At the end of June 2022, the French press reported erroneous information about vaping. At the origin, a typo in the AFP translation confusing vape and heated tobacco. A look back at this episode and the necessary distinction between vape and heated tobacco.
The AFP dispatch was picked up by most of the French media: the European Commission would like to ban flavoring in electronic cigarettes in order to combat smoking.
Very surprised by this announcement, we reread the original statement, in English, by Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health:
"By removing flavoured heated tobacco from the market we are taking yet another step towards realising our vision under Europe's Beating Cancer Plan to create a "Tobacco Free Generation" with less than 5% of the population using tobacco by 2040"
The Commissioner was indeed talking about banning flavors, but for heated tobacco products and not for vaping. This hasty translation reveals a common misconception: the confusion between heated tobacco and vaping.
What are the differences between heated tobacco and vaping?
Smoked tobacco is known to kill half its users prematurely. Heated tobacco, like vaping, offers smokers a less harmful alternative. The key question, however, is how to measure the harmfulness of each of these two processes, firstly in relation to smoked tobacco, but also in relation to each other.
In 2020, the Institut Pasteur presented the first study, available here. Researchers compared toxicity levels between cigarettes, heated tobacco and vaping. Funded by the French National Cancer Institute, the study's conclusion is clear:
"heated tobacco] might be less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, but [is] much more harmful than vaping".
So, when it comes to smoking cessation, vaping drastically reduces the risks compared with heated tobacco.
Two distinct products from two opposing industries
Heated tobacco is a product designed by the tobacco industry. Although less harmful than cigarettes, vaping is deliberately blurred by the use of similar-looking products and vaping codes, giving the impression of comparable risk reduction.
In contrast, the vaping industry, more than 80% of which is independent of the tobacco industry in France, is a disruptive innovation that has turned smoking cessation practices on their head. Unlike heated tobacco, vapotage is clearly different from a cigarette: no combustion, smoke is replaced by an aerosol, tobacco is replaced by e-liquids... Vapotage has been designed by an industry with no connection to tobacco to help smokers escape the smoking trap.