The proportion of UK adults who use vapes on a daily basis has increased from 4.5 per cent to 7.8 per cent since 2020, according to new data from ASH, with the proportion of daily smokers falling from 9.7 per cent to 6.6 per cent over the same period.
While the number of adults who used vapes ‘daily or occasionally’ overtook the number of smokers in 2024, this is the first time that daily vaping has overtaken daily smoking – representing a ‘momentous shift’, the charity states. The data comes from an ASH-commissioned YouGov survey of more than 13,000 people.
Although around 3.3m ex-smokers have now used vapes to quit, more than a million 11-17-year-olds have also tried vaping, highlighting ‘both the success of vaping as a quit aid and the urgent need to reduce youth uptake’ says ASH. The government should ‘proceed swiftly’ to regulate the promotion of vapes to children via the recently introduced Tobacco and Vapes Act, but should also make sure that regulation is proportionate and does not deter adults from using vapes as a quitting tool, it adds. Three quarters of young people report seeing vaping promotion, whether in shops or on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Around 60 per cent of vapers are ex-smokers, while 32 per cent use both tobacco and vapes, and 8 per cent have never smoked. Almost a third of ex-smokers who used vapes to stop smoking in the last five years have also reported giving up vaping, demonstrating that vaping ‘is not a permanent replacement’ for smoking for the majority of those using it to quit. A separate study by ASH, Ending smoking inequality, estimates that smoking is still pushing an estimated 417,000 UK households below the poverty line.
‘This data shows both the promise and the challenge of vaping,’ said ASH chief executive Hazel Cheeseman. ‘Millions of adults have used vapes to quit smoking, with an estimated 3.3m ex-smokers now vaping instead of smoking and many going on to stop vaping altogether. That is a major public health success which should not be undermined. At the same time, it remains unacceptable that so many children are experimenting with vapes. The fact that around 1.1m under-18s have tried vaping shows why the government must act quickly to restrict the promotion and marketing of these products to young people. The task now is to get the balance right: make vaping less visible and less appealing to children while ensuring it remains an effective and accessible quitting aid for adults who smoke.’