One million people in England vape despite never having smoked regularly, study finds

25 comments

1. I think I’ll die in decades time still no further forward to understanding vaping, or vaping culture

2. Given 30% of the population smoked in the early 90s, now we have 14% smoke and 10% vape. It makes sense that some people who would have smoked never did and vaped instead.

3. Turns out making an addictive and habit forming substance easily available in a stressed society leads to people using it. Shocked.

4. Who have they studied 🤔 and how did they go Bout finding these ppl.

5. Wasn’t it originally promoted as a tool to help people quit smoking?

6. Yes I bought few and tried. I do not do it regularly but sometimes. I do not dislike it like cigarettes.

   One day I fell asleep and the cigarette burned spot on the floor. Next time it happened again. I stopped it after that. No mo smoking in bed or ever

7. My only gripe with vaping is those darn disposable vapes which get littered everywhere and are just a general waste of the worlds resources. A ban on them couldn’t come sooner.

8. It’s wild how vaping used to be the cringiest thing that anyone could do a few years ago, and now everyone’s vaping

9. Tbh I find vaping worse than smoking. I switched from rollies to vapes a few years back and found myself puffing on the thing far more than if I’d been smoking. Because if I want a roll up I need to bother to roll it up amd dedicate myself to smoking a whole one. With a vape I cam just take a puff whenever I want, so I did.

   Then, like most people, I ended up vaping AND smoking 

10. Vaping is no longer about quitting smoking for a lot of people, especially young people. Nowadays, it is just considered a less harmful version of smoking. That’s a pretty dangerous attitude to take when we do not know how vaping impacts health decades down the line.

11. When it stopped being promoted as a way to quit smoking, and started being promoted in a way that is massively appealing to young people/kids (bright colours, sweet flavours, stylish, disposable pens), it became endemic.

    There needs to be much stricter regulation on these devices, and the disposable ones should be banned completely. They are an absolute travesty on the environment and I can’t believe in today’s climate we are okay with disposable e-cig waste. Not to mention the fact it makes it much easier for a child to use one and dispose of it so they don’t get caught by their parents.

    I was a smoker – I smoked for 10 years before I switched to an e-cigarette – It took some time to taper down to 0mg of nicotine on that, and I am now completely smoke free and have been for a few years.

    When used the way they should be, as a tool to quit smoking, they are a total game changer, and I would have never quit without one, but ultimately, the way these devices are marketed is poisonous.

12. 70+ years of anti smoking campaigning went out the window when vapes came out as a less bad alternative

13. I am one of them. My IT nerd, raging ADHD’er brain loves flavoured air.

14. This makes perfect sense. Instead of smoking people are vaping instead.

    Good news if you ask me.

15. I don’t know if inhaling Polyethyol glycol is good after it condenses in your lungs

16. I mean idk how this is hard to understand, people start smoking without ever having smoked before. People like substances, they love nicotine caffeine.

17. All I ever wanted was something that was less expensive and less harmful than smoking.

18. Saw a teenager smoking vape the other day, fucking mental

19. I want to say to a degree I “get” some of it, I vaped as a means to give up smoking many years ago when it first was a thing (but you still had to order online as there weren’t a shitload of shops and it wasn’t available in garages in 30 flavours or sensations).

    It’s quicker to do, easier to have and (at the time) more acceptable given they tended to have somewhat more “tame” flavours and doing it around others at least you didn’t choke on a neckful of smoke.

    Trouble is since then it’s become _so_ popular it’s a hugely wasteful, disposable product that I dread to think about now – I only did it a couple of months and gave up fully as wasn’t gelling so well with it.

    You know how bad it is when there’s disposal bins in shops, kids have not only got them and popularise using them between them….but it’s more terrifying from one particular angle: studies.

    We haven’t got any, or at least as far as I’m aware – as they’ve not been around long enough and there hasn’t been an opportunity to properly investigate and determine if there’s longer-term negative effects, much less if proper controls are in place for the fluids used in them.

    If I get a pack of cigarettes, while they *may* be counterfit and dodgy AF chances are that most aren’t and are made in a measured, reproducable way via a supply chain that at least partly guarantees quality. Vapes I can only hope, alongide their fluid, are done so in a similar fashion.

    What do I know though – we all know smoking and alcohol are two well-known carcinogenics and generally largely detrimental to health alongside the waste they leave us with but don’t see those disappearing anytime soon.

20. I’m constantly seeing 14 year olds vaping. The idea that vaping is a way to wean people off of smoking cigarettes is long gone.

21. I’ll take the trade off in all honesty – while I’m not a champion of people vaping, it’s more environmentally friendly (and by that I mean more socially) than tobacco. If it affects health long term, then I think we should take a look at it but they easily get rid of one of my absolute pet hates of walking behind a smoker.

22. I started vaping when my son died because I didn’t want to start smoking again. I gave up the cigs in 2011 and started vaping in 2019. I stopped for a while, but another traumatic event and generally being stressed a lot means I’m still vaping. I want to give up, because it was only meant to be a temporary thing, but I’m struggling because guess what, it’s still just as addictive as smoking.

23. Many more than that drink deadly alcohol. Let people be.

24. I hate vaping and vape culture. I don’t understand why some people seem to make vaping their entire personality. There’s a bunch of vape shops in my town and I always see the same looking people in all of them.

    No doubt the capers will tell me to mind my own business and “let people have fun” and sure, go off and do what you want. But please please PLEASE understand that the fact that I do not vape DOES make me better than you.

25. Or worded a more positive way: 1 million people prevented from taking up smoking by a far safer alternative