that's fine by me.
But the Government should put in measures like obligatory price hikes so that anyone who wants to vape should buy a genuine reusable, rechargeable vape instead of the single-use vapes that pretend to be reusable by having a USB-C charge point and a removable vape juice cartridge.
I came here to say this, so thank you for doing so more articulately than I could have. Ian's central thesis is correct, except characteristically of the liberal approach it has a tendency to ignore and externalise the environmental harms, many or all of which have their own ruinous health impacts, from microplastics to fires to soil contamination from the leaching of heavy metals. Far greater regulation is needed on the things that are actually harmful, especially in disposable form, rather than Mary Whitehousesque grumbling about flavours and colours.
Hi Ian. If you worked in schools or with young people, you'd see it differently. There is no moral panic; it has become a scourge for teenagers—their route into other tobacco products.it is not the flavours or colours it is the ease in which they can purchase them. Beyond that "THC" vapes are becoming more previlent and it is hard to tell the difference. Like all banned drugs, these vapes are often dangerous. Anyway, I love your work, you'd be welcome to come and see the battles we have in schools with a product not designed to help addiction but to start one
This feels like one of your least well argued pieces. Is there really a moral panic about vaping? I think you are conflating concern about declining high streets, of which large numbers of vape shops (and nail bars and barbers) are an indicator, with concern about vaping. There is some justified concern that, as cigarette smoking declines, the industry is trying find new ways to keep a new generation addicted to tobacco, but there is also broad recognition that vaping is preferable to cigarettes on health grounds.
Granted, this is personal experience, but my Mum went from smoking one at most two cigarettes a day, to vaping constantly with no sense of social boundaries like you would have with smoking. She'll have it in her hand all day and blow vapour in my kids faces without even realising she's doing it. From the outside it seems she is much more addicted than she ever was. Am I very glad she's not smoking cigarettes anymore? Yes. Do I think her relationship with the vape is healthy? No.
What a good point. I have been living in a house where at least three people think it’s Ok to vape in the house when they used to go out in the freezing cold to smoke an old fashioned fag . They still smoke fags as well so vaping has not unhooked them. They even vape in the kitchen.
I think the article downplays how in your face vaping is.
I have no objection to it whatsoever as a tool for those looking to quit smoking, and understand the argument for it being a better entry point than smoking.
But I feel it should be subject to the same rules as cigarettes when it comes to selling them. No advertising, behind closed counters, warnings that it is addictive, etc.
Those things don't diminish its ability to act as a route off from cigarettes - all smokers know of vapes by now. But it makes it less in your face and less likely to entice new people in.
Yes, people smoke for the social interaction. Moving to a new place, I sat with smokers because I knew they’d chat. That element of belonging is largely overlooked.
The objection to vape use is that the tobacco industry is pushing hard to create new custom, that vaping litter is pernicious and environmentally harmful.
We need to prevent people starting to smoke or vape and help those already addicted to come off them. We do not need to encourage yet another harm.
Major problems with vaping have been associated with their sale in outlets which are in one way or another illegal, and also that they depend (apparently) on batteries. For example, the large fire beside Glasgow Central Station was in a shop which sold vapes, which was not properly registered or paying taxes, and which had a complex collection of battery chargers plugged into an extension lead (and which apparently started the fire). So it is not the vapes themselves which are the target but the circumstances surrounding their sales.
I myself am an ex lifetime smoker who now vapes and part of me is convinced that in 20 years time we’re going to discover that vapes are way worse for us than cigarettes ever were
Maybe that won’t happen and it will be a great thing, but I vape way more than I used to smoke (never used to grab a cigarette if I woke at 3am) and I don’t think we know for sure yet whether that is a good thing or not
Bit of a false dichotomy this one - sure, vaping may be better than smoking and have some positive benefits, but selling addictive substances to the public is just plain bad, be it fags, vapes, cheesy chips or crystal meth.
We know banning these things outright doesn't work very well, but from a health risk perspective we should be trying to nudge people to better choices, maybe by limiting the number of vape shops on a high street to 1, implementing selective product or business taxation and providing better information about the associated potential (even if unknown) or actual harms.
Exactly. The proposition that we should think about not allowing people to poison themselves with cigarettes (and pay multinationals handsomely for the privilege) doesn’t seem to make it as an option in the article.
This feels too much like promotion of vaping. I even wondered if you’ve been industry-paid to write it.
