A true story
Aotearoa New Zealand
I’m Mark. I lit my first cigarette at fourteen, and by my early thirties my lungs were collapsing. This is how I got my breath back, and what the research actually says about the thing that did it.
Smoke-free since 31.12.2011
Scroll to begin“Smokers smoke for nicotine but are killed by tar.”
Fifty years on
That idea is half a century old, and the science still backs it. Nicotine is what keeps you coming back. The fire is what kills you: burning tobacco makes thousands of chemicals, and dozens of them are known to cause cancer.7
Take the fire away and you take away most of the harm. That’s the whole idea behind vaping. Somewhere between the science and the headlines, a lot of people have lost track of it.
Part one
01Age fourteen
I lit my first cigarette at fourteen. Nobody had to sell it to me. It was what you did, and then it was what I did, every day, for the next twenty-five years.
At my worst I was on thirty a day. I play keys in a covers band: pubs, late nights, long drives, and a smoke in every break.
022003 – 2005
In my early thirties my lungs started collapsing on their own. It’s called a spontaneous pneumothorax, and I kept getting them.
Then one night at a gig I went out to the car in the break. Walking back to the venue I felt it: a physical pop in my chest. From then on, every time I stood up I felt like I was going to pass out. I couldn’t finish the gig.
03The next morning
I got a ride home. The next morning I went upstairs and lit a cigarette. That’s how hooked I was. I got through a few puffs before I knew I had to get to A&E.
They examined me and called an ambulance. Collapsed lung. A week in hospital and the usual treatment.
A collapsed lung, or pneumothorax, happens when air leaks out of the lung into the space around it. In people who are otherwise well, the leak usually comes from a small blister on the surface of the lung, called a bleb.2
A small one may need no treatment at all: the lung heals and the air is slowly reabsorbed. A bigger one is drained, either with a needle and syringe or through a thin tube, about the size of a drinking straw, placed between the ribs.2
It often comes back: about one in three people have another within a year.2 Smoking makes a first one far more likely. In a Swedish study it raised the risk about ninefold for women and 22-fold for men, and the more people smoked, the higher it went.4
04Two months later
I stayed off cigarettes for about two months. Then, at a gig, the urge took over. Just like that, I was smoking again.
05Twelve months later
A year on I was back in hospital, this time for surgery: a bullectomy and a pleurodesis, to stop the lung collapsing again.
When the pathology came back on the tissue they’d removed, it showed emphysema. I was in my early thirties.
Surgery is usually offered when a lung keeps collapsing. It’s done under general anaesthetic, these days most often as keyhole surgery (VATS): up to four small cuts for a camera and instruments.3
The operation has two jobs. First, the surgeon staples off and removes the blebs and bullae, the thin bubbles of lung that burst and leak. That’s the bullectomy. Then they make the lung stick to the inside of the chest wall, by removing or roughening its lining or by using sterile talc, so it can’t collapse again. That’s the pleurodesis.3
You wake up with a chest drain, which stays in for at least a couple of days. Without surgery, the chance of another collapse is around 20 to 30%. After keyhole surgery it’s about 5%.3
06Early thirties
I was heading straight for my own grave, and I could feel it in my body.
I was so addicted to cigarettes that I was depressed. I’d resigned myself to it: I was going to die young, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Part two
An illustration, not the actual broadcast
One evening
One evening a news segment came on the telly about something called an ‘e-cigarette’. Nobody called it vaping back then.
It was a lightbulb moment. I was obviously hooked on nicotine, and here was a way to get it without setting fire to anything. I reckon I was one of the first people in New Zealand to get one.
The long switch
For years I did both. Vaped and smoked, chasing every new gadget that came out, because the early ones just weren’t good enough to carry me all day.
