UKVIA Director General John Dunne says more action is required to help smokers fully transition to cigarettes following publication of new research from UCL researchers.
The study, published in the journal Addiction, found that between 2016 and 2024, the proportion of people both smoking and vaping rose from 3.5% (about one in 30) to 5.2% (about one in 20).
The increase was found to be greatest among young adults, with nearly two thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds who smoked also vaping in 2024 compared to one in five in 2016.
The research team also found that, among dual users, there had been a shift away from more frequent smoking to more frequent vaping, with the proportion smoking daily and vaping non-daily halving from 32% to 15%, while the proportion vaping daily and smoking non-daily more than doubled from 8% to 22%.
UKVIA Director General John Dunne said: “We are now seeing the lowest smoking rates among both adults and young people in the UK but this report highlights that smokers are confused about the relative risks of vaping and smoking.
“We must do a better job to convince smokers to fully switch to vaping so they will see the major health benefits of moving away from a product that kills one in every two of its users.”
John also criticised those who sought to use the survey to claim that vaping acted as a gateway to smoking, insisting that all the evidence showed that the opposite was true.
He said: “There is no evidence anywhere in the world of a gateway effect from vaping to smoking. Humans have consumed nicotine for more than 12,000 years and vaping offers a much safer way for them to do so than smoking.
“We must do more to help people move away from a product that is responsible for 220 deaths in the UK every day and the very reason that vaping was invented in the first place was to help people stop smoking.”
Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson from the UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, said: “Dual use of vapes and cigarettes is often a transitional state as people seek to quit smoking or reduce their smoking. Therefore, it is not necessarily bad for people’s health over the long term, if it helps people move away from smoking.
“In our study, we found a shift in the behaviour of dual users away from more frequent smoking to more frequent vaping. This may be good news, as dual users can reduce the harm they are exposed to by vaping more and smoking less.
“However, it is important that people quit smoking completely to get the full health benefits.
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