Is Vaping Bad For You?

Today, the facts and figures surrounding the amount of Adult users of E-Cigarettes in the UK sit at the highest it’s ever been. And in no coincidence, the number of adult smokers in the UK is declining down steadily, and it’s currently at the lowest amount it’s ever been.

E-Cigarettes have been around on the market in the UK for almost 10 years, and technology has certainly advanced from when the first E-Cigarette was released to what is being released today! Awareness of them has also increased from what it used to be, but also scepticism from many has also reared it’s head.

In this blog, I’m going to take a look at the facts to see if I can answer the question that remains on people’s lips and that’s “Is Vaping Bad For You?” Let’s delve into it and get an answer to this question and give some clarity over the things that have been published about vaping that just may not necessarily true.

Is Vaping Bad For You?

Let’s just get straight to the point of this article and give my honest answer to this question, and then we can unravel it all below.

In my opinion, no, Vaping is not bad for you. Despite what all the negative publications and press associated with Vaping, Vaping actually has far more positive attributes to it than negative which I will go over in this blog.

“Vaping is 95% Safer Than Smoking“

The quote above isn’t my words, they are the words of Public Health England said by them way back in 2016.

For a statement this bold and strong, from a governing body as big as Public Health England, was a huge step forward for Vaping and this is something that is commonly bought up in discussion by pro-vaping experts (myself included in past blogs)

This statement was then further lamented last year when a report conducted by Cochrane, commissioned by PHE, was released full to the brim of facts and figures showing the positive effects Vaping can have on people, most notably smokers looking to quit cigarettes for good.

If Vaping was bad for you like what many believe, would a governing body like Public Health England really be making statements like this? The fact they could not give it the full 100% is because of the lack of long term research on Vaping due to it not actually being around long enough to qualify for the criteria’s of the research.

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Using Nicotine Replacement Therapy When Quitting Smoking

So, you’ve probably worked it out by now, but if the amount of adult users of E-Cigarettes has gone up, and the amount of adult smokers has gone down, it’s pretty obvious that people are quitting smoking and turning to using E-Cigarettes instead of smoking traditional cigarettes.

When you decide to quit smoking, it’s always strongly advised to use a form of Nicotine Replacement Therapy when you’re in the process of quitting. Nicotine Replacement Therapy, or NRT for short, is the name given to the things used by people when quitting smoking.

When you smoke, you will unknowingly form an addiction and even a dependency on Nicotine that you get from the cigarettes. Nicotine addiction is one of the hardest things for a person to overcome but it is not impossible, providing you have the right tools to do it!

Which is why NRT is really important to utilise during this process, as your body would go into “nicotine withdrawal” mode if you suddenly just stopped and went cold turkey and these symptoms associated with withdrawals are not pleasant in the slightest, so it’s absolutely imperative you do what you can to avoid these setting in.

“Traditional” methods of NRT have been around for a long time, and have been prescribed by GPs to patients seeking help and advice to quit smoking. Things like Nicotine Patches, Nicotine Gum, Sprays and Lozenges are commonly pushed forward for people to try, and they release a small dose of Nicotine in to the body in varying speeds, patches giving off a slower release and the others giving somewhat of an instant release. But the new kid on the block that’s proving popular is the trusty E-Cigarette!

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Vaping Is Becoming The Most Effective Form Of Nicotine Replacement Therapy

E-Cigarettes are not available on prescription like what the above mentioned forms of NRT are, but this still isn’t stopping local Stop Smoking Services as well as GP’s from suggesting the use of E-Cigarettes by people who are looking to quit smoking.

Studies by the University of Oxford, on behalf of Cochrane, were carried out using case studies who were looking to quit smoking. They were split into 5 different groups, with one group using E-Cigarettes with nicotine containing vape juice, one group using E-Cigarettes with no nicotine vape juice, one group using traditional methods of NRT such as Patches or Gum, one group using tablet medication (that contains no nicotine) and the final group receiving no support at all when stopping smoking, and this was done over a 6 month time span.

It comes as absolutely no surprise to me, that the group who used E-Cigarettes with vape juice that contained Nicotine were the most successful in their quitting efforts and would likely continue to abstain from smoking past this testing period. But also the group who used E-Cigarettes with zero nicotine vape juice also are more likely to be more successful than those using the traditional forms of NRT or receiving no support at all. 8-12 every 100 people using E-Cigarettes are likely to be successful, while only 6 of every 100 would likely be successful using traditional NRT methods.

So this is the first big win for Vaping in the argument of is vaping bad for you, because if it is bad for you, why is it so effective to help people quit smoking? And the bigger argument is, that if vaping really was bad for you, would GPs and Stop Smoking Services (that are run by health care professionals) really be promoting the use of E-Cigarettes to their patients?

