On 4 February 2026, ANSES published its health risk assessment report on vaping products — the result of three years of work and the analysis of over 2,500 scientific studies. The very next day, Kumulus Vape issued a press release in response to media coverage that, in the Group’s view, misrepresented the Agency’s findings.
A clear hierarchy between vaping and tobacco
The report’s central conclusion can be summed up in a single sentence: the effects associated with e-cigarette use are not of equivalent severity to those caused by tobacco (p. 16). ANSES specifies that no category of effect exceeds, in either severity or level of evidence, those observed for smoked tobacco, and that the absence of combustion remains vaping’s primary advantage (p. 25).
The Agency further estimates that 700,000 people have quit smoking thanks to e-cigarettes and explicitly recommends them as an alternative solution for smokers struggling to quit, within a harm reduction framework.
Levels of evidence the media glossed over
ANSES classifies its conclusions according to four levels: Established, Probable, Possible, and Insufficient. For smoked tobacco, cardiovascular, respiratory, and carcinogenic effects are all classified as “Established.” For vaping, no effect reaches that level. The report further notes that no study conducted on e-cigarette users has identified the development of tumours (p. 14).
Despite these findings, several newsrooms presented hypotheses classified as “Possible” — the lowest level of evidence on the ANSES scientific scale — as established health risks.
Kumulus Vape’s response
In response to these distortions, Kumulus Vape published a detailed press release restoring the facts and announced a formal referral to ARCOM regarding certain broadcast coverage.
Rémi Baert, Chairman and CEO of the Group, stated: “We have never claimed that vaping is risk-free, and ANSES does not say so either. But turning scientific hypotheses into medical certainties, glossing over the favourable comparison with smoked tobacco, and presenting a level of evidence qualified as ‘possible’ as a public health alert — that is not informing, it is lying by omission.”