Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

There's a big puffy cloud of smoke hanging over the vaping versus cigarettes debate this week.  It's all kicked off because the Government's handing out free vapes to smokers to stop them getting what we know could be a death sentence.  They've done a deal to buy a bunch of them for $500,000. Between last January and July, 3000 smokers were given vaping kits and nearly half of them stopped smoking. Which, ordinarily, you would think would be a good news story.  Not so for Kelly Burrowes, Auckland University Vaping Researcher. She said on Newstalk ZB that it wasn't.  So I spoke yesterday to Robert Beaglehole. Yes, the Robert Beaglehole. Former boss of the World Health Organisation. Public health expert.  He says some of the searches are from laboratory-based scientist with no epidemiological or public health experience and doesn't have the big picture in mind. He says one of the other antagonists to this approach clearly doesn't comprehend the evidence, because it's a my