Just over half of British adults who quit smoking in the last five years used vapes to help them do so, according to a new national survey. An estimated 2.7 million people have quit cigarettes in this way since 2019.
Other headline findings include that 5.6 million adults in Great Britain currently vape—the highest total recorded, at about 11 percent of the population. And 53 percent of those people formerly smoked, but no longer do.
That’s around 3 million people who are currently vaping instead of smoking. Another 3.3 million people who formerly smoked have vaped at some point, but no longer do.
The Smokefree GB survey is conducted annually by the charity Action on Smoking and Heath (ASH). The 2024 analysis was released on August 12, and based on data from over 13,000 respondents, collected by the polling company YouGov.
“Millions of people have used vapes to successfully stop smoking in recent years, increasing healthy life expectancy and improving the nation’s productivity,” Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of ASH, said in a press release.
Vaping has long played a major smoking-cessation role in a country that has broadly welcomed it, albeit there are current political threats. Yet an estimated 6.4 million people in the United Kingdom still smoke, with well over 100,000 annual smoking-related deaths.
“We can see vaping reaching deeper into the base of adult smokers and reaching people who would likely have smoked for life.”
Vaping is vastly safer than smoking. And based on current trends, it now seems poised to overtake smoking in the UK for good.
Clive Bates, a former director of ASH, and now of Counterfactual Consulting, said the new survey results represent “a fantastic success story for tobacco harm reduction.”
“We can see vaping reaching deeper into the base of adult smokers and reaching people who would likely have smoked for life,” Bates told Filter. It’s the beginning of the end of smoking, he continued, “not by prohibition but by the power of consumer preference and innovation.”
Interestingly, the survey also reports that one third of people who used vapes to quit cigarettes in the past five years have since quit vaping, too.
Anti-vape advocates sometimes argue that switching just means replacing one addiction with another. But among people who recently quit first cigarettes, and then vapes, “the median length of time spent vaping was around a year,” the survey finds. That weighs against the notion that vapes are impossible to quit, even if most current vapers who switched have been vaping for over three years.
Additionally, 59 percent percent of those who currently vape “say that they use the same strength e-liquid as when they first started vaping,” the survey states, and “Those who have changed are more likely to [have] decreased than increased the strength.”
Nicotine is not particularly harmful, and higher-nicotine vapes play an important harm reduction role. But Louise Ross is among tobacco harm reduction experts to point out that ASH’s findings counter the narrative of vapes as “highly addictive.”
One finding that anti-vape advocates might focus on is a significant increase in “dual users”—people who both vape and smoke. An estimated 32 percent of people who smoke, or 2.2 million people, now also vape—up from 17 percent in 2021. (Among all adults who vape, 39 percent are dual users.)
It’s important to remember that for many people, a period of dual use is a step along the road to switching entirely. Bates attributes this increase to two main causes.
One of them is simply that the number of people vaping has increased by 50 percent since 2021—when the total was 3.7 million vapers, and when dual use was at its lowest. Many people who are more heavily dependent on cigarettes may now be attempting to switch.
“Over the same period, smoking has been decreasing, but the proportion of smokers who also vape has increased,” Bates said. “This suggests that vaping is reaching more deeply into the base of people who smoke. Many of these will find it hard to quit, or just don’t want to. More dependent smokers may be more likely to transition via a period of dual use.”
Much more would be possible if we “ended the anti-vaping activism, the doubt and misinformation, the bad science, the lazy journalism, and the moral panic that dominates the public discourse.”
But special attention, Bates said, should be paid to a second likely cause of increased dual use: ASH found that a staggering 50 percent of people who smoke—up from 32 percent in 2021, and the highest proportion ever recorded—now wrongly believe that vaping is as harmful as smoking, or worse. Reams of misinformation on vaping have led to this.
“If you think that one of the most valuable benefits of vaping doesn’t apply, then you have little incentive to move from dual use to exclusive vaping,” Bates said.
While ASH’s results are “impressive,” he continued, much more would be possible if we “ended the anti-vaping activism, the doubt and misinformation, the bad science, the lazy journalism, and the moral panic that dominates the public discourse on vaping and tobacco harm reduction.”
Cheeseman urged the government to “communicate more effectively that vaping is less harmful than smoking but not risk free, and should only be used as an aid to quitting.”
Many tobacco harm reductionists would contend that people taking up vaping when they would otherwise be likely to start smoking, due to “common liability,” is also a public health benefit.
ASH is supporting the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The proposed legislation was reintroduced by the UK’s new Labour government in July, framed as a means to reduce both smoking and youth vaping. But advocates including Bates have been highly critical of measures it contains—like giving ministers the power to regulate, and potentially ban, vape flavors.
The ASH survey itself underlines the established importance of flavors in helping people switch. It finds that 47 percent of adults who vape prefer fruit flavors, while 17 percent favor mint or menthol. Only 16 percent are choosing tobacco-flavored vapes.
Will future ASH surveys show a continuation, or acceleration, of the tobacco harm reduction success story? Much will depend on lawmakers.
The survey also speaks to the importance of disposable vapes, which, like flavors, are often blamed for youth vaping. These low-barrier devices are preferred by 30 percent of adults who currently vape.
In January, the previous Conservative government announced a plan to ban disposables, with ASH among the opponents of such a move. The Labour Party, which supported this at the time, has not yet clarified its plans in government.
Will future ASH surveys show a continuation, or acceleration, of the tobacco harm reduction success story shown in 2024? Much will depend on lawmakers.
“Imagine if the new government made it a mission to end smoking among the adult population alive today, and everyone pulled together to achieve that,” Bates said. “We would have very different legislation and policies under discussion. There would be no bans on disposables, no tax on vapes, and no talk of flavor bans or plain packaging. The Chief Medical Officer would be forcefully calling out risk misperceptions and cheering on the end of smoking.”
Photograph by Vaping360 via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0