WVS NEWS: Ad citing Public Health England’s vaping claim banned, as ASA rules it misleading

Written by Freddie Dawson | ECigIntelligence

Even the claim by Public Health England (PHE) that vaping is “95% less harmful than smoking” is not good enough for the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The ASA has ruled that a cinema ad commissioned by the brand IVG Vapes and an accompanying post on the LinkedIn page for the company that owns the brand violated the UK’s Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code and must never appear again.

The ad used PHE’s claim that e-cigarettes were 95% less harmful than smoking. Acme Vape, owner of the IVG brand, said the statement could not possibly be construed as duplicitous, when challenged by a “freelance public health researcher” over whether the claim was misleading or could be substantiated.

Ad backed to the hilt by CAA

The Cinema Advertising Association (CAA) backed the company with surprising vociferousness. It said the 95%-less-harmful figure had not been amended or removed by the PHE since first being published in 2015 – despite numerous updates.

The CAA added that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) “endorsed the spirit of the claim with information currently on the NHS website which stated that in 2022 UK experts reviewed international evidence and concluded that ‘in the short and medium-term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking’”.

The association also pointed out that saying something carried a 5% risk of physical damage but was 95% safe was not the same thing as saying it was healthy. Therefore, the 95% claim was not a health claim.

And the CAA went further to explain the basis for the 95% claim – saying it was based on e-cigarettes not having the known carcinogenic chemicals present in tobacco or any other known carcinogens. This meant the claim was not based on an individual product or specific manufacturer but applicable to vaping in general.

‘Unreasonable’ to request evidence

“[The claim] was not quantified by the objective testing of vapes on human individuals over any period of time but estimated by experts making a judgement based on the lack of known carcinogens in nicotine vapes,” the CAA said.

Due to this, the PHE claim was incapable of “objective substantiation” as understood under the CAP code. And consequently, “it was unreasonable to expect IVG to provide substantiation for the claim“, the association added.

Further, the ASA not permitting the PHE statement – or any other justified risk statistics – would not be in the public interest, the CAA argued. It said including a figure from an authoritative source such as the PHE on the risk reduction of switching from smoking to vaping was beneficial to the individual and society.

‘Implied health claim’

But the ASA disagreed. The standards authority said it thought consumers were likely to interpret the 95% less harmful to mean that by using IVG’s e-cigarettes, existing smokers could improve their overall health – rather than it simply being degrees safer to use. Therefore, this was an “implied health claim” related to a medically unlicensed vaping product. It also said the ad featured a wide array of products and made references to the brand in general. This meant the company would have had to provide evidence supporting the entire range being 95% less harmful than conventional cigarettes.

“We had not seen any evidence that showed IVG Vapes’ products, individually or as a range, were 95% less harmful than smoking,” the ASA said, “and we therefore concluded that the claim was misleading.”

The UK’s advertising regulator also took issue with IVG reposting the ad on its LinkedIn page. It said this violated the CAP prohibition on advertising online, because even though the company was updating followers on marketing activities – rather than running the ad as a promotion in itself – it was possible for the public to access the content and thus promoted unlicensed e-cigarettes.

Cinema ads are exempt from CAP prohibitions on marketing communications promoting medically unlicensed e-cigarettes, which is why IVG was able to run the ad in cinemas originally.