Rugby MP Mark Pawsey, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on E-cigarettes, is challenging smokers to try switching to an e-cigarette for the national vaping awareness campaign “VApril.”
VApril is an education and awareness month aimed at encouraging Britain’s 7 million smokers to help break the habit by switching to an e-cigarette. According to research carried out by Cancer Research UK, vaping is far less harmful than smoking as e-cigarettes do not contain tar or tobacco, which are the leading causes of cancer from smoking.
Mark was joined on College Green in Parliament by Parliamentarians and Dr Christian Jessen, who is well known from his appearances on television, to help support the launch of VApril. The national campaign is being supported by the UK Vaping Industry Association, which is the country’s leading forum for supporting and promoting the vaping industry.
The event was also featured on the BBC’s flagship Daily Politics programme, where Mark and Dr Jessen spoke to journalist Greg Dawson about the aims of VApril and Mark’s work in Parliament to highlight the benefits of switching to vaping.
More information about the VApril challenge is available at: http://www.vapril.org/vapril-challenge/
Speaking after the launch, Mark commented:
“Vaping is now recognised as one of the best ways to quit smoking and therefore presents a major opportunity to make a significant and positive impact on the public health of the nation and as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for e-cigarettes I am keen to help increase awareness of the benefits. However, only one in 10 people currently understand the relative risk of vaping compared to smoking, as well as the significant savings that can be made by switching to an e-cigarette.”
Mark continued:
“Evidence recently published by Public Health England highlights that vaping is likely to be at least 95% less harmful than smoking and that there are substantial health benefits from completely switching from conventional cigarettes to e-cigarettes. I would encourage anyone in Rugby trying to give up smoking to get in touch with their GP and find out whether switching to an e-cigarette could be a route to quitting the habit.”
Dr Christian Jessen added:
“E-cigarettes may be contributing to at least 20,000 successful new quits per year - with the industry estimating this figure to be much higher. But as a doctor it's disappointing to hear that an estimated 40% of smokers still haven’t even tried vaping. I’m delighted to be joining forces with the UK Vaping Industry Association to launch VApril, which is all about helping more smokers to make a successful and permanent switchover. I personally believe vaping has overwhelming potential to help smokers break their habit, and this is important because stopping the habit is the single most significant step that people can make to improve their health.”