I get that it’s a better alternative to smoking for the nicotine-addicted and maybe for teenagers who are always going to try stuff. But did I miss it, or did you anywhere speak about how devastatingly addictive nicotine is? Harmless in most senses maybe, but that addiction costs a lot of money and quite probably causes health problems over time.
I write as an ex-smoker - giving up was one of the hardest things I ever did. I didn’t know what to do with my right hand for a while although in the end I replaced it with a glass of something.
I’m also the mother of teenagers who sneakily vape and think I don’t know about it. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed they get coughs more frequently.
And I’ve tried vaping. It is pleasurable as you say. In many ways they’ve cleaned up smoking. The aftertaste isn’t as bad and your clothes don’t smell. But I still felt that tightness in my lungs and slightly violated feeling I remember from smoking and I hated the underlying acrid sweetness of it. I wouldn’t ever do it regularly for fear of getting addicted again.
This newsletter is free (reader-supported). If you read Ian Dunt’s newsletters and books for long enough it is really clear that he is a person of high integrity. I bet he would rather start a smack habit than get paid to secretly promote something :)). He isn’t being paid. He is just passionate about moral crusades disguised as science, when the science isn’t fully there and we don’t know whether it ever will be.
Agree. It's tedious at the best of times when people respond to an article they disagree with by insinuating that the author is 'in the pay' of some interest group, but to make that suggestion about Ian Dunt, of all people, is absurd.
Fine, so judge it on its own merit. No need to insinuate that it is "industry-paid" (which in any case is actually the opposite of judging it on its merit as it is judging it on the motivations you impute to it.)
Motivation for writing is an interesting angle to approach any text with, though. And really, shouldn’t all articles be interrogated for their motivation and their bias, conscious or otherwise, as part of the merit basis?
I love Ian Dunt. I have a paid subscription. I think he’s one of the funniest and most articulate writers around. I’m allowed to have an objective opinion about this specific article and these opinions can exist at the same time. I was very clear about my contention with it - nicotine addiction - perhaps you’d like to tell me where I went wrong?
I think he might have said once he never reads the comments so maybe we are talking among ourselves 😀. Or maybe it was about Twitter and it was a personal rule that he doesn’t engage with comments.
Ex-smoker who kicked it on the... Well I lost count of how many times I tried to stop. I hate all the things about vapes that you do, and I feel that the sensible thing to do would have been to get them on prescription if you were a smoker, but what the heck. My dad died of lung cancer, and my mother of the heart related issues with smoking. Even that wasn't enough to stop me. I just toughed it out in the end. I think I would have received vapes like a gift from God. I don't think non-smokers realize how difficult it is to quit smoking. I was a druggie when I was younger and I've seen people find it easier to kick heroin. I'm not joking. The problem is it's a social habit as well, so if you are in the pub with the load of people and they light up (although these days they are all gonna have to go outside) if you're on day 3 of coming off cigarettes, the probability is, that's you done.
What I really do notice in all this is the complete and utter lack of any evidence in the public sphere. I'm sure there must be some, and the fact Wes Streeting is against vapes tends to move their favourability up a bit for me, but if anything can stop the kind of deaths my parents had I'm generally in favor of it. I'd also like people to control nitrous oxide as that seems to me (from the number of discarded cans in the street) to be a disaster waiting to happen.
Cochrane reviews are certainly gold-standard meta-analyses but they depend on the quality of the original research. Consider, for example, an earlier Cochrane review of smoking bans which was unable to reach firm conclusions on the basis of the research undertaken at that time.
On the whole, I agree vaping is a good thing. I’ve at times been tempted to try it myself even though I don’t smoke. But then, I’m almost 60. But my daughter was in secondary school at peak vape. And it was clear that there was massive vape use among children and yes, it was definitely marketed to them.
So I don’t mind the vape shops and the flavours etc. But sellers who let 14 year olds buy them ought to be nailed to the wall, and the vape manufacturers ought to be treated just like we are finally going after Meta. They definitely knew whom they were encouraging
I'm a retired medic and completely agree with just about every word you've written. A Calvinistic Protestantism underpins an awful lot of our approach to health and social care, particularly addiction disorders and mental health care in general.
The underlying message is that you (the smoker, fat person, addict) are morally reprehensible, and as such must suffer in any treatment that we (the morally superior medics, politicians, clerics) prescribe. It cannot under any circumstances validate your need for pleasure.
