Vaping, illegal drug use, and drinking alcohol are more common among English children from better-off families compared to poorer households, a new study suggests.
The data showed that a more significant proportion of children aged 11 to 15 from affluent backgrounds in England self-reported their experience of each than those from the least affluent backgrounds.
The Social Mobility Commission said its analysis of National Health Service (NHS) digital data showed that almost a third (32 percent) of young people from wealthier backgrounds had consumed alcohol in the previous month.
This compared to less than a fifth (19 percent) of those from poorer households, suggests media reports.
Some 13 percent of more affluent kids had vaped, compared with 10 percent in the least advantaged group, while almost a quarter (23 percent) had taken drugs compared with 17 percent from poorer groups.
The authors suggested access to alcohol might be easier for children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
However, the researchers said they don’t believe this explains the broader findings, and called for further research “to explore these worrying trends.”
Ministers in England are reportedly planning to ban vaping in playgrounds, hospital grounds and near schools in an attempt to prevent children from taking up the nicotine products.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is considering restricting the use of e-cigarettes outdoors in England. Chris Whitty, the country’s chief medical officer, is said to favor the move, according to media reports.
Vaping restrictions will be included in the tobacco and vapes bill, which is due to be presented to parliament in the coming weeks. Whitty is understood to have argued for including pub gardens in the ban, but the Times reported that no final decision has been made.
Ministers are not expected to include outdoor hospitality after the backlash in August over proposals to ban smoking in pub gardens to reduce the number of preventable deaths linked to tobacco use.
About 1 million vapers in England have no history of regular smoking, reports Bloomberg, citing a new University College London (UCL) study.
From 2016 to 2020, the country’s rate of vaping among adults without a smoking history remained stable and low at 0.5 percent, according to the paper, which was published in The Lancet Public Health this week.
When disposable vapes became popular after 2021, the share of vapers without a smoking history increased rapidly, with the rate reaching one in every 28 as of April this year.
One in seven people aged 18 to 24 who never regularly smoked are now using e-cigarettes, the study found. There has also been a noticeable increase in the proportion using disposable devices.
“These findings are a reminder that action is required to try to minimize vaping among young people,” Jamie Brown, the study’s co-author and professor at the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “Banning disposables, as the U.K. government currently plans, is unlikely to fix the issue as popular brands have already launched reusable products with very similar designs and prices.”
Harm perceptions of e-cigarettes have worsened substantially over the last decade among adult smokers in England, according to a study published by Jama Network Open.
In 2023, most adults who smoked believed e-cigarettes to be at least as harmful as cigarettes. The timing of the changes in harm perceptions coincided with the e-cigarette, or vaping product, use-associated lung injury outbreak in 2019 and the recent increase in youth vaping in England since 2021.
Researchers collected data from 28 393 adult smokers. In November 2014, 44.4 percent thought e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes, 30.3 percent thought e-cigarettes were equally harmful, 10.8 percent thought they were more harmful, and 14.5 percent said they did not know.
However, by June 2023, the proportion who thought e-cigarettes were less harmful had decreased by 40 percent, and the proportion who thought e-cigarettes were more harmful had more than doubled.
Changes over time were nonlinear: late 2019 saw a sharp decline in the proportion who thought e-cigarettes were less harmful and increases in the proportions who thought they were equally or more harmful. These changes were short-lived, returning to pre-2019 levels by the end of 2020.
However, perceptions worsened again from 2021 up to the end of the study period: the proportion who thought e-cigarettes were more harmful increased to a new high, and the proportion who thought e-cigarettes were less harmful decreased to levels comparable to those in late 2019.
As a result, in June 2023, the perception that e-cigarettes were equally as harmful as cigarettes was the most commonly held view among adults who smoke, with roughly similar proportions perceiving e-cigarettes to be less and more harmful.
If you start to look for something, you will usually find more than when you weren’t looking. Seizures of illegal e-cigarettes in the UK in the first four months of the year were seven times as high as all of 2021.
Research found the UK has been flooded with two million illicit e-cigarettes since the beginning of last year, reports The Mirror.
Local leaders have called for a more vigorous crackdown on counterfeit vapes, with usage is said to be surging among children and adults.
London, the South East and North West were the top three regions for counterfeit vape seizures, according to the analysis.
The findings, uncovered through freedom of information requests sent to 167 local authorities by VapeClub, raise concerns about a booming black market selling products that do not comply with UK regulations and have not been through appropriate safety testing.
“Illicit vaping products have the potential to be dangerous to the user’s health. What’s needed is a licensing scheme so proper age verification tests can be applied to every retailer,” Dan Marchant, director of vaping and e-liquids retailer Vape Club, said.
“There must also be higher fines applied to every breach for the rogue sellers. The UK Vaping Industry Association is calling for the fines to be raised to at least £10,000 ($12,800), which would be a real deterrent.”
A new study concludes that 18 to 24 year old’s that use e-cigarettes did not use vaping as a gateway to smoking combustible cigarettes.
