Are vapes seriously damaging to those aged 8 to 18?
We speak to Dr Julian Spinks on the 10 year study on The Kent Morning Show.
We speak to Dr Julian Spinks on the 10 year study on The Kent Morning Show.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well our health expert Dr. Julian Spinks joins us now. There he is. Julian, surely
00:07this is the research everyone has needed is it not? I think it's a fantastic news.
00:13Most of us now know cigarette smoking is dangerous and that came from research
00:18which did a similar thing following up in that case actually bus drivers over a
00:23number of years and they could see the difference. I have been on this program
00:27many times actually saying well we really don't know whether vapes are safe
00:31in the long term. We think they're safer than smoking but how dangerous they are
00:35or how safe they are is very difficult. Following things up over 10 years gives
00:41us a good idea of the situation and because we're most worried about
00:44children and teenagers taking up vaping that's the group we need to target and
00:49that's what this research does. But Julian we won't actually know for another 10 years.
00:56And that's the problem with these things. If you introduce something all the tests
01:01that tend to get done are over a few weeks or months but it's only when
01:05you're seeing things over a long period of time you can be much more
01:09certain about whether it's safe or not. And there isn't a way to shortcut this.
01:13We don't think there's animal models you can do which will show in a much
01:18shorter time the dangers. But we've got to start. If we don't start now in 10
01:22years time we'd be still not knowing whether it's safe or not.
01:26And how will that damage be measured? And how can that kind of compare to the damage we know is caused by smoking?
01:34Well I haven't seen the details of exactly how they're doing it but the things you can do, number one,
01:39is actually look and see how many people for example have asthma. The number of
01:44the people who are being studied who end up with a chest infection or being
01:47hospitalised. It may be that they can do lung function tests. That's actually
01:51measuring how well the lungs function. And of course you're following that up
01:55over the the 10 years, comparing it with people who don't vape. So you can see
02:01whether there is genuinely a difference. And with 100,000 there's enough to
02:04really be scientifically pretty certain that the result is genuine.
02:08When we go to the doctors a question we're asked is, do you drink, do you smoke, how
02:12often? I don't think I've ever been asked if I vape. Is that a question you're now
02:17asking? How do you factor that in? That is definitely coming in and if you look
02:23at the routine test that we do or questionnaire that we do when someone
02:27joins the practice now, it actually asks about vaping as well. So we're putting
02:31that in because we're then getting a measure of whether someone is nicotine
02:34addicted as well. Because we know people who vape heavily have a nasty habit of
02:39moving over to cigarettes. And that's something we learned in the United States
02:43and we really don't want that to happen. And I know there's lots of criticism
02:47around vapes outside of health. We were talking about littering and animals
02:51picking it up, that kind of thing. But in terms of the actual effect on health,
02:55have you seen anybody with sort of adverse effects from vaping? The only
03:02thing I've seen so far is people who've moved on to stronger and stronger vapes
03:06and are having very high levels of nicotine coming in and then they get
03:10shakes and insomnia and so on. I think it is too early to know whether you get
03:14lung damage over a period of time. The scientific papers give an occasional
03:18case of people who've developed lung disease, often linked to the cheap or
03:23illegal vapes where they have ingredients which aren't safe. But the
03:28reason we need this study is so that we can really be more confident talking to
03:31people about it. Okay, we've actually heard from Mike Cameron, he's the
03:36co-founder of Smoko, it's a vape shop in Tunbridge Wells. I think we can play a
03:40clip of an interview with him here to get that sort of side of the debate and
03:44we'll pick up after that. There's a growing misconception about e-cigarettes
03:49and vaping in the UK and a lot of that is perpetuated by the mainstream
03:55media and the headlines who are latching on to these stories about bad for
04:02kids, bad for the environment or this or that. I think it's very important to
04:06put things into a measured perspective because in a lot of these
04:12articles, no one's talking about cigarettes or the effect of cigarettes.
04:17They're only talking about vapes versus not vaping and I think it's always
04:22important to understand that the vapes are here to help adult smokers
04:27quit smoking. So if you're going to write a non-biased article as a journalist
04:31then you should report the other side of the coin. Why is this
04:36product here and what are the benefits or the positive effects of it?