A new survey in England found that there’s a sharp increase in the number of non-regular smokers who have taken up vaping. One million adults in England who did not regularly smoke have now , according to new research. The estimates come from a survey published in the on Thursday and reveal a sevenfold increase in the number of adults who were not regular smokers but have turned to vaping since 2021.
This increase is driven by young adults, the study authors said, with 14 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old non-regular smokers now using . Sarah Jackson, the study’s lead author and a principal research fellow at University College London’s Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group, says the public health impact of the survey results depends on whether these people would have otherwise smoked tobacco. "It is likely that some would have smoked if vaping were not an available option.
In this case, vaping is clearly less harmful," Jackson said in a statement. "However, for those who would not have gone on to smoke, vaping regularly over a sustained period poses more risk than not vaping". The estimates were based on survey data from more than 153,000 adults in England collected between 2016 and 2024.
Around 60 per cent of those surveyed were not , meaning they responded that they had never smoked for a year or more. The researchers found that up to 2021, the proportion of adult non-smokers who vaped was stable at 0.5 per cent, but from 2021, this increased to 3.
5 per cent. The authors al.
