Horizon

I think they have a great potential to save millions of lives

over the next 20, 30 years.

There are so many unknowns here and frankly, I think, right now,

we have... It's a human experiment that's going on right now.

They could turn out to be one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest even,

public health innovations of our generation.

We really don't know what the long-term effects will be.

I think they are a game changer

and I'm very excited by that possibility.

Electronic cigarettes.

This bit of technology has absolutely exploded into our lives.

Ten years ago, they barely existed. Now, they're everywhere.

Science is scrabbling to keep up and the experts are bitterly divided.

So we're going to carry out our own unique experiment to test

the effects of e-cigarettes.

I think I'll be able to do it with e-cigarettes.

I've got access to one of the more controversial companies which

produce them.

So how do I know you haven't got some other lovely

piece of research which actually shows that it is harmful

and you're just not showing it?

And I'll seek out cutting-edge research to discover exactly

what they do to people who use them...

Oh, wow! This is really surprising.

We killed 95% of the cells. ..and to people who don't.

This, I think, is about as high as we've seen it.

Through the roof, really.

Are we on the brink of a health revolution or

gambling our way into a catastrophe?

Now, I'm about to do something that, many years ago,

I swore I would never do.

It's dangerous, it's addictive, it's disgusting and there's a good chance

that I'm going to be sick, which is why I've got a bucket down there.

For me, this will be a first,

but it's something more than a billion people do every day.

I'm being wired up to monitor what happens.

Aargh! God! And people do this for pleasure?

That was... That was really horrible. That was really rank.

It's, um, really sort of burning.

It's way down my throat at the moment.

You might find it hard to believe but I have never,

ever smoked before, not even a drag.

This is not, I think, what happens in the movies.

As soon as you draw that smoke into your lungs, your heart rate and

blood pressure goes soaring up and toxic chemicals enter your blood.

I'd like to say it's really vile but it isn't.

I mean, the coughing is vile, the smell is vile,

but the effects are actually quite pleasant.

I don't feel remotely nauseous. I just feel quite buzzy at the moment.

So I get it. I think I finally get why people smoke.

What I've just experienced is an extremely efficient drug

delivery system, sending nicotine to my brain in just ten seconds.

In the 1950s, it was advertised by sports stars,

glamorised by Hollywood and even endorsed by doctors.

These days, we're

fully aware of the dangers yet there are still ten million smokers in

the UK and about half of them will die from smoking-related diseases.

But in the last few years,

a new device has appeared that could finally blow away this deadly habit.

Now we've got the electronic or e-cigarette.

It's been marketed as a much less harmful

way of getting your nicotine hit

but is it the greatest public health measure ever invented,

as some people claim, or simply another way of keeping us

addicted to nicotine with dangerous unforeseen consequences?

For these people, using e-cigarettes or vaping, as it's known,

is part of their daily lives.

So, how long have you been vaping for?

Just over two years. I'll be on my vape-versary for three years.

Three years?

When you took up vaping, did you intend to give up smoking? Yes. OK.

That was my goal. I never tried to give up smoking.

It's just the curiosity of the products and then, just slowly,

over time, used them more and more.

E-cigarettes are fast becoming a socially acceptable way to

consume nicotine but are we gambling with technology

we don't yet understand, simply replacing one danger with another?

These new devices are the subject of scientific studies all over

the world but there are still significant gaps in our knowledge.

So we decided to carry out our own test.

To help us, we've recruited 26 smokers,

all with one thing in common.

I think it's time to quit.

First of all, health reasons.

Secondly, it's not a good example for my kids.

And also, financial reasons.

My mum died of lung cancer about four years ago

so I saw what that had done to her, and if it

cuts my chances of getting that, then that's good enough for me.

I was diagnosed with throat cancer -

that's why my voice is a bit croaky - last July and, even though

I've been advised by all of my consultants

and health care professionals, I'm still smoking.

These smokers are about to embark on what should be a fascinating

experiment - to uncover what e-cigarettes really do to us.

It's being run by behavioural scientist

Paul Aveyard from Oxford University

and Peter Hajek from Queen Mary University of London.

We're going to test the effects of e-cigarettes against smoking

tobacco and compare them with other, more traditional ways to quit.

To do this, we're dividing our volunteers into four groups.

One group is going to stick to regular cigarettes.

