The debate over vaping is heating up. In this opinion piece, Professor Grace Parraga expresses her unequivocally firm stance against e-cigarettes. For balance, Medical Observer also presents another opinion in which the author takes a somewhat softer stance to the overall risks and dangers, suggesting that vaping has its place: It’s safest to avoid e-cigarettes – unless vaping is helping you quit smoking

Vaping causes severe illness in otherwise healthy young adults and teenagers. It causes a life-threatening, life-shortening and sometimes deadly lung toxicity and injury — with apparently irreversible damage that cannot be cured.

A recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine on 53 confirmed cases of young e-cigarette users hospitalised with severe lung toxicity and injury clearly shows that this is the case. The average age of these patients was 19.

A relatively short history of vaping has led to hospitalisation, weeks of intensive care, lung failure, the urgent need for a heart-lung bypass machine and then, after all attempts have failed, needless deaths in otherwise healthy young people.