Has vaping peaked in the UK?
Saturday, October 17, 2020 at 14:48 
According to ASH this week:
There has been little growth in the rate at which smokers use e-cigarettes since 2014. In 2020, 17.4% of smokers were using an e-cigarette; almost unchanged from 2014, when 17.6% reported current use.
Unfounded concerns about the relative safety of e-cigarettes are a likely cause – just 39% of smokers in Great Britain correctly believe vaping is less harmful than smoking in 2020.
Moreover, adds their press release:
... data from ASH from their annual survey with YouGov found that in March 2020 there were 3.2 million e-cigarette users in Great Britain down from 3.6 million in 2019.
I've written about this several times (see links below) so at risk of repeating myself here are a few home truths that many vapers (and vaping advocates) seem reluctant to hear or address.
The initial surge in popularity of e-cigarettes (2010-2014) was based not on confirmed smokers switching to e-cigarettes but on those who were actively looking to quit but had previously struggled to do so.
In the words of Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, at an event sponsored by PMI and entitled ‘How long until smoking is history?', the initial surge in e-cigarette use was a classic example of “low-hanging fruit" syndrome.
What he meant was, if you wanted to quit smoking and were looking for a more enjoyable smoking cessation aid than patches or gum, you were very likely to be receptive to e-cigarettes.
Today that “low hanging fruit” cohort has been weaned off smoking by a combination of e-cigarettes and the high cost of tobacco and what we are left with is a significant and increasing proportion of smokers who don’t want to stop.
Despite that, very little attempt has been made to understand why confirmed smokers won’t switch to e-cigarettes.
A report funded by Forest and conducted by the Centre for Substance Use Research (The Pleasure of Smoking: The views of confirmed smokers) provided some evidence but even when it led to the publication of a peer-reviewed paper - ‘Why Don’t More Smokers Switch to Using E-Cigarettes: The Views of Confirmed Smokers‘ - in June 2017, very few people in public health or the vaping industry showed any interest in reading it.
In fact, neither Neil nor I were ever asked to present or discuss the findings at a vaping or public health event, which I found bizarre.
Of course there are smokers who continue to switch to e-cigarettes but - and it’s a significant ‘but’ - not only has the rate stalled, even more vapers appear to be giving up e-cigarettes.
Some of this may be due to ‘unfounded concerns about the relative safety of e-cigarettes’, as ASH says, but public health campaigners - including ASH and Public Health England - have always been very clear that, in their view, vaping should not become a long-term habit, like smoking.
Vaping, in their opinion, is not something that should be encouraged per se. E-cigarettes are to be advocated only as a stepping stone towards complete abstinence from all forms of nicotine.
Vaping, we are also told, should never be taken up by non-smokers. What message does that send? I’ll tell you.
It suggests there is something to fear from vaping, or nicotine, when the evidence suggests that the problem isn’t nicotine but the delivery system, and despite hundreds (thousands?) of reports and studies, there is still little evidence that e-cigarettes are a significant threat to health.
Nor, despite repeated claims by some public health campaigners (outside the UK especially), is there significant evidence that vaping is a gateway to smoking tobacco.
My principal argument however is that in those early years, and especially when e-cigarette advertising was briefly permitted, there was a buzz about vaping.
Remember this (‘Vaping and television advertising‘, November 10, 2014)? This is what I told Sky News on the eve of the first ever TV ad featuring someone actually vaping:
“There's no reason for e-cigarettes to be over-regulated because there's no evidence they are harmful and little evidence non-smokers are using them.
"Overwhelmingly e-cigs are used by smokers who want to cut down or quit or by smokers who want to use an alternative source of nicotine in places where smoking is banned.
"The idea that advertising e-cigarettes re-normalises smoking or encourages non-smokers to smoke tobacco is another example of anti-smoking paranoia.
"E-cigs are a nicotine delivery product. Nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine. E-cigarettes have the potential to wean millions of smokers off cigarettes but for that to happen they have to be marketed in a way that makes them attractive to smokers.
"Instead some public health campaigners want to suffocate the product with unnecessary rules and regulations. Thankfully, with regard to advertising, the government has adopted a more sensible attitude which we applaud."
Well, that didn’t last long. Today e-cigarette advertising is once again banned and, thanks to the EU’s revised Tobacco Products Directive, e-cigarettes are indeed being suffocated by regulation.
Meanwhile many vaping advocacy groups openly use the language of the tobacco control industry, which is far more likely to alienate than win converts among adults who enjoy smoking.
A few years ago there were vaping festivals that celebrated vaping not as a quit smoking aid (although it was obviously that) but as a pleasurable pastime in its own right.
When I attended Vapefest in a large showground in Shropshire in 2015 I was genuinely taken aback (and impressed) by the enthusiasm for vaping and the choices (important word) available to consumers.
