When Will Vaping Become More Popular Than Tobacco Smoking?

It is extremely possible that there will be a smoke-free generation in the UK far sooner than we expect.

A proposed smoking ban which would stop anyone born after 2009 from ever buying cigarettes is the most direct action towards this goal, but what is interesting is that the reaction to its announcement in May 2024 and reintroduction later in the year treated a potential lifetime ban as an inevitable conclusion.

The reality is that smoking has been falling since the Office for National Statistics has been tracking it through Annual Population Survey data, with the most recent report claiming that just 11.9 per cent of people are smoking, a fall of around 80 per cent since records began in the 1970s and half the number found a decade ago.

At the same time, vape kits have increased in use, with an estimated 5.9 per cent of people in the country using an e-cigarette daily, as well as another 3.9 per cent who use one on occasion, a combined figure that is remarkably close to the figures for smoking.

There will be a day when there are more people who vape in the UK than smoke, and it is a vital component of bringing a smoke-free generation where less than five per cent of the population shorten their lives through smoking.

It increasingly seems like that day is much closer than many of us would have thought possible during the early days of e-cigarettes, and it is impossible to ignore the effects vaping has had.

But what was the turning point? When did vaping become a widely accepted alternative to smoking, and when did that smoking culture change in the UK?

Point Of No Return

The prevalence of smoking in the UK has been trending downwards since 1974 when records began, but it was in the 2010s when smoking began a steep and somewhat terminal decline.

Since the Tobacco Master Settlement provided incontrovertible proof of the significant harm tobacco causes and the ways in which it can shorten your life, there has been a major cultural shift away from a smoking culture, although it was still somewhat widespread for years.

One of the first shifts was the passing of the Health Act 2006, which introduced a ban on smoking in public places.

The smoking ban was hugely criticised at the time, characterised as a “nanny state overreach”, but ultimately turned out to be surprisingly popular with the general public, including many smokers trying to quit. This support has since only increased.

The justification for the ban was the effects of passive smoking, the evidence base for which has only strengthened in the years since.

This led to the creation of smoking shelters the legal distance away from enclosed buildings, as well as the first spike in popularity for e-cigarettes, as people who would regularly smoke inside a pub or restaurant would opt to vape instead.

At the time, vaping was limited to the first generation of cigalikes and was not covered by the smoking ban, so people who needed a hit of nicotine could still vape in many places.

In some places that is still true, although a lot of places have introduced bans on vaping indoors so it is important to check before you start puffing.

The smoking ban

If the initial 1998 settlement was the first turning point in the world, the next biggest in the UK was the smoking ban, but possibly the biggest and most intersecting point between the fall of smoking and the rise of vaping came in the mid-2010s.

In 2015, plain cigarette packaging was introduced via the House of Commons, which followed the lead of Australia and was intended to make smoking less appealing to particularly young people, who had historically started smoking through branding, colourful packaging and the effects of association through sponsorship.

This, in combination with the maturation of the smoking ban, caused a statistically significant cultural shift away from smoking, with far fewer people starting tobacco smoking and far more people quitting.

The latter was in no small part the result of the rise of a new generation of vapes that were more powerful, more effective and used ingredients such as nicotine salts to produce an effect far closer to smoking for people trying to quit.

With a viable alternative available, many existing smokers switched to vaping and persevered to give themselves a higher quality of life.

Since then, smoking has consistently fallen and vaping has increased at a relatively similar rate. The overlap appears to be inevitable.