Globally, youth vaping and its supposed health impacts have dominated public discussion and driven policies, to the extent that other needs tend to be overlooked. Among the forgotten populations, many older adults have started vaping in recent years, having previously smoked ever since their youth.
It’s true that older people vape in lower numbers than younger adults. Detailed figures are often less readily available, given the disproportionate focus on youth. But in the United States, surveys and studies have suggested that somewhere around 1 percent of people in 50-plus age groups vape daily. In the United Kingdom, where public health authorities have generally been more pro-vaping, an estimated 5.8 percent of adults over 55 vape.
Smaller in percentage terms, perhaps, but still comfortably over a million older vapers in those two countries alone. What are some of their stories, and how do they view the moral panic over youth vaping?
“If vapes he had existed in my youth, I would definitely have used them instead of smoking.”
Alan Beard is 71. He started smoking when he was 15, he said, and had a 40-a-day habit for 45 years. But in 2013 he joined an online vaping forum, and very soon quit cigarettes for good.
“After two weeks of avid reading and questions, I decided to take the plunge,” he told Filter. After ordering “a couple of simple vape pens plus e-liquids,” he continued, “I never smoked again.”
Beard lives in what he calls “a quiet part of the world”—in Powys, Wales—and described being somewhat insulated as a result. “I was unaware of any moral panic regarding youth vaping, so it didn’t put me off whatsoever.”
But still, he did quickly sense an adverse reaction to what he was doing. “I rapidly realized that, to some, I had quit ‘the wrong way,’ much to my amazement,” he said. “Official bodies were making foolish inaccurate statements, ranging from the WHO, the EU and the UK health minister at the time, Jeremy Hunt.”
Efforts to end smoking have morphed into trying to stamp out nicotine use, said Beard, who later became an associate with the New Nicotine Alliance advocacy group. The focus, he emphasizes, should be wholly on smoking-related harms.
“If vapes he had existed in my youth, I would definitely have used them instead of smoking,” he said, and he would have been better off for that.
“Kids are going to experiment—that’s what kids do. Vaping is so much less harmful.”
“I enjoy vaping and plan to continue,” said Darcy Mackenzie, 67. A grandmother of six in Ontario, Canada, her favorite flavor to vape is strawberry ice cream.
“I started smoking at 13, and tried every method to quit but always went back,” she told Filter.
That changed in June 2014, when Mackenzie and her son, plus three friends, all discovered vapes together. “I’ve never smoked another cigarette since.”
Like plenty of other people, Mackenzie started vaping at a higher nicotine level, which she later chose to reduce. Regardless, she’s comfortable with the established science that vapes are far safer than cigarettes.
That extends to the wellbeing of her grandkids, when secondhand vapor is much safer than secondhand smoke—and even to the possibility that they might pick up vapes themselves one day.
“Kids are going to experiment—that’s what kids do,” Mackenzie said. But if they’re going to experiment with something, “vaping is so much less harmful than smoke.”
The great thing for older people who smoke to know is that it’s never too late to benefit from quitting. Doing so at any age (or if not, even cutting down on cigarettes) will reduce your risk of cancer and other diseases in the years ahead. That firmly includes if you switch to safer nicotine products.
Other benefits may be social. One of the interviewees in this film, for example, shares that he started vaping after his daughter-in-law told him, “You can’t see the grandkids with all that smoke on you.”
Additionally, the fact that vapes can reduce fire risk is of particular relevance to older people who are less mobile, or those impacted by age-related neurocognitive disorders. In the UK, firefighters have urged people to switch to vaping for this reason. Research has also pointed to allowing vaping as a way to reduce fire incidents in mental health settings—something that might translate to assisted living facilities for older people.
“Most patients are reluctant, saying, ‘I’m too old and I’m going to die soon anyway.’ They truly believe that vaping is far more dangerous than smoking.”
Julie Martin works at one such facility in Australia. She also vapes, having used the devices to quit cigarettes during her 28-year career as a nurse. But she told Filter that most homes like the one where she works have outdated policies on smoking cessation.
Residents “are told to quit smoking, and are then given brochures for quit hotlines, which are useless,” Martin said.
She and her colleagues have nonetheless spoken with residents who smoke about how much safer it is to vape.
“Most are reluctant to change and make the same excuse, saying, ‘I’m too old and I’m going to die soon anyway,’” she said. “Patients are completely different in aged care; they truly believe that vaping is far more dangerous than smoking, so I never pushed it with them. They are elderly and don’t handle some conversations well.”
Even so, Martin was able to persuade a few residents to switch. One man was intrigued when he saw her use a vape, she related, so she seized the opportunity. “I explained there was a lot of misinformation regarding vaping, and I told him about my smoking-to-vaping transition story.”
Wanting to stop buying costly cigarettes, the resident asked his son to speak to Martin about vapes, and the son purchased his father’s first vape that very day.
However, “all this happened before Australia went crazy and put in all these ridiculous regulations in place,” Martin said. She was referring to the country’s recent policy of banning retail sales of vapes (now slightly amended to permit pharmacy sales only).
When older people worldwide are still far likelier to smoke than to use safer alternatives, there’s enormous harm reduction potential. Realizing that potential will require big changes in policy and messaging, however—including work like educating medical professionals, when older people place high trust in doctors, but most doctors remain ignorant about tobacco harm reduction.
Most of all, it will require the world to remember a population that suffers the majority of smoking-related harms.
Photograph (cropped) by E-cig Twigg/Vaper City via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0
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