In 2010 the Herald ran a story on me. I’d gone from thirty cigarettes a day to three, and I told them that within three or four days of vaping, “I woke up in the morning and I could breathe.”1
At the time the Ministry of Health’s position was that distributing nicotine e-cigarettes here would be an offence. So I imported mine from China.1
The New Zealand Herald · 15 April 2010
Smoker wants e-ciggie nicotine at a shop near him
“I woke up in the morning and I could breathe.”
From my inbox
I’m hopeless with dates, so I went back through years of order confirmations and emails. The technology got better. And one day it got good enough.
c. 2007–08
My first e-cigarette: a Ruyan V4, a pen-style model from the original e-cigarette company. Nobody I knew had heard of them.
2010
Batteries and nicotine cartridges, imported from China. Selling them here was a legal grey zone.
2011
Tank systems. By October I was down to a few cigarettes a week, but I couldn’t quite kill the last of them.
Dec 2011
A dual-coil tank arrives in the post, a week before New Year’s Eve.
“That was the first time vaping managed to cover it for me.”
2012
Clearer, better tanks. Adjustable power.
“…easily by far the longest break in like 25 years of hard-out smoking.”
2013
My first proper mod. More battery, more control, no going back.
2015
Mixing my own liquids, and helping mates and family make the same switch.
Today
Still vaping. Still not smoking. Still enjoying it.
New Year’s Eve · Napier
I had a New Year’s Eve gig in Napier with Rikki Morris. I made a decision before I left the house: the cigarettes stayed home. I’d take the vape and nothing else.
Hours without a cigarette
24:00
Cigarettes
0
01 · The drive down
A long drive.
02 · The gig
A gig: the exact place I’d always smoked.
03 · Midnight
2012 arrives.
04 · The drive home
Another long drive.
1 January 2012
“You’d be such a loser to have a cigarette now.”
That’s what I told myself the next day. Then the day after that. It worked. I haven’t smoked since.
About two weeks later
I was lying in bed and I took a full, deep breath. The first one I could remember taking.
And I just cried.
Hold the circle (or the space bar) to take the breath
Now
Smoke-free since 31 December 2011
14years8months25days
13:00:00
At my old rate of thirty a day, that’s 161,460 cigarettes I haven’t smoked.
I still vape. I enjoy it. I’m a grown adult and I have no plans to stop, and I don’t think I should have to apologise for that.
Vaping didn’t make me healthy. Stopping smoking did. Vaping is how I managed to stop.
“If I can stop smoking, anyone can.”
Part three
That’s my story. It’s one person’s, and you shouldn’t take a stranger’s word for anything on the internet. So from here on, every claim comes with its source: peer-reviewed research, official health agencies, and the studies the scaremongers quote too.
82sources, every one of them checked
Tap any little number like this one to see where a fact comes from, or browse the full list.
3.1The fire
A cigarette is a tiny bonfire. A vape is closer to a kettle. That one difference is the whole story.
Temperature
880°C
What’s happening
The burning coal of a cigarette reaches about 850°C at its centre and about 900°C at its edge. At these temperatures tobacco doesn’t just heat up. It burns.8
7,000+
chemicals in cigarette smoke. At least 69 of them can cause cancer.7
People get addicted to the nicotine, but the devastating harm comes mainly from everything else in the smoke, including tar and carbon monoxide.22 The NHS puts it plainly: most of the harm from smoking “comes from the thousands of other chemicals in tobacco smoke, many of which are toxic.”10
Take the fire away and those chemicals mostly go with it. The US National Academies of Sciences found conclusive evidence that switching completely from cigarettes to vaping cuts people’s exposure to numerous toxicants and carcinogens.12
3.2Measured, not guessed
You don’t have to wait forty years to see what vaping does. You can measure what ends up in people’s bodies right now. Researchers have.