And that means you've got four more weeks of smoking.

My wife's not going to believe I've got this group but thanks anyway!

Another will try to quit smoking the hard way.

You're going to be quitting cold turkey.

It's not what you wanted? No! Have you tried cold turkey before? Yes.

Yeah. Didn't work. No.

This group will try quitting with the help of nicotine patches.

You're going to be quitting with nicotine replacement therapy.

All right. That's good. Is that all right? Yeah. Yeah.

And this is the group who we're really interested in.

You're going to be quitting with e-cigarettes. Yay! Why yay?

I think I'll be able to do it with e-cigarettes.

I've never tried it but I think it's possibly the easiest way.

Everybody here currently smokes at least 20 cigarettes a day,

and it's a notoriously hard habit to break.

Research shows that when people try without help,

the success rate is just 4%.

So this is a pretty hard-core group of people, smokers.

They've really tried and tried again, is that right?

They certainly are.

I mean, we selected them for being hard-core and, of course,

you don't volunteer for this kind of study unless, really,

you've struggled to just quit smoking on your own.

Our volunteers are all undergoing a range of health tests.

We're measuring the levels of some toxic substances

in their bodies, like carbon monoxide in their lungs.

Most of the people, possibly all the people,

here on the programme are heavy smokers.

You will see the flashing red lights showing you that

that level of carbon monoxide they have is rather alarming.

And we're using cutting-edge technology to probe

deep inside their airways. We're measuring airways resistance.

It's a measure of how well the lungs are functioning.

This will give us baseline measurements before our

experiment starts, while our volunteers are still heavy smokers.

The major cause of health problems for people who smoke is,

of course, heart attack and stroke.

So we've got a couple of tests here

that are looking at the heart function itself. Mm-hm.

And over here, we're looking at the way that the arteries respond

when they're called on to do so by a physiological stress.

In four weeks' time, the volunteers will undergo exactly the same

tests to find out if anything's changed.

Remember that today, for most of you, is the last day

of your smoking and tomorrow is the first day of your non-smoking lives.

And I can see it's going to be really tough

but I'm really crossing my fingers for you

because you know it's important and I know it's important and I really

look forward to seeing you again in four weeks' time

and we shall see what we shall see.

We're feeling good, though, aren't we? Yeah!

I'm hoping that, in a month's time, our results will begin to

answer some of the fundamental questions about vaping.

There are still so many unknowns

because the habit has become popular so suddenly.

E-cigarettes are one of those bits of technology, like mobile phones,

that have absolutely exploded into our culture.

From nowhere, they have become a multibillion pound industry.

In the UK alone, there are over 2.5 million users.

Their extraordinary rise has polarised opinion around the world.

So when electronic cigarettes came on the market,

many countries prohibited their use.

They include countries like Canada, Brazil, Uruguay, Australia.

When you look at some of those governments that are doing

practically nothing about tobacco control

and yet they're banning e-cigarettes, you think, why?

The UK took a different approach.

So in 2010, we took the view, in the Behavioural Insights Team,

that we should make these widely available

because of their potential to be a very effective route

out of smoking, and so we argued for a deliberately light touch

regulation in order to make them widely available.

On this advice, the UK government took a relatively liberal

stance and allowed the sale and advertising of e-cigarettes.

You know that feeling you get when something's great?

But not everybody agreed with this decision.

There was widespread concern that e-cigarettes would have

a broader appeal than just as a tool to help smokers quit.

Well, now you can taste it.

Now, some people are worried that e-cigarettes will encourage

non-smokers to take up vaping.

Even if that's true, would it be such a bad thing?

Well, surprisingly enough, no-one has really studied

the effects of vaping on healthy volunteers.

So I thought I'd give it a go.

Current research tends to look at the effects of e-cigarettes

only on smokers.

To discover what they do to a healthy non-smoker, I'm going

to test them on myself.

I guess this is how addiction begins -

you start with a single cigarette, and the next thing you know,

you've committed yourself to a month full of vaping.

I must admit, I'm feeling a little apprehensive.

So, for some advice on how to get started, I've come to one

of the many e-cigarette shops that have sprung up all over the country.

Ah! Hi there. Afternoon. How are you?

I'm expecting something a little bit smoky,

but actually, it's quite sort of pleasantly fruity, isn't it?