The report, published in the journal Addiction, examined e-cigarette use in England among young adults between 2007 and 2018, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
In the study, a team from University College London reviewed data for England from the Smoking Toolkit Study.
Lead author, Emma Beard, said the “findings suggest that the large gateway effects reported in previous studies can be ruled out, particularly among those aged 18 to 24.
“However, we cannot rule out a smaller gateway effect and we did not study younger age groups.” she said.
“If the upper estimates are true, we would estimate that of the 74,000 e-cigarette users aged 16 to 17 in England, around 7,000 would become ever regular smokers as a consequence of e-cigarette use.
“At the same time, approximately 50,000 smokers are estimated to quit per year as a consequence of e-cigarette use.”
An inquiry into the extent of the illicit vaping and e-cigarette products market has revealed the scale of Liverpool, England’s growing black market. City council trading standards officers found large numbers of retailers in the city selling illegal vaping products.
Credit: SYCprod
Vaping devices are highly regulated by the government to control the amount of nicotine available and have to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), according to a story in Liverpool’s Echo newspaper. The devices should contain no more than 2 percent nicotine or hold more than two millilitres of liquid, equivalent to 600 puffs or a packet of cigarettes.
However, in a recent test purchasing exercise across the city to check on compliance, officers were able to buy illegal products at 74 retailers – some containing up to 3,500 puffs, almost six times above the legal limit. Now council is offering the retail trade the opportunity to contact Trading Standards for advice on their products with the proviso that compliance visits will be carried out in the New Year and any illegal products still on sale will be seized.
The council have also been receiving a large number of complaints over the sale of these products to children and is asking parents with information and evidence to contact them. Councilor Abdul Qadir, cabinet member for Neighborhoods, said: “E-cigarettes and vaping products are seen by many people as a way of giving up smoking.”
Smokers in England continue to be encouraged to quit by being offered free vaping devices. The action will now bring the borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, one step closer to fulfilling the UK government’s ambition for England to be smoke free by 2030, a move which could save local National Health Service (NHS) trusts millions of pounds.
The devices are now available from Kirklees Council’s stop smoking services and the charity Yorkshire Cancer Research alongside more traditional forms of Nicotine Replacement Therapies such as patches or gum. The devices are being offered as part of the Kirklees Wellness Service, a council funded initiative that supports over-18 youth in Kirklees to live healthier lives.
Stuart Griffiths, director of research, services and policy at Yorkshire Cancer Research, said his organization is committed to saving lives by helping more people quit smoking for good. “Yorkshire has the highest smoking rate in England, and this causes thousands of smoking-related cancers and needless deaths in our region each year,” he told Yorkshire Live. “When it comes to helping people quit for good, being able to offer vaping products is essential. They are an incredibly effective aid in helping people give up cigarettes.”
A recent review of evidence by global researchers Cochrane has shown that vaping devices are more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) when supporting smokers to quit. More than 500 people in Kirklees lose their lives to smoking related illnesses every year, yet smoking remains one of the biggest causes of preventable death in the region, according to the story.
The number of young adults who smoke in England rose by about a quarter in the first lockdown, reports The Guardian, citing new research from University College London (UCL) and the University of Sheffield said. At the same time, the number of people who quit smoking nearly doubled across all groups.
“The first lockdown was unprecedented in the way it changed people’s day-to-day lives. We found that many smokers took this opportunity to stop smoking, which is fantastic,” said Sarah Jackson, the lead author and a principal research fellow at UCL.
“However, the first lockdown was also a period of great stress for many people, and we saw rates of smoking and risky drinking increase among groups hardest hit by the pandemic.”
While the widespread belief that smoking and drinking relieved stress could be a factor in the apparent increased prevalence among people aged 18 to 34 years, the researchers pointed out that their data did not indicate what the causes may be.
Doug Mutter
Doug Mutter, director at U.K. vaping specialist VPZ, warned that the country is now in danger of missing its 2030 smoke free targets.
“Smoking statistics are continuing to rise as the pandemic has triggered an increase in smoking rates and the public health problem has been compounded by funding cuts for NHS stop smoking services and local support groups,” he said.
“There has been a lack of funding and joined up strategy to tackle smoking and we are now sleep-walking into another public health crisis with a new generation of smokers being consigned to an early death or serious disease.
Mutter pointed to a new report from Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group, which backs vaping as an effective treatment for tobacco dependency and recommends that it should be included and encouraged in all treatment pathways.
A VPZ consumer survey from September 2020 found that among the 14,000 smokers served:
25 percent of people said they were unable to buy their vaping products because of store closures.
26 percent of smokers said they has increased the number of cigarettes they smoked during lockdown
65 percent of people claimed they received no advice during lockdown of the best ways to quit smoking, through either NHS or online resources.
58 percent of people said they did not feel healthier coming out of the initial lockdown.
45 percent of people said their mental health was affected during the lockdown.
