The act of inhaling the vapor produced by an e-cigarette or personal vaporizer. E-cigarettes are portable battery-powered devices that vaporize e-liquid – a mix of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, water-based flavorings, and optional nicotine.Vaping’s a hot topic these days. It’s no wonder why people want to know what it is. It has ignited one of the biggest debates in public health history and has found its way into just about every newspaper and TV news show. There are at least 10 million Americans who vape currently, and more than two million of them no longer smoke cigarettes at all. Worldwide the number is harder to be sure about, but there are likely to be 30 million or more vapers, many of which stopped smoking because of it.

As the popularity of vaping has skyrocketed, smoking has declined more quickly than anyone could have imagined.

Who is vaping for?
Most vapers are former or current smokers — some are still trying to quit, and others use e-cigarettes to get the nicotine they like when it’s inconvenient to smoke. There are some vapers who have never smoked, but they represent a tiny percentage of the vaping population.

We know from survey data that as vaping has grown in recent years, smoking has declined to record lows. And despite the claims that vaping is a gateway to smoking for teens, youth smoking rates have fallen even more rapidly than adult rates since the advent of vaping.

Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University, says that “as vaping has become more popular among youth, it has displaced cigarette smoking and contributed towards the de-normalization of cigarette smoking.”

But no one is suggesting that kids should take up vaping! The fact is the vast majority of teenagers who use e-cigarettes are already smokers or have quit smoking. Among regular teen vapers, fewer than one percent are never-smokers.

When you see a story about teen vaping, look closely to see if the authors are measuring “ever use” or “last 30-day use.” Surveying teens about something they may have done once in the last 30 days, or once in their lives, doesn’t tell us anything about their regular habits. Teenagers experiment with things. They always have, and they always will. But the number of under-18’s who vape regularly is small indeed.

Vaping, vapers, and e-cigarettes
Some vapor products look like cigarettes (usually called “cigalikes”), and some are larger. Many people choose a cigalike first because they’re often found in the same stores where cigarettes are sold, they look familiar, and they have a fairly low initial cost.

The term electronic cigarette (or e-cigarette, or e-cig) doesn’t necessarily refer specifically to the small cigalikes, although some people use it that way. E-cigarette can refer to any vaping device. Other common names are personal vaporizer (sometimes shortened to PV), vape, or mod. The term mod originates from the early users who modified their primitive e-cigs to work better, or modifed other products (like flashlights and laser pointers) to work as vapes. Big or small, disposable or refillable, e-cigarettes do essentially the same thing.

Vaping means different things to different people. For smokers who have spent years desperately trying to find a way to quit cigarettes, becoming a vaper (one who vapes) can be a life-improving or even life-saving miracle. For some in public health — especially those vocal opponents of vaping in the tobacco control field — e-cigs are a threat to the status quo. For them, enjoying nicotine without health consequences (i.e. smoking) doesn’t fit neatly into their campaigns against the misunderstood alkaloid.

Vaping vs. smoking: it's no contest
Despite how vaping may look to non-smokers, smoking and vaping are vastly different. When you smoke a cigarette, you’re lighting dead plant material on fire and inhaling the smoke. Breathing smoke — any kind of smoke — is dangerous.

The products of combustion are devastating to the lungs and cardiovascular system. Thousands of chemicals and compounds are inhaled, including more than 70 that are known carcinogens. In addition to cancer risk, smoking can cause massive damage to the heart and circulatory system, leading to heart disease, and possibly causing heart attack and stroke. There is also damage to the lungs, which can cause emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

There may be some risks from vaping (which we have looked at in more detail before), but so far no evidence of serious health danger has emerged. Studying all the available scientific literature on vaping, the Royal College of Physicians concluded in 2016 that vaping is “unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.”

Most of the debate over vaping is rooted in a simple disagreement. Should we judge vaping by its unproven risks, or by its proven benefits? American public health officials are prone to looking at absolute risk as the yardstick. They’re worried there might be some health risk that will appear out of nowhere. British health groups, on the other hand, support the idea of harm reduction — offering users of dangerous products safer (but not necessarily absolutely safe) choices like nicotine replacement therapy.

About half of long-term smokers die prematurely from using cigarettes. The World Health Organization estimates that a billion people will die from smoking this century. Reducing or eliminating the damage caused by burning tobacco would not only save many lives, it would also allow billions of dollars that are now spent treating preventable smoking diseases to be directed elsewhere. Reducing smoking would save money as well as lives.