Vapes vs cigarettes: Which are more harmful?

SINGAPORE: Singapore recent crackdown on vapes, imposing far stricter penalties,  has raised questions about why cigarettes have not been banned as well, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said recently.

He told members of the media that the question appears to have arisen due to the impression that vapes are less harmful than cigarettes.

A vape pod, on the contrary, can last much longer than a cigarette. When people finish smoking one cigarette, they stop at that. With a vape, however, one pod can last a person the whole day, or even two days.

He added that when officers from the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) tested the vape pods that they had seized, they discovered that one vape pod could contain as much nicotine as four packs of cigarettes. Nicotine, a chemical from tobacco plants, is highly addictive and can cause withdrawal symptoms when a person stops smoking or vaping suddenly.

“For someone who keeps on vaping the whole day (will have) taken in the equivalent of four packs of cigarettes,” the Health Minister said, adding, “So this whole idea that we should not ban (vapes) because we didn’t ban cigarettes is not true. It was correct to ban vapes from the outset.”

Significantly, Mr Ong underlined the effect of vaping on the young, who smoke far less than older generations.

“But vapes got introduced, and some of them are picking up vaping.” On the other hand, for them smoking is “not cool… and it smells”, he added.

He tackled the issue at greater length in a speech on Aug 28.

“Vapes have become a delivery device, and then the two behaviours (smoking and substance abuse) become mixed up, and vapes become a gateway for very serious substance abuse, so we are facing a very different situation now,” he said.

“So there are many people, especially the young, who picked up vaping thinking that it is all right and it’s not as harmful as cigarettes, and then out of curiosity, out of coercion, or out of just ignorance, they wandered into substance abuse, which is what we are seeing now with etomidate. That is the situation we are facing — something new,” he added.

Concern over vaping arose after some vapes were discovered in Singapore to be laced with etomidate, an anaesthetic agent. These are popularly known as Kpods, which is short for ketamine pods. The government recently reclassified etomidate from a poison to a Class C drug, which means users face higher penalties.

As of February 2025, etomidate has been listed as a dangerous drug in China and Hong Kong. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has said that the substance has also been discovered in vaping products in Thailand and Indonesia.

The Hong Kong Free Press reported on Friday (Aug 29) that between January and June 2025, authorities recorded 338 etomidate users. In the same period last year, only 85 were reported. /TISG

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