Most of the studies are from researchers who are actively looking for risks and who write up their work in a way that emphasises the “potential” harm. They generally fail to provide adequate context by referring to typical readings among active vapers, let alone active smokers, and they rarely refer to the safe thresholds of the substances they are examining (the 2021 study by Amalia et al is one of very few exceptions). That is because the levels recorded are generally considered safe by regulators in workplaces and outdoors (which is where the regulations tend to be applied). Unable to show that the measurements are unsafe or abnormal, the researchers focus instead on an increase in one substance - usually cotinine - and imply that any increase above the baseline must be hazardous.
It should be noted that these are the studies mentioned by organisations such as the WHO who want vaping banned indoors. Weak as it is, they presumably think that it is the best evidence to support their position, but other evidence is available. For example, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sampled the air in a vape shop (where e-cigarette use was obviously heavy in a confined space) it found that all chemicals in the air were below the occupational exposure limit. It expressed concerns about detectable levels of two chemicals (diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione), but both of these are banned for use in e-cigarette fluids in the UK (and EU).
Similar studies have found that even in very high exposure conditions in a small, non-ventilated vape shop, nicotine concentrations in the air were undetectable and those chemicals that were detectable were at very low (and legal) levels.
A systematic review of the evidence found “no evidence of potential for exposures of e-cigarette users to contaminants that are associated with risk to health at a level that would warrant attention if it were an involuntary workplace exposures” and “no evidence that vaping produces inhalable exposures to contaminants of the aerosol that would warrant health concerns by the standards that are used to ensure safety of workplaces.” And that is to the users of e-cigarettes! “Exposures of bystanders are likely to be orders of magnitude less, and thus pose no apparent concern.”
Public Health England said in 2016 that “there is no evidence of harm to bystanders from exposure to e-cigarette vapour and the risks to their health are likely to be extremely low.” They also said that “e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not routinely be included in the requirements of an organisation’s smokefree policy”. Why? Because there is no risk to bystanders and vaping bans discourage smoking cessation.
As Prof Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) says:
“While health risks of e-cigarettes to vapers themselves have been estimated at up to 5% of health risks of smoking, health risks to bystanders are most likely reduced by a much bigger margin, and most likely altogether. This is because e-cigarettes release no chemicals into the environment themselves, only what users exhale, and such exhalation has so far not been shown to generate any toxicants at levels that could conceivably affect the health of bystanders.”
There has been a concerted effort by anti-vaping academics to find evidence that ‘secondhand vapour’ is harmful to bystanders. Despite using a variety of methods, they have come up empty-handed, with the partial exception of a few studies that have looked at air quality in unrealistic laboratory conditions. The levels of chemicals measured in the atmosphere and in the bodies of people ‘exposed’ to vaping in everyday situations are not only vastly lower when compared to tobacco smoke, but are lower when compared to everyday activities such as cooking and are consistently below the safe level for indoor and outdoor air quality.
Wednesday, 11 March 2026
Secondhand vaping: the studies
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Chris Whitty vs fat jabs
Speaking at the Medical Journalists’ Association annual lecture last week, the Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty took at pop at “fat jabs” such as Mounjaro and Ozempic. Thrashing away at a strawman of his own construction, he asked: “Does anyone in this group believe that the correct answer is to allow obesity to rise because of pretty aggressive marketing of obesogenic foods to children and then stick them on GLP-1 agonists at the age of 18?”
“Just relying on the drugs seems to me the wrong answer,” he said. To which we might ask, who is just relying on the drugs? Not the public, most of whom manage to avoid “living with obesity” by controlling their appetite and doing a spot of exercise, and certainly not the politicians, who have saddled Britain with the most extensive set of anti-obesity policies anywhere in the world.
Thursday, 5 March 2026
People are different. Get used to it.
Most social scientists pay lip service to the old adage about correlation not equalling causation, but the temptation to find a deeper meaning in statistical relationships can be hard to resist. In Australia, which is becoming a centre of excellence for human stupidity, an anti-vaping program was recently launched on the basis that: “Studies have shown that engaging in unsafe sex, other substance abuse, drink driving, texting while driving and driving without a seatbelt are associated with increased e-cigarette use among youth”. I dare say they are, but a campaign to reduce unsafe sex by clamping down on e-cigarettes (which, incidentally, are already illegal in Australia) is as doomed to failure as a campaign to reduce drownings by clamping down on ice cream sales.
