In the moral panic over vaping, we risk forgetting that cigarettes kill

The rise in vaping, especially among young people, has led to bans and an extra tax on vaping liquid. Photograph: Igor Ilkov/Alamy

Imagine we’d found a way to get millions of people to switch from alcohol, which in this country kills 10,000 people a year, to another kind of substance: still addictive, still not risk-free, but when compared with the booze, pretty harmless. Coffee, say.

A public health miracle is hailed. Liver units are empty. Heart surgeons spend more time on the golf course, and costly government prevention programmes close. Millions chink into NHS coffers.