An anti-vaping professor has made a shock admission at a public inquiry that the only known deaths from vapes are from the batteries exploding.
Professor Emily Banks was grilled at the Australian senate inquiry for the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill.
Federal Nationals Senator for Queensland Matt Canavan asked Banks if anyone had actually died from vaping, or even had a severe medical episode.
He said he was still not sure “after all these years” if anyone had died using a vape in places like the United Kingdom or New Zealand.
“Or even just a severe medical episode,” he said “Because I'm trying to reach what the threshold is here before we ban something.”
Banks - head of the Centre for Public Health Data and Policy at Australian National University in Canberra and leading advocate for stricter regulations on vapes - at first attempted to avoid the question.
She talked about the 34 countries that had banned vapes before saying the issue is ‘bigger than consenting adults buying the product’, as children have been targeted by companies to become addicted.
Mr Canavan pushed her on the point, saying he wanted an answer to his question about vaping deaths.
She then made the embarrassing admission that there are no known deaths from vaping itself. This compares to HALF of all regular smokers globally dying from the habit.
She said: “So we're not just talking about deaths, there are examples of deaths in those countries from exploding batteries, for example.”
Banks could not point to anyone dying because of inhaling a vape, but gave one example of a teenager admitted to hospital from vaping.
She went on to concede that the main issue with vaping is not its health implications but people becoming addicted to nicotine, saying: “It doesn't have to be severe or a death.”
Professor Banks told the inquiry that 30 per cent of Australian vapers have never smoked, with just under a third saying they would find it difficult to quit.
However, Senator Canavan returned to his original question, asking her again what evidence there was of severe impact from vapes and if such effects were the result of illegal or regulated vapes.
Banks didn’t have the chance to answer again before Western Australia Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John asked if she would agree that vaping is “95 per cent safer than tobacco smoking”.
She said: “There's really no evidence to support the '95 per cent less harmful' factoid, which I think is what you could call it.”
“In saying it's 95 per cent less harmful, what outcome are you talking about? If you're talking about childhood addiction, you might actually say that e-cigarettes can be a greater risk than smoking.
“We're seeing 23 per cent of school students who start using vapes start by the age of 12 and another 23 per cent start by the age of 13. These are not harsh on your throat, they've got flavours, they're very easy to use.
“You could also say that in terms of poisoning children they are higher risk. Having one blanket statement is problematic.”
She also conceded that the impact of vapes are largely unknown due to them being a recent product.
“We don't know a lot of the effects—we don't know what it does to cancer and we don't know what it does to cardiovascular disease—it's very difficult to actually come to an appreciation of the comparison,” Banks said.
Meanwhile, around 24,000 Australians lose their lives each year to cigarettes, according to the Cancer Council, a fact that has led many health advocates and politicians to argue for them being a life-saving quitting aid.
