MP Mary Glindon column: Vapes are a healthier option

It’s a big issue for the individual and for society as a whole, not least the NHS.

I am not a smoker, but know why people take it up and how many want to quit but cannot.

I have been working with MPs across the political spectrum to highlight the benefits that vapes offer smokers.

Public Health England concluded that vapes are 95% less harmful than combustible tobacco and can help smokers quit smoking. There are now around 2.5 million ex-smokers in the UK thanks to vapes.

I support the government’s commitment to vaping as a way of achieving ambitions for a smoke-free future by 2030.

We must defend the nation’s public health from those around the world who would try and force the UK to chart a different and more harmful course.

The World Health Organisation is rabidly anti-vaping, although it could help one billion smokers around the world to stop. We should be sceptical about their plans.

We also need further independent research, as suggested by Public Health England in 2018, into heat-not-burn products that may be considerably less harmful than cigarettes. That hasn’t happened yet.

Vaping and maybe heat-not-burn products can do the job of curbing clearly dangerous cigarettes, and that would be an advance.

Of course, in an ideal world people would stamp out smoking altogether. But we cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.