The urgency of raising awareness on World Vape Day—May 30—has increased since I wrote about it in 2024. The time when it was simply a day of celebration for people who had quit smoking is long gone. The past year has heightened the need to combat rampant misinformation and the spread of policies that favor deadly cigarettes over safer alternatives.
The World Health Organization ended 2024 by tweeting, “WHO continues to fight against misinformation and disinformation—a great challenge to global health. Governments, health agencies, and partners need to safeguard public trust by responding to misinformation and disinformation directly and effectively.”
But the WHO constantly deploys misinformation as it continues its anti-vape campaign, refusing to embrace harm reduction for the world’s leading cause of preventable death despite doing so for other forms of drug use.
WHO entities have falsely claimed that vaping causes seizures, isn’t safer than smoking tobacco, is “designed to kill,” and is a “gateway” to smoking.
On May 31, the day after World Vape Day, the WHO will spearhead World No Tobacco Day—an event that now targets all nicotine use, including the safer forms that replace cigarettes.
WHO entities have falsely claimed that vaping causes seizures, isn’t safer than smoking tobacco, is “designed to kill,” and is a “gateway” to smoking.
Earlier in May, a tweet by WHO Europe that sounded like a preference for young people to smoke instead of vape was deleted—a year after receiving a Community Note.
As those of us in the nicotine space turn our attention towards November’s COP11— the WHO’s next meeting on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, with global policy implications—I think about the people who use nicotine and are banned from attending and denied a voice. I think about how stigmatized they are by the WHO and others in tobacco control.
The WHO isn’t the only source of the floods of misinformation that harm reduction advocates try to stem. Misinformation is widely disseminated by leading health officials, government agencies, lawmakers, public health organizations, journalists, concerned citizens, and individuals on social media, as well as by some universities and scientists.
Some scientists are prematurely releasing what they think their findings will be, leading to scaremongering headlines that fuel more misperceptions.
Publishing research should be a meticulous process with many checks, culminating in peer review. But some scientists, perhaps hungry for publicity, are prematurely releasing what they think their findings will be, leading to scaremongering headlines that fuel more misperceptions about vaping. In 2024, for instance, one unpublished study led to loud media claims that vaping causes heart failure. Another unpublished study led to widespread news stories saying that vaping causes heart disease, organ failure and dementia.
The myth that vaping causes “popcorn lung” was debunked 10 years ago, yet advocates had another busy year correcting that misperception. This past year also saw false claims that vaping is a leading cause of cancer, with a claim that dual use of cigarettes and vapes can quadruple lung cancer risk.
Since the last World Vape Day, there has also been a proliferation of scary stories about the chemicals found in vapor products, equating them to bug spray, weed killer or antifreeze.
While the evidence is clear that vaping helps many people stop smoking, the public is repeatedly told it doesn’t. Some organizations, such as the American Lung Association, have gone as far as claiming that switching to vaping isn’t quitting smoking.
In the past year, some countries, like Vietnam and Kazakhstan, banned vapes, while Mexico wrote its vape ban into its constitution.
Even though you can’t smoke a vape because there’s no combustion, some groups call vaping smoking. The Health Center at Hudson Yards, which calls vaping the “latest smoking trend,” is one of many examples. They, like many others, falsely claim that youth vaping is going up in the United States; in fact, youth vaping is at its lowest levels in a decade.
None of them are celebrating the public health win of record-low rates of youth smoking.
Being misled about the relative risks of vaping and smoking is not the only barrier consumers face. Onerous policies can prevent people from quitting smoking or push them to a riskier, unregulated vape market. Comparing New Zealand with Australia, for instance, shows the stark difference in outcomes arising from pro- and anti-vape policy landscapes.
In the past year, some countries, like Vietnam and Kazakhstan, banned vapes, while Mexico wrote its vape ban into its constitution. Other countries, like Ireland, are raising taxes on vapes, while France and Belgium have banned disposable vapes and the United Kingdom will do so from June 1.
European countries are exploring banning vaping in outdoor public spaces. Slovenia and Latvia banned flavored vapes, while US advocates suffered disappointment at the Supreme Court in their bid to guarantee availability of flavors on which many adults rely to quit smoking. In Singapore, where vaping is illegal, a person caught vaping can be fined up to $2,000.
What’s extraordinary in this light is that the tobacco harm reduction movement is still gaining momentum.
What’s extraordinary in this light is that the tobacco harm reduction movement is still gaining momentum. One simple reason is that consumers are leading the way. People are seeing through misinformation or circumventing bad regulations in order to switch away from smoking in the tens of millions.
And despite the obstacles, advocates for vaping and other safer nicotine products are not backing down. They are a testament to the power of determination—born of a fundamental belief in the human right to access tools that help people quit smoking.
On a global scale, vaping advocates of all political persuasions are united in their common mission. Their efforts have led to significant victories, defeating measures such as flavor bans, punitive taxes, registry bills, and outright vape bans at all levels of government.
In Thailand, amid a ban on vape sales and law enforcement raids, a government committee that includes consumers was established to provide policy recommendations. Advocates in Panama initiated a lawsuit to have the ban on vapes declared unconstitutional—and won. Recently, advocates in Costa Rica halted a decree that would have banned all tobacco harm reduction products.
Chile enacted balanced regulations that define vapes independently, instead of conflating them with combustible tobacco. Peru went from an unregulated vape market to a regulated one. Brazil clarified the language of its vape ban, making clear that possession for personal use is not a crime.
While many of these victories were only partial, all were steps in the right direction. The lesson is that in the fight for vaping rights, activism matters. When consumers come together to advocate for their rights and health, they can have a powerful influence on policy and effect positive change.
Countless more battles lie ahead. But let’s take these successes as a beacon of hope—and amplify and replicate them for all we’re worth on World Vape Day and beyond.
Photograph (cropped) by Richard R. Schünemann via Unsplash
