Around one million adults in England now vape despite never being regular smokers, research suggests.
A new study suggests the number of people vaping in England who have never regularly smoked has increased sharply since 2021, when disposable e-cigarettes first started becoming popular.
According to the research, as of April 2024 the number has risen to one million, representing a sevenfold increase since 2021.
The findings, published in Lancet Public Health, suggest that most of these people are vaping daily and over a sustained period.
This increase was largely driven by young adults, with an estimated one in seven 18 to 24-year-olds (14%) who never regularly smoked now using e-cigarettes.
Despite the overall increase in people vaping since 2021, the researchers found the rise had levelled off since early 2023.
Experts say that banning disposable vapes, as the UK Government currently plans, is not likely to fix the problem as some brands have already launched reusable products.
Instead, they suggest, there should be stricter regulation around making the products look less appealing.
Senior author Professor Jamie Brown, of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, said: “These findings are a reminder that action is required to try to minimise vaping among young people who have never previously smoked.
“However, a balancing act is required to avoid deterring smokers from using e-cigarettes to quit.
“Banning disposables, as the UK Government currently plans, is unlikely to fix the issue as popular brands have already launched reusable products with very similar designs and prices.
“A sensible next step would be to introduce stricter regulation around product appearance, packaging and marketing, as those are less likely to reduce the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation – unlike, for instance, flavour bans.
“The fact that overall vaping prevalence appears to have levelled off since 2023 may reassure policymakers that it would be reasonable to begin with these measures and assess their impact.”
In the King’s Speech in July, ministers promised to table a Tobacco and Vapes Bill to progressively increase the age at which people can buy cigarettes, similar to a Bill of the same name tabled by the previous Conservative administration earlier this year – to ban shopkeepers from selling cigarettes to anybody born in 2009 or later.
The study looked at survey data collected between 2016 and 2024 from 153,073 adults (18 and over) in England, of whom 94,107 had never regularly smoked tobacco.
People were classed as never-regular-smokers if they said “I have never been a smoker (smoked for a year or more)”.
Before 2021, the proportion of never-regular-smokers who vaped in England was low, at an average of 0.5% between 2016 and 2020.
This increased to 3.5% by April 2024, equating to about a million vapers.
Among these, more than half (an estimated 588,000) were aged between 18 and 24, the study found.
It also found that the sharpest increase in the never-regular-smokers group was among those classed as the heaviest drinkers (of all ages), of whom 22% vaped.
This is compared with 3.0% and 1.3% among those drinking alcohol at low-risk levels or not at all.
Because smoking rates are higher among people who drink more heavily, this suggests vaping may be more common among people who would otherwise have gone on to smoke, the researchers say.
The researchers also found that in recent years people who had never regularly smoked tended to be younger, more were women, and more were drinking at increasing or higher-risk levels.
They also tended to have been vaping for longer, were more likely to use disposable devices and the highest-strength nicotine e-liquids, and to buy their products from supermarkets/convenience stores.
Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson, of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, said: “The public health impact of this substantial rise in vaping among people who have never regularly smoked will depend on what these people would otherwise be doing.
“It is likely that some would have smoked if vaping were not an available option.
“In this case, vaping is clearly less harmful.
“However, for those who would not have gone on to smoke, vaping regularly over a sustained period poses more risk than not vaping.”
A separate study led by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) indicates that banning the sale of tobacco to people born between 2006 and 2010 could prevent 1.2 million lung cancer deaths by 2095.
The results are based on a scenario in which the sales were banned for people born between January 1 2006 and December 31 2010 and this intervention was perfectly enforced.
The group included a total of 650 million people.
Also published in The Lancet Public Health, the research includes 185 countries and draws from the World Health Organisation Mortality Database and the IARC Cancer Incidence in Five Continents database.
Another study from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors (GBD) Tobacco Forecasting Collaborators, also published in the same journal, looked at speeding up the decline in tobacco smoking globally.
It found that cutting smoking from current levels to 5% everywhere could increase life expectancy and prevent millions of premature deaths by 2050 – and would result in one year of additional life expectancy in males and 0.2 years in females.
The findings suggest that based on current trends, global life expectancy is likely to rise to 78.3 years by 2050 – up from 73.6 years in 2022.
In a scenario where tobacco smoking was eliminated from 2023 onwards, this could result in up to 1.5 additional years of life expectancy among males and 0.4 years among females in 2050.
Senior author Professor Stein Emil Vollset, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said: “We must not lose momentum in efforts to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, smoking around the world.
“Our findings highlight that millions of premature deaths could be avoided by bringing an end to smoking.”
