Public education

Despite its immense success in supporting adult smokers to kick the habit and its undeniable role in securing a smokefree future, misperceptions about vaping are at an all-time high.

According to Action on Smoking and Health UK, half of all smokers in Great Britain wrongly and worryingly believe vaping is as or more harmful than smoking – which claims 78,000 lives every year in England alone.

And with a potential advertising ban on the horizon, as a part of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, it is feared misperceptions in the quitting tool could worsen and its effectiveness as a stop smoking tool could be jeopardised.

Experts suggest that mainstream media stories could be contributing significantly to the distrust and confusion around vaping.

There is an ongoing disconnect between scientific evidence on the relative harms of vaping compared with smoking and how these risks are communicated to the public…misperceptions about the risks of vaping vs. smoking are a health risk in and of themselves.

Why is public education so critical?

Freedom of Information data, provided by the Department of Health and Social Care, has revealed that under the previous government, only £4.88 million was spent on stop smoking campaigns over the past two financial years – amounting to an annual average spend of less than 50p per smoker.

This falls significantly short of recommendations included in the Khan Review, which called for £15 million per year in funding for a national mass media campaign which directs smokers to support and dismantles myths about vaping. The Khan Review also warned of worsening public misperceptions about vaping, yet no specific campaigns have been run to address this.

To support ambitions for a smokefree future, the Government must prioritise well-funded public education campaigns and allow the industry to communicate the facts about vaping as the most effective quitting tool available.

Hear from an expert

To further understand the importance of public education campaigns, and highlight the key role of vaping in eradicating the harms of smoking, we at the VApril hub sat down with expert Sairah Salim-Sartoni – a chartered health psychologist and award-winning stop smoking clinician with 20 years of experience within the smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction sector.