Smokers could be offered vapes in Peterborough under new trial
July 6, 2023
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Smokers could be offered vapes to help them quit cigarettes as part of a trial being proposed in Peterborough.
According to local reports, the one-year pilot program would see smokers being given vapes as part of a structured attempt to give up smoking in order to test whether it helps improve success rates. The report recommending the trial produced by Peterborough City Council (PCC) and the region’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) says that vapes, which contain nicotine but not tar or tobacco, are “probably less harmful than cigarettes”.
There is “robust short- and medium-term evidence” that people who vape are exposed to fewer harmful substances than people who smoke, it continues, while acknowledging the “relatively short timeframe for any evidence about their long-term use”.
Vapes contain toxins and carcinogens, it adds, but at lower levels than cigarettes, and have been shown to be effective in helping people give up smoking.
PCC and the ICB propose in the report that, alongside local authorities in Cambridgeshire, they should apply for funding for the pilot from central government when it becomes available under its “swap to stop” initiative, highlighting in their application the “very high rates [of smoking] in Fenland along with high numbers of homeless in Cambridge City and Peterborough”.
