In the early 2000s, a Chinese pharmacist invented the e-cigarette to help people like his father — a lifelong smoker dying of lung cancer — find a safer alternative.
Two decades later, the world is deep in a very different nicotine story: Yes, e-cigarettes have helped people quit smoking. Yes, they've likely saved hundreds of thousands of life-years. But also? They created a sleek, candy-flavored on-ramp to addiction for millions of teens who might never have picked up a pack of Marlboros. And now we're stuck in a murky middle with a product that's less harmful, but far from safe — a public health fix that may have lit the fuse for another crisis.
In his latest must-read, Vox senior health correspondent Dylan Scott untangles the science and the staggering data behind the vaping conundrum and he talks to the experts grappling with one big, unsettling question: Did vaping break the cycle of smoking, or just restart it in a new form?
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—Paige Vega, climate editor