Today the message I took home that day seems to have been lost, and I think I know why.
Vaping in the UK is increasingly ‘owned’ by tobacco control and public health campaigners. The likes of ASH were late and initially reluctant to endorse vaping but, boy, are they in control now, which begs the question:
What impact do you think ASH’s ‘endorsement’ of e-cigarettes has on smokers, confirmed smokers in particular?
This, after all, is an organisation that has pursued smokers relentlessly for decades, demanding (and getting) smoking bans and a host of other laws designed to denormalise both them and their habit.
Thanks to ASH and their scaremongering tactics, a wedge has been driven between smokers and non-smokers, some of whom are now convinced that passive smoking is a serious threat to their health, even in the open air.
The irony is that, having helped create a disproportionate fear of secondhand smoke, it is hardly surprising that many people also dislike/fear the vapour exhaled by e-cigarette users as well. What goes around comes around.
Either way, it’s my guess that ASH’s current support for e-cigarettes does vaping very few favours, and another reason is this: the initial attraction of e-cigarettes was based on pleasure and empowerment.
Unlike patches and gum, vaping mimicked the act of smoking and as the technology developed and the choice of e-liquid flavours multiplied it also became something that, for some, was as enjoyable if not more enjoyable than smoking.
In those early days e-cigarettes also gave a sense of empowerment to smokers who wanted to quit because it was their decision to switch.
While public health and groups like ASH were still swithering, no-one told smokers to switch. They just did it.
There was no coercion or false incentive. It was entirely their decision - prompted, perhaps, by a personal recommendation or the influence of a friend or family member.
To vape was to raise a middle finger to anti-smoking fanatics. Look, many vapers seemed to be saying. We enjoyed smoking and now we’re going to enjoy vaping.
Events such as Vapefest were an eye-opener to me because everyone seemed to be wearing a Black Sabbath (or similar) t-shirt and it was like wandering into a heavy metal concert, although the smell of strawberry or mango in the air suggested otherwise.
The point is, for one brief moment, vaping felt like a counter-culture. Now it’s been adopted by the establishment.
What historians may come to regard as the golden age of vaping happened because there were relatively few regulations designed to restrict the use of e-cigarettes.
Public health and anti-smoking campaigners had yet to seize control of the product through unnecessary laws (advertising bans) and other restrictive practices such as vaping bans (which they never seem to oppose).
E-cigarettes have been embraced by public health not as a pleasurable consumer product in its own right but as a quit smoking tool. Long-term use, however, is frowned upon.
Vapefest - which featured live bands, like a mini rock festival - no longer exists. Pre-Covid the big vaping events were trade fairs set in anonymous exhibition halls.
One comparison might be the way pirate radio was neutered by the launch of Radio 1 in 1967.
For years in the Fifties and early Sixties the BBC had largely ignored ‘pop culture’ (pop music in particular).
Eventually the government (and the BBC) was forced to recognise the appeal of Radio Luxembourg (Fab 208) and the pirate radio stations, and so Radio 1 was born.
Did Radio 1 ever recreate the excitement of the pirate radio stations that empowered teenagers to listen to the music they wanted to hear, albeit on crackly transistor radios with poor reception?
No, it didn’t. With few exceptions, DJs who seemed edgy and rebellious when they were working aboard a ship in the North Sea often became parodies of their former selves.
Endorsed and controlled by the establishment as a quit smoking tool, e-cigarettes are similarly, and arguably, less appealing than they were.
There’s still a substantial market for them because it’s a safer product, but enthusiasm for them isn’t the same, despite the ever improving technology.
Another unpalatable truth for many vaping advocates is this:
E-cigarettes may be the most popular smoking cessation aid but the number one method of quitting is still cold turkey.
Again, public health campaigners who endorse e-cigarettes to wean consumers off smoking - but refuse to endorse long-term vaping - aren’t helping.
If most smokers manage to quit without the help of e-cigarettes or NRTs, why bother with e-cigarettes when you’re being told they are not a long-term solution to your nicotine ‘addiction’?
The truth is, a lot of the messaging from public health about e-cigarettes is all wrong. It maintains the myth that long-term ‘addiction’ to nicotine is unhealthy, when the serious threat to health is the delivery system not the drug itself.
The refusal of politicians and public health professionals to engage with tobacco companies on public health is also unhelpful and counter-productive.
Like it or not, the leading brands of ‘closed cartridge’ e-cigarettes are made by Big Tobacco. They may have come late to vaping but they are now leading players.
By continuing its aggressive and infantile war on the tobacco industry, tobacco control campaigners perpetuate the outdated myth of an ‘evil’ industry that has no interest in public health.
