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This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato.

You've likely heard about the harms of vaping, but is it better for you than smoking?

The evidence is really clear that if you're comparing smoking to a licensed nicotine-containing

e-cigarette, the e-cigarette is going to bring much, much less risk to you.

The harms of smoking cigarettes are pretty clear.

It's the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. It causes

cancer, heart disease, lung disease. But when it comes to vaping or e-cigarettes, the risks are a bit

more tricky to figure out. And the outbreak of e-cigarette or vaping use associated lung injury,

Evali, in 2019 and 2020, made things even more

confusing. The founders of Jewel, the company that popularized vaping, said they wanted to help people

kick their smoking habits. But can vapes really help people quit? And how bad are they for you, really? And if you're addicted

to vaping, how can you kick the habit? Joining me now to answer those questions and more is one of the

top researchers in the field, Dr. Jamie Hartman-Boyce, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and

Management University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Nice to have you. Let's jump right in now. When most people

think about the harms of vaping, they're probably thinking of Ivali or the outbreak a few years ago.

Thousands of young people ended up in the hospital, as we all know.

Can you give us a refresher on what was causing that illness?

Absolutely.

So one of the scary things about that illness is when it first started, no one really knew what was causing it,

other than that it was following the use of e-cigrats or following vaping.

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