Tuesday, 3 March 2026
On the Matt Forde podcast
It was my great pleasure to appear on Matt Forde's Political Party podcast last week. You can listen to it here. Here's his blurb for it...
What is lifestyle economics and why does it matter?
The IEA's Christopher Snowdon is a fun-loving political thinker and explains his opposition to puritanism, why we should have more freedom and what that would mean for our policies on smoking, alcohol, gambling and the very existence of the NHS.
Also... what are ultra-processed foods and are they necessarily bad?
Monday, 2 March 2026
Britain's black market in tobacco is too big to ignore
Figures published last week show that legal tobacco sales fell by 52% in the United Kingdom between 2021 and 2025. The volume of manufactured cigarettes sold dropped by 46%, from 23.4 billion sticks to 12.6 billion sticks, while the volume of rolling tobacco fell by 59%, from 8.6 million kilograms to 3.6 million kilograms.
The decline in legal rolling tobacco sales is particularly significant because loose tobacco has been subject to the heaviest tax rises in recent years, with the duty rate doubling since 2020. Rolling tobacco is often the last resort for low income smokers before they turn to the black market.
Converting kilograms of rolling tobacco into sticks, we find that a total of 19.8 billion cigarettes were sold legally in the UK in 2025, less than half the figure recorded in 2021 (40.6 billion).1 This decline is far greater than any estimate of the decline in the smoking rate. These estimates vary. According to the Opinion & Lifestyle Survey, the smoking rate among people aged 16 or older in Great Britain fell from 12.7% to 9.1% between 2021 and 2024. According to the Annual Population Survey, the rate among people aged 18 or older in the United Kingdom fell from 12.3% to 10.5% in the same period. Neither survey has an estimate for 2025 yet, but the monthly Smoking Toolkit Study suggests that the rate of daily cigarette smoking in England was 10.6% in 2025, only modestly less than in 2021 when the rate was 11.4%.
If the Smoking Toolkit Study is correct then overall tobacco consumption has barely changed since 2021 and it is a mathematical certainty that at least 50% of the market is illicit. If the other estimates are correct, the illicit share is still much larger than the official estimate of 13% from HMRC.
I may return to the question of why estimates of smoking prevalence are so different and why HMRC's estimate is so wrong in the future. For now, read my analysis of the latest data on the IEA Insider Substack.
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Restless people
The BBC has been unearthing cases of people behaving unusually after taking a drug for Restless Legs Syndrome. Since reporting the story of one woman who “began leaving her house in the early hours of the morning to cruise for sex” and would “flash her chest at any man she could find” after taking Ropinirole, the Beeb has received messages from hundreds from people who claim to have suddenly developed a taste for reckless hedonism after being prescribed the medication.
“I think I’m obsessed with sex,” says Michael (not his real name), whom the BBC says has “now slept with about 20 men and women, despite being married. Previously, he never cheated on his wife or had any homosexual encounters”. Other alleged victims of the drug say that they lost tens of thousands of pounds on gambling (“at the time I didn’t know it was no fault of my own”) and on shopping (“I knew that the behaviour wasn’t me, but I couldn’t control it”). One man “felt compelled to go on three-day long fishing trips every single week” and “found himself shopping compulsively for clothes, despite never previously having any interest in fashion”.
Read more about this odd phenomenon at The Critic.
Tuesday, 24 February 2026
Fight the vaping ban
The New Nicotine Alliance has produced a simple, accurate and easy-to-read summary of why the proposed vaping ban is an appalling idea. You can read it on a webpage or as a PDF.
Please take a few moments to complete the official consultation by visiting the government website here and sharing your views. When you fill out the form, you might find it helpful to focus on how vaping has helped you or others stay away from combustible tobacco. Do not be put off by questions which ask for new evidence, your lived experience is evidence in its own right, so please feel free to tell your stories.
You can also mention that current scientific evidence shows no material harm to bystanders, as explained in our briefing.
Your contribution does not need to be long or overly technical to be effective. It simply needs to be an honest reflection of why a public ban would be counterproductive to health goals. By speaking up now, we can help protect the progress the UK has made in reducing smoking rates. Thank you for your continued support and for taking the time to make your voice count in this important discussion.