What Is Dual Use Vaping And Can The Right Vape Kit Stop It?
The goal of most vape kits is to transition smokers from the clear and present dangers of cigarettes to a less harmful alternative, and the most effective way for a smoker to improve their health is to make the complete transition away from tobacco.
As a nicotine replacement therapy, vaping works by not only providing similar hits of nicotine that a smoker expects and feels from smoking but also by simulating the physical and psychological aspects of smoking, making it easier to swap one for the other.
For many smokers, this is exactly how it works once they get used to vaping; they will gradually smoke fewer cigarettes and vape more before the transition is complete and they do not buy any more packets.
On the other hand, some people, particularly quite heavy smokers, may stay in this intermediate phase for longer than expected, becoming what researchers and medical professionals describe as “dual users”.
According to a study published in Addiction, funded by Cancer Research UK and undertaken by researchers at University College London, five per cent of adults in England are dual users, a significant increase from 3.5 per cent in 2021.
It is important to know what this means, as not all dual users smoke and vape for the same reasons.
On The Smoke-Free Journey
A dual user is someone who smokes and vapes at least semi-regularly, but this definition only covers part of what a dual user is, since what matters is not so much that someone both smokes and vapes, but why and the general trends in either direction.
For example, most smokers will, unless they make a particularly sudden transition to vaping from smoking, be dual users for at least a short space of time as they get used to the former and wean themselves off of the latter.
This is undoubtedly a positive, and the UCL data suggests that there are more people who regularly vape and only occasionally smoke than the other way around, which suggests that people are transitioning away from smoking as a general trend.
At the same time, not every stop-smoking journey is the same, and there are heavy smokers who will both smoke and vape.
One of the most famous of these is Dr Hon Lik, the inventor of the modern e-cigarette and a lifelong smoker, although he is a rather unusual case.
Whilst he created the Ruyan in an attempt to quit after struggling with patches and gum like many other smokers who have made the brave effort to quit over the decades, he does still regularly smoke.
According to Dr Lik himself, he primarily smokes as a way to check the tobacco flavours in the devices of companies he has been employed as a consultant.
Aside from people attempting to transition away, the other main dual users are typically heavier smokers who have somewhat complex cravings. A lot of vapes will help with some of them, but in others, they feel they need a cigarette.
According to the UCL data, smokers with this particular pattern are typically older, smoke hand-rolled cigarettes and tend to report stronger cravings.
The data also includes social smokers who typically vape but might smoke a cigarette whilst at a social gathering or on a break from work, which would technically count them as dual users even if they may not have the same circumstances as others.
A positive from the data is that it appears that the gateway effect is largely disproved by the data; if there are people transitioning to smoking from vaping, it is statistically insignificant.
However, one concern the data has revealed is the perception of the relative safety of tobacco and vaping according to smokers.
According to the UCL data, 44 per cent of dual users incorrectly believe that e-cigarettes are as harmful as tobacco, something that is simply false and could be the result of misreporting or misrepresentation of harms.
What makes this worse is that it might be affecting their vaping habits; the best way to quit smoking is to vape every day, whilst non-daily vaping is not linked to successfully stopping.
All of this emphasises that official advice concerning vaping should be clear and consistent, something that over the past few years has been sorely lacking.
Supporting schemes to ensure that vapes are available on the NHS as part of pilot schemes on the one hand whilst trying to ban e-cigarettes outright on the other sends mixed messages and might be failing smokers attempting to quit.