The EU Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) final opinion on e-cigarettes is a step backwards for vaping. Based on weak data, it ignores crucial scientific evidence, experience from consumers and the expert opinions received in the consultation period. There is a small silver lining we can see, but a lot of pressure had to be applied by scientists and consumers to even get there.

THE GOOD

Consumer and expert participation makes a difference. After the preliminary opinion of the SCHEER report was published back in September of last year, it received widespread criticism from scientists and vapers alike. Both these groups made their objections to the biased report quite clear during a public consultation period immediately following the release. You can find here a great overview from Clive Bates about the problems with the preliminary report. Even though they didn’t change much, it seems they listened to some of the submissions.

SCHEER downgrades evidence quality from strong to moderate for the following points:

• The overall weight of evidence for risks of long-term systemic effects on the cardiovascular system;
• The role of electronic cigarettes as a gateway to smoking/the initiation of smoking, particularly for young people;

In addition, they agree with us on flavours:

• To date, there is no specific data that specific flavourings used in the EU pose health risks for electronic cigarette users following repeated exposure.

It seems like action from scientists and consumers can make a difference and the louder and harder we push back, the harder it will be to ignore us.

THE BAD

Even though SCHEER downgraded the evidence on the gateway hypothesis, it is still quite ludicrous to label the evidence as moderate.

Vaping has clearly brought smoking rates down around the world. The correlation between the introduction and higher popularity of vaping and declining smoking rates suggests that vaping is an important factor in quitting smoking. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Report found that the smoking rate has decreased overall more rapidly since vaping became more prominent in the United States. The researchers concluded: “The inverse relationship between vaping and smoking was robust across different data sets for both youth and young adults and for current and more established smoking.” Moreover, the claim that non-smokers would get introduced en masse to smoking due to vaping seems not to be supported by data from the newest Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) UK report either. It states that “only 0.3% of never-smokers are current vapers (amounting to 2.9% of vapers), down from 0.8% in 2019”.

The conclusion the SCHEER report makes that there is only “weak evidence” for the support of electronic cigarettes’ effectiveness in helping smokers is even more ridiculous, in light of the massive amount of information they received from the consultation (which they chose to ignore) and defies the experience of millions of consumers. There is, in fact ZERO evidence that vaping does not help people stop smoking.

AND THE UGLY 

As much as the SCHEER committee needs to be criticized for this report, we must turn our attention also to the EU Commission. On the commission’s side some explanations are needed. Why did they explicitly give SCHEER the assignment to just look at the health effect of vaping, but leave out the comparison to smoking? Taking vaping out of the context does not make sense.

This makes as much sense as comparing the effects of a healthy diet with not eating at all, rather than eating an unhealthy diet.

Overall, it seems like the main objective has been forgotten: reducing the number of smokers and tackling smoking-induced illnesses. Vaping is not smoking and must not be treated the same. Regulation must be drafted in a way that encourages current smokers to switch. The EU needs to focus on practical solutions to reduce harm and this major point is missing from the SCHEER analysis. Vaping can help smokers quit, but this report ignores that and compares vaping to non-smoking. So it is unsurprising that the results don’t echo reality.