I just wish you could disseminate this more widely.
Sorry to be slightly off topic again Ian, but you've done it again so I'm picking you up on it again:
" ...an Old Testament view towards the horror of addiction as a concept..." - really??? I think you've (again) fallen into the trap of using "Old Testament" as a shorthand for harsh, uncompromising, merciless morality - and by implication, the New Testament in this scenario must therefore be less like this.
As I'm sure you know, both of these collections are full of many, many viewpoints. What you've done (I would humbly argue) is to fall back into a Christian misrepresentation of the OT, which simply serves to big up the spin-off sequel and has certainly done no favours over the years to those of us who still only recognise the original canon (plus a bunch of fan-generated lore we call the Talmud, and a huge corpus of fan fiction that we call Midrash). Would you use the Qur'an as shorthand for a distinct moral viewpoint?
Okay, getting down from my hobby horse now. Broadly agree with the article - in all honesty I do find vaping annoying, but that's more of a me problem than a public health issue. I'd be really interested in your views on extending this argument to gambling; if having a regulated gambling sector is demonstrably safer than a blanket ban which means people gamble illegally, is the same moral disdain for enjoyment at work here?
I don't have an opinion regarding the health effects of vaping. I'm not a smoker or a vaper and never have been.
The reason I despise vapes - to be specific, what were previously single-use vapes and which are now vapes that pretend to be reusable but which are in fact still single-use - is the level of waste they create.
To be clear: a vape is a battery and an LED wrapped in metal and plastic. It is a battery-powered consumer gadget.
However, people treat them and dispose of them in the same way they treat cigarette butts (which incidentally are also a littering eyesore).
And unlike cigarettes, throwing used vapes in the bin leads to potentially dangerous and expensive fires at rubbish depots.
Then there's the discarded empty plastic vape juice cartridges: the cardboard box that the vape comes in: the sealed plastic or foil bag inside that: and the paper instruction leaflet that's also included.
Vapes are harmful e-waste and also a litter multiplier.
If people want to vape, that's fine by me.
But the Government should put in measures like obligatory price hikes so that anyone who wants to vape should buy a genuine reusable, rechargeable vape instead of the single-use vapes that pretend to be reusable by having a USB-C charge point and a removable vape juice cartridge.
I came here to say this, so thank you for doing so more articulately than I could have. Ian's central thesis is correct, except characteristically of the liberal approach it has a tendency to ignore and externalise the environmental harms, many or all of which have their own ruinous health impacts, from microplastics to fires to soil contamination from the leaching of heavy metals. Far greater regulation is needed on the things that are actually harmful, especially in disposable form, rather than Mary Whitehousesque grumbling about flavours and colours.
I fully accept this, and agree, but it is secondary to Ian's main argument.
Secondary is substantive.
At least cigarettes had a useful role to play in organic gardening.
Agree. Also shocking waste of lithium.
Hi Ian. If you worked in schools or with young people, you'd see it differently. There is no moral panic; it has become a scourge for teenagers—their route into other tobacco products.it is not the flavours or colours it is the ease in which they can purchase them. Beyond that "THC" vapes are becoming more previlent and it is hard to tell the difference. Like all banned drugs, these vapes are often dangerous. Anyway, I love your work, you'd be welcome to come and see the battles we have in schools with a product not designed to help addiction but to start one
Ian needs to take a deep breath, without a vape or a fag, and think a bit more deeply about this.
This feels like one of your least well argued pieces. Is there really a moral panic about vaping? I think you are conflating concern about declining high streets, of which large numbers of vape shops (and nail bars and barbers) are an indicator, with concern about vaping. There is some justified concern that, as cigarette smoking declines, the industry is trying find new ways to keep a new generation addicted to tobacco, but there is also broad recognition that vaping is preferable to cigarettes on health grounds.
I agree with Ian about most things but every so often he loses the run of himself. I don’t know why he got it so wrong about transphobia.
Granted, this is personal experience, but my Mum went from smoking one at most two cigarettes a day, to vaping constantly with no sense of social boundaries like you would have with smoking. She'll have it in her hand all day and blow vapour in my kids faces without even realising she's doing it. From the outside it seems she is much more addicted than she ever was. Am I very glad she's not smoking cigarettes anymore? Yes. Do I think her relationship with the vape is healthy? No.
What a good point. I have been living in a house where at least three people think it’s Ok to vape in the house when they used to go out in the freezing cold to smoke an old fashioned fag . They still smoke fags as well so vaping has not unhooked them. They even vape in the kitchen.
