95% less risk with vaping ! Where does this come from ?

This is a figure that we often hear. Vaping is said to be 95% less risky than smoking. But where does this number come from? To understand it, we have to go back to 2015, when a report commissioned by Public Health England was published.

The UK Health Service, a country at the forefront of tobacco control, commissioned a team of independent experts to assess the risks associated with vaping. Their conclusions were : on the one hand, "the constituents of cigarette smoke that threaten health - including carcinogens - are either absent in e-cigarette vapour or, if present, are well below 5% (most often below 1%)"; on the other hand, "the main chemicals present in e-cigarettes have not been associated with any serious risk".

The authors of the report, Professors Ann McNeill and Peter Hajek, draw on this data to make an encouraging finding : "Based on the evidence currently available, there is no doubt that smokers who switch to vaping significantly reduce their health risks. "