US PATH Study · 247 exclusive vapers vs 2,411 exclusive smokers
NNAL
A breakdown product of NNK, a tobacco-specific lung carcinogen
98%lower
Acrylonitrile marker
A toxic volatile chemical from burning
97%lower
2-Naphthol
A marker of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
62%lower
Cadmium
A toxic metal
30%lower
Not everything falls to near zero: cadmium, a metal, was only about 30% lower. That’s the honest picture — dramatically less of the chemicals that cause smokers’ cancers, not nothing. A UK study found the same pattern in people who’d switched completely, with one big catch: people who vaped and still smoked saw little benefit.14
Lab test of vapour vs cigarette smoke
Formaldehyde9× less
Acrolein15× less
NNK40× less
Toluene120× less
NNN380× less
Acetaldehyde450× less
Six toxicants measured in vapour from twelve early (2012-era) e-cigarettes. Log scale.
Carbon monoxide on the breath
12
ppm, smoking
2
ppm, vaping
Median levels in a small study of smokers who switched completely. Two ppm is what you’d expect from a non-smoker.
3.3The famous number
You’ve probably heard vaping is “95% safer”. Here’s the honest history of that number, warts and all.
Expert panel scores, 2014 · 100 = most harmful
99.6
67
22
14
5
4
2
Cigarettes
Small cigars
Pipes
Water pipe
Snus
E-cigarettes
Nicotine replacement
2014
An international panel of twelve experts scored twelve nicotine products on fourteen kinds of harm. Cigarettes scored nearly 100. E-cigarettes scored 4.17
2015
Public Health England’s evidence review turned that into the headline: e-cigarettes are “around 95% less harmful” than smoking.18
The pushback
The Lancet and the BMJ attacked it: one workshop, expert opinion rather than measurement, and funding and conflicts of interest the Lancet flagged. Fair criticisms.1920
Since then
The measured evidence has piled up, and it points the same way. England’s 2022 review says the estimate “remains broadly accurate, at least over short term and medium term periods”.21 The Royal College of Physicians calls vaping “demonstrably less harmful than smoked tobacco to user and bystander alike”.22
The exact number was always a best guess. The direction has never changed.
3.4The gold standard
Yes, and this is the best-evidenced answer in the whole debate. Cochrane reviews are the gold standard in medicine: they pool every good randomised trial they can find.23
Cochrane Review · 80 randomised trials · 29,861 people · published 26 August 2026
~10
quit with a nicotine vape
~6
quit with nicotine replacement (patches, gum)
Certainty of evidence for this comparison: High. Risk ratio 1.61 (95% CI 1.23–2.12).
England, 2019 · 886 smokers
18%vs9.9%
Still off cigarettes a year later: e-cigarettes versus nicotine replacement like patches and gum, in a trial in the New England Journal of Medicine.24
Auckland, 2013
New Zealand went first
An Auckland trial was among the first anywhere to test e-cigarettes against nicotine patches. With early devices the result was close and not statistically significant: 7.3% versus 5.8%.25 A bigger 2020 follow-up with 1,124 Kiwis found adding a nicotine vape to patches beat patches alone: 7% versus 2%.26
Health New Zealand, 2025
36%
Health NZ now gives free vape kits to smokers through its Stop Smoking Services. It reports that of 5,261 people who quit between January and August 2025, 1,889 used one of those kits.27
3.5Straight answers
Seven in ten New Zealanders think nicotine is extremely or very harmful. It’s the most misunderstood chemical in this debate, so here’s exactly what’s known.57
Is it addictive?
No argument here. Nicotine is why tobacco products are addictive.30 It’s also why people keep smoking long enough to be killed by everything else in the smoke.
Does it cause cancer?
The WHO’s cancer agency classifies tobacco smoke as a cause of cancer; nicotine itself has never been classified as one.32 A 2025 UK expert review: “The research consensus is that nicotine does not cause cancer.”31 People on long-term nicotine gum in a big US lung study showed no rise in cancer.33
What about my heart?
