Considerations
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- Ministry of Health encourages smokers who want to use vaping products to quit smoking to seek the support of local stop smoking services.
- Vaping products are a less harmful way of delivering nicotine than conventional tobacco cigarettes.
- Expert opinion is that vaping products are much less harmful than smoking tobacco but not completely harmless.
- Toxicants have been found in vapor, but in general, at levels much lower than found in cigarette smoke or at levels that are unlikely to cause harm.
- When used as intended, vaping products pose no risk of nicotine poisoning to users. Short-term risks appear to no different than NRT, long-term quantification still unknown.
- Combining vaping with behavioural support is likely to have comparable success rate to stop-smoking medication.
- Stop smoking services should be ‘vaping friendly’, provide accurate information about benefits and risks, and advice about obtaining a suitable vaping product.
- Anyone who is switching from smoking to vaping should stop smoking tobacco as soon as possible.
- There is no international evidence that vaping products are undermining the long-term decline in cigarette smoking among adults and youth, and may in fact be contributing to it.
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