Vaping

Debate between Gareth Johnson and Gloria De Piero

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of vaping.

I was pleased to secure this debate, because I have been interested in the phenomenon of vaping for some time. There are now millions of people vaping in the UK and many of them are former smokers. This is an important issue because if many of the reports and studies carried out on vaping are correct, it has the potential to save thousands of lives in the UK, and millions worldwide. It therefore has to be worth looking at very carefully. We all know that smoking is bad for a person’s health—indeed, more than half of smokers will die from smoking.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate; he is making some excellent points. In my constituency in Nottinghamshire, there is a class dimension to this. Of those in managerial and professional occupations, 8% are still smoking cigarettes; that rises to 26% of those in routine and manual occupations in the Nottinghamshire population, so this is a social justice issue as well as a health issue. Vaping is much cheaper and safer, so it should not be taxed, and people should stop deterring it in public places. The hon. Gentleman is right: we have finally found a way to stop smoking. We should celebrate it, and I say that as somebody who has stopped smoking and now vapes.

[Gareth Johnson]

It is good to see some enthusiasm for this subject. The hon. Lady is absolutely correct: it tends to be more vulnerable people, if I can put it that way, who are affected by smoking, but smoking affects the whole of society. Almost everybody knows somebody who has died from smoking or has been seriously affected by the consequences. As she rightly says, we have potentially found what is almost a silver bullet that will allow us, at long last, to tackle the issue of smoking among those who want to stop.