Nicotine briefly raises your heart rate and blood pressure.31 In a trial of 8,058 smokers, nicotine patches didn’t increase serious heart problems,36 though a big analysis linked nicotine replacement to more minor ones like palpitations.35 And in a large Korean study of heart-stent patients, those who switched completely to vaping had an 18% lower long-term cardiac risk than those who kept smoking.31
Teenage brains?
Animal studies suggest adolescent exposure can cause lasting changes. Whether that happens in humans is genuinely unclear, and hard to separate from the effects of smoking.31 That uncertainty is a good reason to keep nicotine away from kids.
Pregnancy?
Stopping everything is best. For pregnant smokers who can’t, a trial of 1,140 pregnant smokers found no safety concerns from either vaping or nicotine patches.40 Talk to your midwife or doctor.
Is it good for you?
You’ll see claims online. The evidence is thin: nicotine patches didn’t slow Parkinson’s in a 2023 trial,37 results in ulcerative colitis are mixed with a lot of side effects,38 and a small memory study was promising but hasn’t been confirmed.39 We won’t claim more than that.
Is it a medicine?
Nicotine replacement therapy has been on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines since 2009.34
3.6The fine print
A site about misinformation that only told you the good news would be part of the problem. So here’s the other side, with the same standard of evidence.
01
It isn’t harmless
Less harmful than smoking is not the same as safe. Even the US FDA, which accepts vaping can be a lower-risk alternative for adult smokers, says it’s not risk-free.41
02
Half-switching doesn’t work
People who vape and still smoke carry nearly the same toxin load as smokers.14 The benefit comes from stopping cigarettes completely.
03
Coils can shed metal
Metals leach from heating coils. In one study, nickel and chromium in many users’ vapour exceeded health reference limits — for those two metals, more than cigarettes.42 Device quality matters.
04
Don’t vape a dry coil
An overheating coil produces nasty chemicals.9 If it tastes burnt, stop and refill.
05
Liquid nicotine can poison kids
Small children who swallow e-liquid end up in the emergency department. In the US, cases fell after child-resistant packaging became law.43 Keep it locked away.
06
Batteries need respect
Fires and explosions are rare and almost always come down to battery failure or misuse.44 Use the right charger and never carry loose batteries in a pocket.
07
Nobody has 40-year data
The UK’s big evidence review is careful to limit its conclusions to the short and medium term.21 That’s honest, and it’s why research should carry on.
08
It’s not for non-smokers
New Zealand’s official position: vaping is not for children and young people, and not for people who don’t smoke.27 On this, I agree completely.
3.7“We just don’t know”
It’s the line you hear most. It was fair in 2008. It isn’t now.
Research papers on e-cigarettes and vaping added to PubMed each year
17,561papers so far, as of 25 September 202669
80
randomised trials on quitting alone
Plus 1,431 more added so far in 2026. Counted by the date each record was added to PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s index of medical research.
What we know
We don’t know everything. But for a smoker, the choice was never vaping versus clean air. It’s vaping versus smoke.
Part four
Fourteen things people say about vaping, checked against the evidence. Every one has its own page you can share the next time someone posts one of these in the group chat. One of them is a myth from our side of the argument, because misinformation runs both ways.
“Vaping is just as bad as smoking.”
Every major review that has measured it finds vaping exposes you to far fewer toxins than smoking. Not harmless — but nowhere near as bad.
The evidence
“Vaping gives you popcorn lung.”
There has never been a confirmed case of popcorn lung caused by vaping. The chemical blamed for it turns up at far higher levels in cigarette smoke.
The evidence
“Vapes caused the 2019 lung-injury outbreak that killed dozens of Americans.”
The 2019 outbreak (EVALI) was strongly linked to vitamin E acetate in illicit THC cartridges — not the nicotine vapes smokers use to quit.
The evidence
“Vapour contains more formaldehyde than cigarette smoke.”
That headline came from a lab test that overheated a vape to “dry puff” conditions no one would inhale. At normal settings, the same test found none.
The evidence
“Vaping doubles your risk of a heart attack.”
