Dr Jackson Discusses Research

The new paper reveals two key changes in vaping trends since the UK government announced plans to ban disposable vapes, according to Dr Jackson:

1. The rise in vaping prevalence has stalled, including among young adults
2. People who vape are increasingly using reusable devices 

She commented: “There has been a rapid rise in vaping among youth and young adults in Great Britain since disposable vapes started to become popular in 2021.

“In Jan 2024, the UK government announced plans to introduce a number of new policies, including a ban on disposable vapes, to tackle youth vaping. We wanted to find out what’s happened to vaping rates and use of disposable vapes since this announcement.

“We analysed data from the Smoking Toolkit Study, collected monthly between January 2022 and January 2025 from over 88,000 adults in Great Britain.

“We modelled trends in current vaping among ‘adults’ (16+) and ‘young adults’ (16-24), and in the proportion of those who vaped who mainly/exclusively used disposable vapes.

“Before January 24, vaping prevalence was increasing rapidly (by ~23%/year). After the new policy measures were announced, vaping rates stabilised at 13% among people aged 16+ and at 26.5% among 16-24s.”

Dr Jackson continued: “In January 2024, nearly half (44%) of all vapers aged 16+ mainly used disposables. This fell to less than a third (29%) a year later. Among 16-24s, the proportion mainly using disposables almost halved, from 63% to 35%.”

Addressing why the trends have changed, Dr Jackson says: “Our data can’t tell us this, but it’s not unprecedented to see behaviour change in anticipation of policy change.

“The market has responded to the impending ban by developing similar rechargeable versions of their popular disposable vapes.”

Dr Jackson believes this has clear implications for government health policy: “While it’s understandable that policymakers want to take action to reduce vaping among children and never smokers, smoking remains the number one public health priority.

“Action is likely still required to reduce high vaping rates, but now that the situation has stabilised policymakers should be reassured they can prioritise measures that are least likely to undermine how helpful vapes are for people trying to quit smoking.

“We will continue to monitor trends in smoking and vaping to allow policy decisions to be informed by up-to-date evidence.”

Responding to her explanation, harm reduction expert Clive Bates pointed out: “We can't assess these effects without looking at what happened with smoking and if other safer products like pouches are having an impact: the ban is a perturbation in an adaptive system. It is not good news if vaping growth stalls in young people if they are smoking instead.”

Sarah Jackson agreed.

“Absolutely,” she said. “We didn't look at smoking here, but our data show no sign of an increase in smoking among younger adults - rates have fallen fastest in this group.”

Dr Jackson added that the team have been collecting data on pouch use and will be publishing on this in the near future.

Photo Credit:

• Thumb photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash, Parliament Photo by Samuel Hagger on Unsplash, graphs from Dr Jackson

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.