Source: Radio New Zealand
A teenager vaping an e-cigarette. 123RF
While vapes may cause cancer – as a recent Australian review of evidence concluded – they remain a far less dangerous vice than traditional cigarettes, a local anti-smoking lobby group says.
Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) looked at eight years of prior research between 2017 and 2025 – including human and animal studies, case reports and chemical analyses.
Lead author Bernard Stewart said it provided “by far the strongest evidence” vapes – like cigarettes – could cause lung and oral cancer. He said it could no longer be considered “safer than smoking”, urging a wider crackdown on black market products and more public awareness of the dangers.
But Ben Youdan, director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), worries the findings will promote the view that vaping is just as bad for you as smoking.
“There’s no question it does carry risk, and I think it doesn’t change the message that it’s much, much less harmful than smoking, but not completely risk-free, and that if you smoke, vaping is a very effective way to stop smoking and will substantially reduce your risk. None of that changes at all,” he told Morning Report on Thursday.
“But I think what the issue with this particular review is that it sort of makes a sweeping statement that ‘we found these things in vaping that may cause cancer’, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the levels that they are, whether they’re actually cancer-causing levels or what the dose exposure might be.”
For example, he said, the review noted some vapes will expose users to nicotine – but only about 2 percent of what a smoker would get, a “massive risk reduction” and not a cancer risk on its own.
The fear was studies like this – and the way they have been reported – will deter smokers from using vapes as a gateway to quitting altogether.
“We have really, really high quality evidence, much of which comes from New Zealand studies that vapes are very effective in helping people stop smoking. But we also have an increasing body of evidence that people believe vaping is as, if not more harmful than smoking, which is far from the truth.
“So there’s a real concern that when we have some quite alarmist studies that don’t face scrutiny like this coming out, that we might either encourage people to switch back to smoking or even to put them off using vaping as a stop-smoking act.”
Ben Youdan of ASH said there was no evidence that vapes were leading Kiwi youth towards smoking. 123rf
The researchers noted there was still no epidemiological link between using vapes and cancer, but proving cigarettes caused cancer took a century, and vapes had only been around for two decades.
Youdan said there was no evidence that vapes were leading Kiwi youth towards smoking, though a study last year suggested it could be slowing the move towards the country’s smokefree goal for Māori and Pasifika.
The latest Ministry of Health data showed smoking rates for both youth and adults had dropped markedly in the past 15 years.
Just 6.8 percent of adults and 3.2 percent of people aged 15-24 were daily users in the 2024/5 survey.
There was evidence however vaping amongst teenagers is now more popular than smoking was in 2011/2.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
