What Is Tar in Cigarettes? Secret Nature Using nicotine based vapes is likely to cause lung and oral cancer, even if e cigarette users do not smoke tobacco, a watershed academic review has found. Some reports state that these new, flavored smoking devices are less harmful than tobacco cigarettes but how safe is vaping? In this third part of a four part series, China Daily examines the Massachusetts new vaping campaign done with student input masslive.com