I think the article downplays how in your face vaping is.
I have no objection to it whatsoever as a tool for those looking to quit smoking, and understand the argument for it being a better entry point than smoking.
But I feel it should be subject to the same rules as cigarettes when it comes to selling them. No advertising, behind closed counters, warnings that it is addictive, etc.
Those things don't diminish its ability to act as a route off from cigarettes - all smokers know of vapes by now. But it makes it less in your face and less likely to entice new people in.
🤔 yes, vapes help smokers quit.
Yes, people smoke for the social interaction. Moving to a new place, I sat with smokers because I knew they’d chat. That element of belonging is largely overlooked.
The objection to vape use is that the tobacco industry is pushing hard to create new custom, that vaping litter is pernicious and environmentally harmful.
We need to prevent people starting to smoke or vape and help those already addicted to come off them. We do not need to encourage yet another harm.
Next substack about betting?
Major problems with vaping have been associated with their sale in outlets which are in one way or another illegal, and also that they depend (apparently) on batteries. For example, the large fire beside Glasgow Central Station was in a shop which sold vapes, which was not properly registered or paying taxes, and which had a complex collection of battery chargers plugged into an extension lead (and which apparently started the fire). So it is not the vapes themselves which are the target but the circumstances surrounding their sales.
Not sure about this one Ian
I myself am an ex lifetime smoker who now vapes and part of me is convinced that in 20 years time we’re going to discover that vapes are way worse for us than cigarettes ever were
Maybe that won’t happen and it will be a great thing, but I vape way more than I used to smoke (never used to grab a cigarette if I woke at 3am) and I don’t think we know for sure yet whether that is a good thing or not
Bit of a false dichotomy this one - sure, vaping may be better than smoking and have some positive benefits, but selling addictive substances to the public is just plain bad, be it fags, vapes, cheesy chips or crystal meth.
We know banning these things outright doesn't work very well, but from a health risk perspective we should be trying to nudge people to better choices, maybe by limiting the number of vape shops on a high street to 1, implementing selective product or business taxation and providing better information about the associated potential (even if unknown) or actual harms.
Exactly. The proposition that we should think about not allowing people to poison themselves with cigarettes (and pay multinationals handsomely for the privilege) doesn’t seem to make it as an option in the article.
By poisoning, I mean smoking, just to be clear. But cheesy chips is going too far!!!
You still look like a knob when you do it though.
This feels too much like promotion of vaping. I even wondered if you’ve been industry-paid to write it.
I get that it’s a better alternative to smoking for the nicotine-addicted and maybe for teenagers who are always going to try stuff. But did I miss it, or did you anywhere speak about how devastatingly addictive nicotine is? Harmless in most senses maybe, but that addiction costs a lot of money and quite probably causes health problems over time.
I write as an ex-smoker - giving up was one of the hardest things I ever did. I didn’t know what to do with my right hand for a while although in the end I replaced it with a glass of something.
I’m also the mother of teenagers who sneakily vape and think I don’t know about it. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed they get coughs more frequently.
And I’ve tried vaping. It is pleasurable as you say. In many ways they’ve cleaned up smoking. The aftertaste isn’t as bad and your clothes don’t smell. But I still felt that tightness in my lungs and slightly violated feeling I remember from smoking and I hated the underlying acrid sweetness of it. I wouldn’t ever do it regularly for fear of getting addicted again.
This newsletter is free (reader-supported). If you read Ian Dunt’s newsletters and books for long enough it is really clear that he is a person of high integrity. I bet he would rather start a smack habit than get paid to secretly promote something :)). He isn’t being paid. He is just passionate about moral crusades disguised as science, when the science isn’t fully there and we don’t know whether it ever will be.
Agree. It's tedious at the best of times when people respond to an article they disagree with by insinuating that the author is 'in the pay' of some interest group, but to make that suggestion about Ian Dunt, of all people, is absurd.
Why? The article should be judged on its own merit. And I found it lacking.
Fine, so judge it on its own merit. No need to insinuate that it is "industry-paid" (which in any case is actually the opposite of judging it on its merit as it is judging it on the motivations you impute to it.)
Motivation for writing is an interesting angle to approach any text with, though. And really, shouldn’t all articles be interrogated for their motivation and their bias, conscious or otherwise, as part of the merit basis?