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Nicotine Is Not Harmful

The most misunderstood belief by so many people when discussing smoking is that Nicotine is one of the harmful chemicals that are emitted in cigarette smoke. A lit cigarette emits over 6000 different chemicals in the smoke, with at least 70 or more of them being so toxic they’re actually proven to cause cancer. But guess what? NICOTINE IS NOT ONE OF THEM!!

Tar and Carbon Monoxide are the two primary perpetrators when it comes to the toxic chemicals that are found in cigarette smoke, and these are what can cause deadly diseases like heart disease, lung disease, and even cancer in various different forms.

There has not been any scientifically proven evidence to show that Nicotine is the cause of any of these deadly diseases, nor that it can actually cause harm to a person either. And I highly doubt there ever will be anything to come out to show that Nicotine is harmful.

The NHS website actually validates this point I’m making here. You can check out the page and read for yourself, but there’s some firm validation of the fact that Nicotine isn’t harmful sandwiched between a lot of positive affirmations about the subject of Vaping and how it can help people quit smoking.

If Nicotine and Vaping was bad for you, would GP’s and the actual NHS be promoting the use of these things to quit smoking? Don’t think they would!

E-Liquid Doesn’t Contain Harmful Chemicals

The Tobacco Products Directive. You might have heard of this if you’re already in the Vaping world, but you also may not have had of it, even if you are. TPD as it’s more commonly known as is a set of regulations that was introduced to the UK in 2016 to regulate the E-Cigarette market and adhering to the Government’s guidelines.

It’s comprised of numerous different points relating to vaping, including;

• Vape Tanks must not exceed 2ml capacity
• Bottles of vape juice containing nicotine must only be sold in 10ml bottles
• The maximum nicotine strength must not exceed 20mg in vape juice
• Ban certain ingredients including sweeteners, colourings, caffeine and taurine

And it’s the bottom point that we are going to focus on for this section. All vape juices made here in the UK must undergo compliance testing and not include any banned substances or chemicals that are listed within the TPD guidelines. The regulations are strict for a reason, and if vape juice manufacturers do not abide by these regulations, then the products will not make it to shelves as they’re forbidden from sale.

All of this is relevant to something which is STILL bought up to this day, and that is that “Vaping can cause Popcorn Lung”

Popcorn Lung was the nickname given to a lung disease that was found to be caused by a sweetener used to sweeten popcorn and give it a “buttery” taste. Workers in an actual Popcorn factory started suffering from this, and it was found that Diacetyl was the culprit for causing this, and low and behold, some vape juices around this period had it included, most notably buttered popcorn flavoured vape juice.

Diacetyl is one of the banned chemicals on the list relating to TPD, and it cannot be included in any vape juices sold in the UK as it won’t pass the regulatory checks. But still, to this day, people are still saying vaping is bad for you and will give you popcorn lung. But it won’t, because the culprit chemical isn’t allowed to be included in vape juice recipes!

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Safety & Compliance Are Our Priority

Here at Vape69, we certainly don’t believe that Vaping is bad for you. We believe that Vaping is the most effective form of Nicotine Replacement Therapy, and our aim is to make Vaping as affordable as possible to anyone and everyone, and we do this by offering the cheapest vape juice in the UK.

But the common belief when people hear “cheap price” is that it’s going to be “cheap vape juice” but this couldn’t be further from the truth! We only use the highest quality ingredients in all of our vape juice recipes, and in turn the end result is the creation of high quality, premium vape juices at low prices!

All of our operations are ran from under one roof at our state of the art facilities based in Manchester, England. And because we don’t involve any other third parties in our processes, this means our costs remain low so we can reflect this in our prices for our customers to benefit from.

Every single ingredient that passes through our doors is rigorously tested prior to being used in our vape juices, and then the final product also goes through the same testing as well as compliance checks to ensure everything meets the necessary regulations.

Just some of the tests we perform include –

• Nicotine Testing
• Emissions Testing
• Refractive Index & Density

In addition, we pride ourselves on being able to ensure all our flavours are free from any CMRs (carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic substances) and we can verify this through our industry-standard GC systems.

As the header says, safety and compliance is our top priority, and everything we produce here at Vape69 is 100% safe to vape, and doesn’t include anything it shouldn’t, and the best thing? It’s only 69p a bottle!

Conclusion

And now we reach the conclusion of this article, and I hope it has been informative to you if you yourself were questioning if vaping is bad for you.

The fact that health care professionals like GPs and Stop Smoking Services are pushing people towards using E-Cigarettes as a form of Nicotine Replacement Therapy is the kind of backing that Vaping needs. This is further backed by NHS website as well as Cancer Research UK giving their backing for people opting to vape than smoke.

I personally don’t think Vaping is bad for you, and I’m under no illusion that the false statements and publications will continue to come thick and fast to put people off the prospect of converting to using E-Cigarettes, but just look at the proof I’ve shown in this article that counters these beliefs, and take a deeper dive into the research of things to make your own mind up.