Press conference in Q4 of 2026: the launch of the MOVE website and the publication of our commissioned research. Media only. Event details
Press conference in Q4 of 2026: the launch of the MOVE website and the publication of our commissioned research. Media only. Event details
Research
On harm reduction, nicotine without smoke, the latest Cochrane review, and more.
One
MOVE commissioned an independent study examining the consequences of a vape ban for public health, product regulation and the illicit market in Malaysia. We will publish a summary of its findings.
Two
High-certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes help more people stop smoking than traditional nicotine replacement therapy. A living review that is updated as new trials appear.
It is about smoking cessation among adults who already smoke. It says nothing about people who never smoked, nothing about young people, and nothing about long-term harm. It reports short-term side effects, but it is not a long-term safety study.
Pools randomised controlled trials on cessation efficacy and reported safety outcomes. Sits alongside the Cochrane review as independent confirmation from a separate research team.
Trial follow-up periods are short relative to the timescale on which smoking-related disease develops. Efficacy at six or twelve months is not a statement about twenty years.
A large randomised trial from a United States cancer centre, in which adults who smoke were given e-cigarettes without guidance, finding e-cigarettes effective as cessation aids. Cited in international coverage of the Malaysian debate.
It is a United States trial of adults who already smoke, and it says nothing about people who never smoked or about long-term harm.
Adult daily smoking in New Zealand fell from 15 per cent in 2015-16 to below 7 per cent by 2022-23, with the annual rate of decline increasing about five-fold after 2018-19. Youth vaping peaked in 2022 and fell after regulation. The authors conclude that regulated access to substantially less harmful nicotine products can complement demand and supply reduction and accelerate reductions in smoking.
New Zealand data, a different population, a different enforcement environment and a different regulatory sequence from Malaysia’s. It is evidence that one regulated model coincided with a fast decline; it is not a forecast for Malaysia.
Three
The origin of the “around 95% less harmful than smoking” estimate. This figure is also often cited by MOVE in the conversation on vaping.
The estimate is a contested one. It rested substantially on an expert elicitation exercise rather than on long-term outcome data. The elicitation was a 2014 multi-criteria decision analysis by Nutt and colleagues in European Addiction Research. The Lancet published an editorial questioning the review in August 2015.
The successor to the Public Health England 2015 review, it is more cautious in its language than the 2015 report, and considerably better evidenced.
While it does not reaffirm the 95% less harmful than smoking estimate, it does conclude that in the short and medium term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking. This is also the argument for harm reduction, which is one of the key pillars of MOVE’s advocacy.
A medical royal college’s position that e-cigarettes are substantially less harmful than combustible tobacco, with the 2024 review backing their use to help smokers stop. The 2016 report states that the hazard from long-term inhalation of vapour from the e-cigarettes available at the time “is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco”. It carries weight because it comes from a body of physicians with no stake in the product.
The 2024 report pairs its support for e-cigarettes as a cessation tool with a call to reduce their appeal, availability and affordability to people who do not smoke, including children and young people.
FOUR
A regional consumer critique of World Health Organization positions on electronic nicotine delivery systems, written from the Asia Pacific. It is the clearest statement of the consumer-rights case in this region.
Advocacy, and it reads as advocacy. CAPHRA argues a position MOVE broadly shares. Weigh it as argument, not as a finding.
A challenge to how youth vaping figures are presented internationally, and to the way survey questions about ever-use get reported as regular use.
International data, not Malaysian. The author’s affiliation, Pinney Associates, has consulted for tobacco and pharmaceutical clients. We know of no independent Malaysian study of youth uptake.
Addresses the claim that vaping leads young people into smoking, and the difficulty of separating a gateway effect from shared underlying risk factors.
International data and not Malaysian.
FIVE
SEATCA’s substantive 2026 policy demand, addressed to the minister: a comprehensive ban on the sale, production, distribution and use of e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and other new nicotine products, expedited without further delay. It cites adolescent e-cigarette use rising from 9.8 per cent in 2017 to 14.9 per cent in 2022, an annual vaping-related healthcare cost of up to RM223.5 million, and more than 40 countries with bans, including eight ASEAN members.
Their argument echoes the Ministry of Health’s argument on the heavy burden of vaping-related healthcare costs and the rise of adolescent use.
The clearest Malaysian statement of the case for prohibition, from a domestic health policy think tank.
A policy position paper rather than new evidence. We answer it here.
A retrospective cohort of about 4.5 million adults from South Korea’s National Health Screening Programme. Compared with people who quit smoking completely, e-cigarette use after cessation was associated with a higher incidence of lung cancer and with a higher rate of lung-cancer death. It is the most significant evidence against the harm reduction framing.
It is observational, and the authors state that causality cannot be established. Its comparison group is people who quit nicotine altogether, not people who kept smoking, and outcomes for the vaping group remained better than for continued smoking. The journal page is paywalled and we read the findings from the Europe PMC record.
A qualitative assessment drawing on human biomarker studies, animal studies and mechanistic data, whose authors conclude that e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer. It reached Malaysian consumer media in June 2026.
The authors state their own limit: “Our assessment is qualitative and does not involve a numerical estimate of cancer risk or burden. We’ll only be able to determine the precise risk once longer-term studies are available.”
A respiratory-medicine review grouping vaping-related lung disease as EVALI plus pneumothorax, hypersensitivity pneumonitis and bronchiolitis obliterans, and concluding that these devices are no longer viewed as safe. It is also the source for one of the few regulatory points that runs our way: the United Kingdom and the European Union have banned diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione from e-liquids.
A narrative review rather than a systematic one, and it does not weigh vaping against continued smoking, which is the comparison we base our argument on.
Former smokers who used e-cigarettes had about twice the risk of relapsing to cigarettes compared with former smokers who did not: relative risk 2.03, 95 per cent confidence interval 1.39 to 2.96, falling to 1.38, 1.11 to 1.65, on the adjusted measures. Earlier versions of this website cited this paper on three pages as if it showed the opposite. We corrected those pages in September 2026 and list the paper here, among the sources that argue against us.
Six studies, three in the quantitative synthesis, from the United States, the United Kingdom and France. It measures e-cigarette use as a risk factor for relapse in people who had already stopped everything. That is a different question from what happens to people currently vaping when a legal supply is withdrawn.
MOVE answers these criticisms, and others, on The case against us.
Please cite the original publishers. If you have spotted an error or if you have further questions and would like to engage with us, we can be reached through the media page.
To cite this page, you can also use the line below:
MOVE, Malaysian Organization of Vape Entity, "The evidence library", last reviewed 23 October 2026, move-malaysia.org/evidence-library.
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