In 2020 this is blatantly false and to those who say, “In that case, why don’t they stop manufacturing and selling cigarettes?”, there are obvious reasons why they can’t (and shouldn’t), especially when there is still significant demand for them.
Meanwhile, by refusing to engage with the tobacco industry, government and public health fuel the idea that everything the industry is associated with - e-cigarettes included - should be viewed with caution or, worse, avoided.
Very few smokers, in my experience, blame the tobacco industry for their habit but, if you take all these things into consideration, is it any wonder that the number of vapers in the UK has stalled?
Instead of blaming “Unfounded concerns about the relative safety of e-cigarettes”, perhaps ASH should look closer to home.
PS. Having drafted this post I then read the latest Smoking Toolkit Study published by Smoking in England on October 12 which includes the latest ‘Trends in electronic cigarette use in England’.
Overall, the prevalence of e-cigarette use in the UK is summarised as follows:
• Use of e-cigarettes in adult population has remained relatively stable since late 2013
• Use of Juul and HNB products is currently rare
• E-cigarette use by never smokers remains negligible but use among long-term ex-smokers has grown
• E-cigarette use in smokers and recent ex-smokers has plateaued
• The majority of both e-cigarette and NRT users are ‘dual users’ (also smoke)
• A smaller proportion of both e-cigarette and NRT daily users are ‘dual users’ (also smoke)
See also some of my previous posts on this subject:
Vaping and tobacco trends (April 2014)
The rise of vaping and a potential threat (May 2017)
Tobacco control has created a generation of vaper haters (November 2017)
Beware anti-smoking campaigners and their siren pro-vaping voices (July 2019)
Foreword to Nicotine Wars (October 2019)
Reader Comments (3)
Its extremely rare for me to see people vaping now. Most people have reverted to real tobacco. Its much nicer. I never went away !
So nice, as usual, to read.
First of all, and in a way strangely, the situation is not the same in France as vaping has been growing steadily (well 2019/2020 remains to be analyzed and with the huge marketing ploy with Evali plus the global difficulties with the way covid-19 has been handled, the figures certainly stalled a bit) and you are more than welcome if/when you can visit.
Strangely as the authorities, despite not being violently against vaping, have not been as enthusiastic as in the UK.
Another thing to check is that counting vapers is not a very good measurement as around half of vapers quitting smoking a year will quit vaping (without going back to smoking) in the next 2 years. So the same number is an issue but is still a growth of people quitting smoking. Of course some vapers, in the first 2 years or later will go back to smoking for many reasons (and not only the enjoyment).
And yes, "only for smokers" and "only to quit" and "only for a certain times" are battles to continue to fight like "safer/as safe as most common goods" and "efficient to quit smoking", and that we continue to. Those even are essential battles as those 3 battles were those lost by NRT (all) and/or snus (some).
Of course those battles also are to reduce harm from smoking, as people not starting to smoke have far more success not to smoke, and people still doing something else have far more success not going back to smoking. But they are for consumer rights first.
I don't like chewing-gums, and they don't cure diseases, but they are common goods and I would fight for them to be available for people who like them… Perhaps that also is an issue to see far not enough people defending vaping but not using it and not being smokers.
Thanks again to keep some light in this world.
You’re bang on the money here, Simon. I think that regular vaping has reached “peak” now – any smokers who have wanted to quit and tried e-cigarettes to do so have either tried them, liked them and are still using them; or they’ve tried them, not liked them, and gone back to smoking real cigarettes; or they’ve tried them, found them useful in quitting real cigarettes, and have now given up the e-cigs, too. None of which scenarios makes an increase in vaper numbers terribly likely.
But then, when you analyse it, vaping has only ever been a quitting aid, no matter how much vape manufacturers might try and protest otherwise – the miniscule numbers of never-smokers taking up vaping just for the pleasure of vaping alone is testament to that. And quit-smoking aids have never been cool, badass, edgy or appealingly anti-authority in the way that smoking has always traditionally been. The bottom line is that there’s nothing remotely rebellious about doing as you are told, no matter how you do it. When e-cigarettes first started gaining in popularity, there was a tiny window of opportunity for vapers to join forces with smokers and, by association, move vaping out of the realms of obedient-drone territory and into the “two fingers up to the bullies” community, but they squandered it by instead trying desperately to become part of that same playground bullies’ “gang” by mimicking their words, their attitutudes and their dogmatic views about real smoking.
Oh well, they can’t say they weren’t warned, Simon – you’ve said on here many, many times how careful they should be before they tried to jump into bed with a bunch of swivel-eyed zealots who had, without a second’s thought, previously been their own worst persecutors. But they didn’t listen then, and I doubt that – even as their numbers continue to fall – they’ll listen now, either.