Are we on the brink of The Vapour Revolution?
The answer is a resounding “yes,” according to a new Reason Foundation working paper of the same name. After years of improvement and adoption, the relatively new technology of e-cigarettes and vaporizers is set to improve global health drastically over the next few decades. That is, so long as the World Health Organization — and other regulatory health bodies around the world — don’t get their way.
Co-authored by Julian Morris, vice president of research at Reason Foundation, and Dr. Amir Ullah Khan, a noted Indian economist, the paper highlights how innovation and competition in a relatively unregulated market has led to the development of vapes that are more effective, safer, and less costly. Such innovation has been far more rapid where vape products are regulated as consumer products than where they are regulated more heavily (in a similar manner to cigarettes and other tobacco products).
In these areas, vape products are attracting millions of smokers to switch from cigarettes. Considered 95 percent safer than smoking, vaping enables smokers to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives.
The paper concludes that: “If product quality and diversity continue to increase, and costs continue to fall, within 20 years vaping could cut smoking rates by 50 percent or more. In 30 years, vaping might eliminate smoking altogether. If that were to happen, it would effectively save most of the billion lives — and perhaps eight of the 10 billion life-years — that might otherwise be lost to smoking.”
The authors warn, however, that continued innovation and these massive health benefits may be thwarted by regulations, especially those promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO plays a key role providing guidance to countries on tobacco control policies with its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global treaty. The body has previously been hostile to the potential for vaping to reduce the harm of nicotine addiction, instead favoring projects aimed at getting smokers to quit entirely.
When WHO hosts the seventh conference of the parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Delhi this November, Morris and Khan say WHO should abandon this so-called ‘quit or die’ approach and embrace the potential of vape technology and innovation to reduce smoking and improve health outcomes. “The WHO’s FCTC should change its approach to vape products, recognizing their life-saving potential,” said Julian Morris, co-author of the report.
Students For Liberty couldn’t agree more. It’s time for policymakers to give up the moralizing and fear-mongering in favor of fact-based harm-reduction — a point we’ve driven home with recent activism against plain-packaging in Canada and by speaking out against some of the FCTC’s more draconian anti-tobacco measures.