Overview

The COSA Research Report on E-cigarettes and Cancer is a qualitative risk assessment of the evidence relating to e-cigarettes and cancer.

Details on this project

In 2022, COSA Council formally endorsed the Cancer Council Position Paper, E-cigarette use in young people – urgent action needed to avert a public health crisis, which outlined the alarming uptake of e-cigarettes by adolescents and the proven adverse health effects.

Young people who use e-cigarettes are three times more likely to become tobacco smokers than non-smokers. Tobacco smoking has long been recognised as the major preventable cause of premature death worldwide, and specifically the major preventable cause of cancer worldwide.

The extent to which e-cigarettes may cause cancer in their own right has not been comprehensively assessed. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has made evaluation of e-cigarettes as a carcinogenic hazard to humans a high priority for an IARC Monograph in the near future.

The COSA Research Report on E-Cigarettes and Cancer is a qualitative risk assessment of the evidence relating to e-cigarettes and cancer. The report was authored by COSA Cancer Prevention Chair, Professor Bernard Stewart AM, with input from a multidisciplinary Working Group of oncology and public health healthcare professionals.

COSA intends to publish a subsequent position statement to integrate the findings in this report with wider considerations relating to the availability and impact of e-cigarettes in Australia, and any role for e-cigarettes in smoking cessation by cancer patients. COSA has published a separate position statement on Smoking Cessation in Cancer Patients: Embedding Smoking Cessation Care in Australian Oncology Health Services.

The COSA Research Report on E-cigarettes and Cancer: A Qualitative Risk Assessment is supported by Cancer Council Australia and Lung Foundation Australia.

COSA Research Report E-Cigarettes and Cancer: A Qualitative Risk Assessment