I think it was the prime minister (or spokesperson) who made this very clever argument: (paraphrasing) “we are not taking away choice… cigarettes are designed to inherently take away your choice by trapping you in an addiction.”
I’m not picking sides here, just pointing out a great piece of rhetoric to spin the policy as taking away something that takes away your choice. Effectively putting forward the idea that you don’t have choice to begin with.
(sorry to say this rhetoric was not mentioned in the linked article; I just heard it on BBC World Service)
I doubt vaping has the health consequences that cigs do. Baking the plant at a precise temperature needed to just release the desired chemicals instead of burning it and releasing all toxins presumably would result in less cancer. Cigs also have filters that attempt (and fail) to trap the unwanted chemicals and iirc there’s also some recent research that the filters themselves have some negative health consequences (for both the smoker and for the environment when the discarded filter chemicals leech into the ground water).
Note I’ve not studied this in depth but that’s my off-the-cuff understanding.
Vapes have their own set of issues, especially the cheap ones where you can end up with heavy metals in the vape smoke. However, it is still a better choice if you are going to do it at all. Not doing it at all is by far the absolute best. Followed by vaping it, which is still pretty good. Followed by actually smoking it, which is the worst. By far.