Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential (a) respiratory, (b) cardiovascular and (b) cancer risks arising from vaping.

The Department has commissioned and published a series of evidence reviews on vaping, with the final report of the series published in September 2022.

It found that in the short and medium term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, but that vaping is not risk-free, particularly for people who have never smoked.

In summary, the 2022 review concluded that switching to vaping is likely to slow down respiratory disease development, compared to smoking. Using vaping products leads to a substantial reduction in biomarkers of toxicant exposure affecting cardiovascular disease, and vaping generally leads to lower exposure to many of the carcinogens responsible for the considerable health risks of smoking associated with cancer.