The study behind that claim was retracted in 2020. It couldn’t show the heart attacks happened after people started vaping.
The evidence
“Nicotine causes cancer.”
Nicotine isn’t classified as a carcinogen. The cancer comes from the smoke — which is exactly why removing the smoke matters.
The evidence
“It’s too new. We have no idea what vaping does.”
PubMed lists 17,561 papers on e-cigarettes, and there are 80 randomised trials on quitting alone. We don’t have 40-year data — but “no idea” just isn’t true.
The evidence
“Second-hand vapour is as dangerous as second-hand smoke.”
Public Health England found no identified health risks of passive vaping to bystanders. Second-hand smoke kills over 1.6 million people a year.
The evidence
“A new study shows vaping is worse than smoking.”
The 2025 “worse than smoking” headlines came from an ongoing study presented as a conference abstract — not a peer-reviewed paper.
The evidence
“Vaping raises your lung-cancer risk 58 times.”
The study behind that number says “nearly all vapers also smoked”. It measured dual use, not vaping.
The evidence
“Vaping causes COPD.”
A 2025 meta-analysis found a link — but in the stronger long-term studies it wasn’t statistically significant, and the authors say past smoking may explain it.
The evidence
“Vaping is a gateway to smoking.”
Teens who vape are more likely to try a cigarette — but youth smoking has kept falling. In New Zealand, 1.2% of 14–15-year-olds smoke daily.
The evidence
“Vaping damages your DNA just like smoking.”
One study found some shared molecular changes. It measured a biomarker, not disease — and it doesn’t show vapers get cancer.
The evidence
“Vaping is completely safe.”
No. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking — but it isn’t harmless, and it’s not for people who don’t smoke.
The evidence
4.2Why this matters
Getting this wrong isn’t harmless. When smokers are told vaping is just as bad, some of them reasonably decide they may as well keep smoking.
Aotearoa, 2026 · Talbot Mills survey for ASH NZ · 2,291 people57
England · adults who smoke
Over the same years, the evidence that vaping is far less harmful got stronger. The public moved the other way.
Great Britain, 2026 · ages 11–17
62%
of young people wrongly believe vaping is as harmful as smoking, or worse.60
Scaring kids off vaping by telling them it’s as bad as smoking has a side effect: it tells them cigarettes are no worse.
Part five
Smoking still kills about 4,500 to 5,000 New Zealanders every year. That’s twelve or thirteen people a day.62 Here’s what’s happened as vaping took off.
New Zealand Health Survey · adults 15+ · % who do it daily
Dotted lines cross survey years we haven’t shown. Survey years run July to June.
Smokefree 2025
Missed.
The goal was under 5% daily smoking for every group. Progress has stalled at 6.8%.63
Did vaping cause the fall?
Honest answer: it’s argued about.
The Ministry of Health is careful to say the survey shows the two trends side by side, but can’t prove vaping caused the fall.61
In 2026 two groups of researchers argued it out in the same Lancet journal. One says vaping helped speed up the decline, while admitting that kind of analysis can’t prove cause.64 The other calls that optimism misplaced.65
My view, for what it’s worth: both things are true. Policy made smoking expensive and unappealing. Vaping gave people like me somewhere to go.
5.2The hard part
This is where people get angriest, and where it matters most to be careful. First the numbers, then the debate, then what I actually think.
ASH Year 10 Snapshot 2024 · 30,339 students aged 14–1570
1.2%
smoke daily
Daily smoking among Year 10s has fallen from the mid-teens in 1999.
8.7%
vape daily
Down from 10% in 2023 — the first fall. Regular vaping peaked at 20.2% in 2021 and has dropped three years running.
3.7%
of never-smokers vape daily
Down from 4.6%. Among the few who do smoke daily, 85.7% vape daily too.
The gateway question
Does vaping lead kids to smoking?
