Making the Switch from Cigarettes to Vaping: Is It Healthier?

If you smoke cigarettes, then it’s worth considering switching to vaping. While vaping isn’t technically healthy, it’s a lot better for you than cigarettes are. Smoking cigarettes can cause serious issues, like heart disease, lung disease, and even cancer. An astonishingly large amount of smokers will die because of smoking-related diseases. Lung cancer only affects 10-20% of smokers, but heart disease, emphysema¹, and strokes affect many others.

If you are interested in quitting smoking, then vaping is a great option. This post will explain why that is, in addition to offering a few explanations for why vaping is better for you than smoking.

Is Vaping Healthier?

Is vaping healthier than smoking? While there aren’t any health benefits associated with vape usage (i.e., you won’t get any stronger or fitter from the vape itself), vaping ²is 95% safer than smoking cigarettes. What this means is that by vaping, you will successfully wean yourself off of cigarettes and begin enjoying the benefits of not smoking them.

You should be aware that vape devices do contain substances that are technically bad for the human body, although they are nowhere near as bad as cigarettes for you, and you are very unlikely to develop health problems from using vape devices. 20% of smokers will develop cancer at some point, and many more will go on to develop heart disease. The chances of developing these conditions from vape devices are very slim.

Alternative Substances

Vape devices also make it easier to switch from using nicotine products to other things, like Cannabis, for example. According to this information from https://goldenleafshop.com, you can purchase vape products that contain both Cannabis and nicotine³. You can then use these products and gradually cut down on the nicotine content while keeping the Cannabis content high. Eventually, you will be able to completely cut out nicotine smoking. Cannabis is a lot easier to quit than nicotine, so once you have cut out the nicotine, you can then begin working on eliminating the Cannabis from your life (if you want to).

Quitting Smoking

Something else that you should consider is that vaping can help you to completely cut smoking, making it a lot more possible than if you just went cold turkey.

Going cold turkey when smoking cigarettes can be very bad for your health, even resulting in health problems becoming manifest, like fatigue, insomnia, and severe anxiety. You might be surprised to learn that quitting cigarettes cold turkey⁴ can actually be very dangerous, depending on the amount that you have been smoking. You could end up having flu-like symptoms, which could make your life very difficult. Vapes make quitting easier.

Long-term Success

As mentioned in the previous section, vapes make quitting smoking a lot easier. A lot of smokers who try to cut out smoking cold turkey go on to relapse and begin smoking again. Completely cutting cigarettes out of your life is a really bad idea. Vaping will make quitting long-term a lot easier because you will be able to gradually bring down the amount of nicotine that you are consuming until the amount’s negligible. Smoking can be extremely bad for your health, so anything that has the power to help you to quit once and for all is, by definition, good.

Product Options

Moving away from vaping’s benefits and onto taking it up, if you want to try it out, then you should know that there are lots of different product options that you have available to you. Some people start off by using disposable vape pens, which are pens that come with juice already in them, and once they are used, they are thrown away. Other people buy more expensive kits. Whatever you decide to do, consider your options, try out different flavors, and speak to professionals to learn about which type of vape product is best for you.

Establish Budget

Smoking’s not cheap. Vaping is significantly cheaper than smoking cigarettes. If you are planning on taking up vaping, then you need to work out a budget. Because of the conflict in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic⁵, fuel, and food shortages are becoming more common. Because these things are more common, prices are going up. You should set aside enough money for vaping without it impacting your quality of life or your ability to purchase fuel or food. If you are quitting smoking, then this shouldn’t be a problem—you should end up having a lot of money spare.

Vaping is a great alternative to smoking. While it’s not necessarily good for you, it is healthier in that it helps you to cut smoking out of your life completely. Smoking kills, so anything that helps you to eliminate it is worth introducing into your life.

1. Yang, Xiaofei, et al. “Association between chest CT–defined emphysema and lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” Radiology 304.2 (2022): 322-330. ↩︎
2. Park, Jin-Ah, Laura E. Crotty Alexander, and David C. Christiani. “Vaping and lung inflammation and injury.” Annual review of physiology 84 (2022): 611-629. ↩︎
3. McGrath-Morrow, Sharon A., et al. “The effects of nicotine on development.” Pediatrics 145.3 (2020). ↩︎
4. Watkins, Shannon Lea, et al. “Cold Turkey and Hot Vapes? A national study of young adult cigarette cessation strategies.” Nicotine and Tobacco Research 22.5 (2020): 638-646. ↩︎
5. Pokhrel, Sumitra, and Roshan Chhetri. “A literature review on impact of COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning.” Higher education for the future 8.1 (2021): 133-141. ↩︎

Last Updated on July 24, 2024 by Sathi Chakraborty, MSc Biology