Breaking ‘news’.
According to new calculations by the Adam Smith Institute, a leading think tank, promoting safer alternatives to cigarettes could save 19 million years of life by 2030, and up to £12.6 billion every year.
Back in 2018 the ASI claimed that switching to vaping could save one million years of life (an interesting concept that plays into the modern cult of longevity, and a nice round figure to boot).
In 2002 that became two million years of life. Now it’s 19 million. What next - 25, 50, one BILLION?
Frankly, this type of estimate is embarrassing, not just because it almost certainly bears no relation to reality, but because it is so clearly designed to generate a cheap headline.
The anti-smoking industry plays this game all the time. According to ASH last week, new estimates show that smoking costs society in England £43.7 billion a year, an estimate that has risen from £13 billion, then £17 billion, in less than a decade.
It’s nonsense, and the ASI’s calculations are nonsense too.
I have known Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler, co-founders of the ASI, for 45 years, and on a personal level I have much to be grateful to them for.
I have no such allegiance to the younger generation of free marketeers, some of whom are happy to jump on the anti-smoking bandwagon if it suits their agenda.
The latest ASI paper even quotes research by ASH, but that’s not surprising because their modus operandi seems much the same - think of a number then double or quadruple it.
Then, when the media loses interest, go for broke with an even bigger number, a figure so fantastical that it doesn’t just jump the shark, it uses a pole vault to do so.
As I wrote in 2018, I agree that vaping has been a free market success story. I said it again (for the umpteenth time) a few weeks ago, but to claim that switching to vapes can save one, two or 19 million years of life is absurd.
I appreciate that the the aim of the ASI paper is to highlight the counter-productive effects of creeping prohibition, including the ban on disposable vapes, but employing such a broad guesstimate doesn’t reflect well on the credibility of the research.
It’s true of course that the biggest argument in favour of switching to vapes is the probability that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking. But that argument is looking less and less sustainable - not because it isn’t true but because the media, and therefore public opinion, is moving in the opposite direction.
A few days ago, for example, it was reported that Paul Danan, the Hollyoaks star, dies aged 46 after ‘obsessive vaping’ habit (Telegraph).
This led to a flurry of articles including The risks of vaping and how to quit (Telegraph), The truth about vaping - and real dangers you can't ignore (inews), and The dangerous impact vaping can have on your lungs (Metro).
Yesterday the Blackpool Gazette ran a story with the headline, ‘Blackpool dad, 20, in coma for two weeks with collapsed lung after continuous vaping’, and this morning it was reported that ‘Vape experts reveal how to get rid of 'vaper's tongue' as doctor issues warning about long-term side effect’.
I’m as sceptical as anyone about the veracity of these reports, but they represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the tsunami of stories and studies that are going to be published over the next decade or so highlighting the alleged risks of vaping.
We’ve seen plenty of evidence of this already but, believe me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Public health campaigners and politicians have a template - otherwise known as the tobacco playbook - and they will follow it ruthlessly en route to prohibiting, if possible, all recreational nicotine products. It’s just a matter of time.
Part of that playbook is to commission studies that will highlight and exaggerate each and every potential risk to demonise and denormalise both the product and the user. Those are the rules of their game and anyone who plays along in a vain attempt to win their support for a less harmful nicotine product is going to get chewed up and spat out.
As I have said ad nauseum for many years, arguing that vaping is ‘safer’ than smoking will only help for a limited period. In the longer term the public health goal is to stop consumers using any product that contains nicotine (cigarettes, vapes, pouches and so on).
The health argument in favour of vaping will only go so far because as soon as the public decides that vaping has its own significant health risks (and we’re not far off that perception) the game is up, regardless of the actual evidence.
We saw it with secondhand smoke. To this day the evidence that passive smoking is a serious health risk to non-smokers is still questionable but, following decades of reports and propaganda, the public (by and large) accepts what they have read or been told.
The same will undoubtedly happen with vaping and there’s almost nothing the pro-vaping lobby can do about it. The more they play the prohibitionists’ game and bang on about the ‘millions of years’ lost to smoking, the more they are condemning vaping to a similar fate.
The health risks of vaping may be significantly less than the risks of smoking, but focussing on health as the number one argument for vaping (whilst ignoring the most fundamental argument of all - an adult’s right to choose, regardless of the risks) leaves vaping extremely vulnerable.
If switching to vaping could save 19 million years of life by 2030, how many years of life could be saved if people quit smoking and vaping by 2050?
My estimate, which I have just calculated on the back of a fag packet, is 100 million. Now prove me wrong.
See: Safer Alternatives to Cigarettes Could Save 19 Million Years of Life and Billions of Pounds by 2030 (ASI, January 2025)
See also: ‘Healthier, happier, freer’ (Taking Liberties, June 2018) and Number crunching (April 2022), in which I comment on previous ASI papers in this field.
Update: The ASI also promotes its new paper by quoting Labour MP Mary Glindon:
“The Government is right to strengthen its commitment to a Smoke-Free 2030 …”
Er, why is the Government right to strengthen its commitment to a Smoke-Free 2030? How very (neo) liberal of you!
