MYTH BUSTER: VAPING IS NOT A GATEWAY TO SMOKING

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MYTH: E-CIGARETTES WILL LEAD YOUNG PEOPLE INTO SMOKING.

FACT:  VAPING IS NOT A GATEWAY TO SMOKING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

This is a particularly touchy subject with parents. Rightly so. It’s only natural that with so much hysteria circulating about vaping this issue would come to the fore. Thankfully, the evidence is clear, vaping is not a gateway to smoking for young people.

UK surveys conducted by Public Health England (PHE) show that young people are experimenting with e-cigarettes, but regular use is rare and confined, almost entirely, to those who already smoke. Happily, they also reported that smoking rates among young people in the UK continue to decline.

The data was taken from five large scale surveys, which polled over 60,000 young people, with different designs and sampling strategies conducted between 2015 and 2017: The Youth Tobacco Policy Survey; the Schools Health Research Network Wales survey; two Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Smokefree Great Britain-Youth Surveys; and the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey. The UK wide surveys showed a consistent pattern: most e-cigarette experimentation does not turn into regular use, and the levels of regular e-cigarette use in young people who have never smoked remains very low.

There is also a lot of talk about how the prevalence of vaping is ‘normalising’ smoking. PHE researchers confirmed that, while adult and youth vaping in the UK were increasing, the number of young people believing that it was ‘not ok’ to smoke was accelerating.

CONCLUSION

Vaping is not a gateway to smoking or any other type of drug. In the UK it’s illegal to sell vaping products to anyone under the age of 18. Of course, there have always been – and always will be – accommodating older siblings and friends who enable younger people to smoke and vape. Our job, as adults, is to make it clear that smoking is disastrous for your health. Moreover, if a kid has never vaped (or smoked), they should never start.

References

  1. McNeill, A. et al. Evidence review of e- cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018. A report commissioned by Public Health England (2018).
  2. Andy McEwen and Hayden McRobbie, Electronic cigarettes: A briefing for stop smoking services, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) in association with Public Health England (2016)
  3. Action on smoking and health (ASH). Use of e-cigarettes among adults in Great Britain, 2018. 2018.
  4. UK data from 2019 found that while 5.5% of young people aged 11-18 who have never smoked have ever tried an e-cigarette, only 0.8% are current vapers, and only 0.1% vape more than once a week

Joanne Emmerson FCIM
Head of Marketing, Ibiza Vape Club

Joanne is a fellow of the Royal Chartered Institute of Marketing and has 30+ years marketing experience. She has worked all around the world, is published in 7 countries and teaches marketing communication theory at Post Graduate level both in the UK and USA. She has worked alongside many government bodies, health organisations and national charities. ivcservice@ibizavapeclub.com