Just a reflection of my exact thoughts after I’d read it. Even as a fan of the author.
I love Ian Dunt. I have a paid subscription. I think he’s one of the funniest and most articulate writers around. I’m allowed to have an objective opinion about this specific article and these opinions can exist at the same time. I was very clear about my contention with it - nicotine addiction - perhaps you’d like to tell me where I went wrong?
For me it was the suggestion that he had been “industry paid to write it”.
But that was my honest response to the article. I’m pretty sure a character like Mr Dunt can handle some criticism from a loyal readership.
I think he might have said once he never reads the comments so maybe we are talking among ourselves 😀. Or maybe it was about Twitter and it was a personal rule that he doesn’t engage with comments.
Ex-smoker who kicked it on the... Well I lost count of how many times I tried to stop. I hate all the things about vapes that you do, and I feel that the sensible thing to do would have been to get them on prescription if you were a smoker, but what the heck. My dad died of lung cancer, and my mother of the heart related issues with smoking. Even that wasn't enough to stop me. I just toughed it out in the end. I think I would have received vapes like a gift from God. I don't think non-smokers realize how difficult it is to quit smoking. I was a druggie when I was younger and I've seen people find it easier to kick heroin. I'm not joking. The problem is it's a social habit as well, so if you are in the pub with the load of people and they light up (although these days they are all gonna have to go outside) if you're on day 3 of coming off cigarettes, the probability is, that's you done.
What I really do notice in all this is the complete and utter lack of any evidence in the public sphere. I'm sure there must be some, and the fact Wes Streeting is against vapes tends to move their favourability up a bit for me, but if anything can stop the kind of deaths my parents had I'm generally in favor of it. I'd also like people to control nitrous oxide as that seems to me (from the number of discarded cans in the street) to be a disaster waiting to happen.
Cochrane reviews are certainly gold-standard meta-analyses but they depend on the quality of the original research. Consider, for example, an earlier Cochrane review of smoking bans which was unable to reach firm conclusions on the basis of the research undertaken at that time.
https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD011856_do-smoking-bans-institutional-level-help-stop-people-smoking
There's also the alternative view that smoking bans introduced gradually as well as regulation of vaping is the better approach.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/29/uk-gradual-smoking-ban-success
I’m glad someone came to comment about the tarnish on “gold standard” meta studies. It’s the same as your diet - rubbish in, rubbish out
On the whole, I agree vaping is a good thing. I’ve at times been tempted to try it myself even though I don’t smoke. But then, I’m almost 60. But my daughter was in secondary school at peak vape. And it was clear that there was massive vape use among children and yes, it was definitely marketed to them.
So I don’t mind the vape shops and the flavours etc. But sellers who let 14 year olds buy them ought to be nailed to the wall, and the vape manufacturers ought to be treated just like we are finally going after Meta. They definitely knew whom they were encouraging
I'm a retired medic and completely agree with just about every word you've written. A Calvinistic Protestantism underpins an awful lot of our approach to health and social care, particularly addiction disorders and mental health care in general.
The underlying message is that you (the smoker, fat person, addict) are morally reprehensible, and as such must suffer in any treatment that we (the morally superior medics, politicians, clerics) prescribe. It cannot under any circumstances validate your need for pleasure.
I just wish you could disseminate this more widely.
Sorry to be slightly off topic again Ian, but you've done it again so I'm picking you up on it again:
" ...an Old Testament view towards the horror of addiction as a concept..." - really??? I think you've (again) fallen into the trap of using "Old Testament" as a shorthand for harsh, uncompromising, merciless morality - and by implication, the New Testament in this scenario must therefore be less like this.
As I'm sure you know, both of these collections are full of many, many viewpoints. What you've done (I would humbly argue) is to fall back into a Christian misrepresentation of the OT, which simply serves to big up the spin-off sequel and has certainly done no favours over the years to those of us who still only recognise the original canon (plus a bunch of fan-generated lore we call the Talmud, and a huge corpus of fan fiction that we call Midrash). Would you use the Qur'an as shorthand for a distinct moral viewpoint?
Okay, getting down from my hobby horse now. Broadly agree with the article - in all honesty I do find vaping annoying, but that's more of a me problem than a public health issue. I'd be really interested in your views on extending this argument to gambling; if having a regulated gambling sector is demonstrably safer than a blanket ban which means people gamble illegally, is the same moral disdain for enjoyment at work here?