Teenagers who vape are more likely to try a cigarette later. The US National Academies rated that link as substantial evidence.1271
But the same kids tend to be drawn to both, and youth smoking kept falling as vaping spread. In the US it fell two to four times faster.72 Modelling suggests vaping diverted more young people away from smoking than it led into it.73
My view · Mark
Teenagers have always found something. When I was one, it was cigarettes. The best outcome is a kid who does none of it, obviously. But that has never been reality.
So if a teenager is going to use nicotine, I would much rather they vaped than smoked. That’s not promoting vaping. It’s harm reduction: dealing with the world as it is, not as we wish it was.
On flavours: I’m a grown adult and I like a nice flavour. If the worry is that flavours appeal to kids, control who can buy them. People who started vaping on non-tobacco flavours weren’t more likely to take up smoking.74
And look at alcohol. It comes in sweet, fruity flavours in bright cans, and it’s arguably far more harmful than vaping. When UK experts ranked 20 drugs, alcohol came out the most harmful overall, ahead of heroin and crack cocaine.75 The World Health Organization puts 2.6 million deaths a year down to it.76 Flavoured drinks are a problem for young people too: in a US study of underage drinkers, those who drank only alcopops or premixed cocktails were more likely to drink heavily and get hurt.77
Yet I don’t hear anyone arguing that alcohol should only come in one flavour. With alcohol, we license the sellers and check ID. Vapes deserve the same logic.
What the law already says
Source: Ministry of Health67
5.3Another way off cigarettes
Sweden took a different road to the same place: a nicotine product you don’t set fire to.
Across the EU · people who smoke
24%
European Commission survey, 2023 fieldwork. It counts occasional smokers too, so the gap isn’t exactly like for like — but it’s big.79
Snus is a small pouch of moist tobacco you tuck under your top lip. No smoke, no burning. It has been banned across the European Union since 1992, but Sweden kept it when it joined in 1995.80
An expert panel scored snus at 5 on a harm scale where cigarettes scored almost 100 — about the same as vaping.17
Here’s the honest bit: snus isn’t harmless, and some of the research cheering it on has tobacco-industry money behind it, so treat “Sweden is smoke-free because of snus” with some care. But the basic logic is the same as vaping. Take away the fire, and most of the harm goes with it.
In New Zealand you can import snus for your own use, but selling it is illegal, and so is selling nicotine pouches for recreational use, without a medicine or psychoactive-substance approval.81
My view · Mark
Let adult smokers buy snus and nicotine pouches here, under the same R18 rules as vapes. Not everyone gets on with vaping. Every extra way off cigarettes is worth having.
My view · Mark Steven
This part is opinion, not evidence. It’s mine, formed by twenty-five years of smoking and fourteen of not.
Tell smokers the truth
Vaping is far less harmful than smoking. Public health messaging should say so, clearly, every time. Fewer than one in three Kiwi smokers know it.
Specialist stores only
Take vapes out of dairies and service stations. Sell them in R18 specialist shops, with ID checked every time, and hammer anyone who sells to kids.
Flavours for adults
Grown adults should be able to enjoy a nice flavour. Control who can buy, not what adults can vape — the way we already treat fruit-flavoured alcohol, which is arguably far more harmful.
Educate, don’t advertise
Tell teenagers the truth — including that smoking is far worse — and never market vaping to them.
More ways off cigarettes
Let adult smokers buy snus and nicotine pouches here, under the same R18 rules.
If you smoke
Quitline · free
Or text 4006, or visit quit.org.nz. They can help you quit vaping too, if that’s your goal.68
Stop Smoking Services
Health New Zealand has been giving free vape kits to smokers through its Stop Smoking Services since 2025, alongside patches and other support.27
If you don’t smoke
Don’t start. Not smoking, not vaping. Everything on this site is about getting smokers off cigarettes. It’s not an invitation.
Rather ask something quietly first? Ask Unlit, this site’s AI helper, answers from the research here, any time, without judgement.
