Why people who have never smoked are still getting hooked on vapes
More than a million people in the UK who have never smoked a cigarette now vape regularly, a figure that keeps climbing year on year according to Office for National Statistics data — and doctors say the habit is proving just as hard to shake as smoking itself.
Gracey Mungulu was repelled by vaping when it first swept through her school: “I literally used to tell people like, ‘Er, why are you doing that?'” she says. But by 16 she’d taken it up too, even though her first go at it made her cough instead of inhale. “The more you see it, the more you start trying it a bit more,” she says, “and then eventually I just got used to it and I was just doing it all the time.” Now 21 and working as a hairdresser, she buys a refillable vape daily, reaching for it whenever her hands are free.
Vapes were originally marketed to help smokers quit, and the NHS says vaping nicotine is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, though long-term effects remain unclear. For never-smokers like Gracey, the appeal is different: managing social anxiety through “the hand action… just having something in your hand, just having something in your mouth,” she says. GP Dr Helen Wall hears similar things from patients: “It’s that kind of psychological dependence on something else to almost regulate their emotions.” Gracey calls her own habit “mindless” — during an interview for this piece she realised she’d been lying in bed scrolling Instagram with a vape in her other hand, without even noticing.
Malin Andersson, 33, a campaigner against domestic abuse who also appeared on Love Island, quit vaping in May but recognises the pattern: scrolling and reaching for her vape usually went together, though she’d never thought of herself as a smoker. She falls squarely into the bracket the ONS flags as most likely to vape — nearly one in six aged 25 to 34 use e-cigarettes daily or occasionally. She started during a stressful break-up, drawn to the ritual as much as the nicotine: “It’s a dopamine hit… It’s literally an adult’s version of a dummy.” Frustrated at how reliant she’d become, she eventually threw her banana ice-flavoured vape across the room. A 26-year-old Manchester woman, who gave only her first name, Alex, describes a similar drift from occasional nights-out vaping to working in bed with “my vape on my chest”.
Prof Sarah Jackson of the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group warns against reading the figures as pure alarm: some never-smokers who vape might otherwise have taken up cigarettes, “in which case, vaping has diverted them away from a more harmful behaviour, which is good news” — though others, she says, are being exposed to risks they wouldn’t otherwise face. A 2024 UCL study found nicotine use rising among young adults even as cigarette smoking fell, suggesting some vapers would never have smoked at all.
Smoking keeps declining nationally — 4.9 million UK adults still smoke, against 5.4 million vapers aged 16 and over, the ONS reports — and regulators are now scrutinising the bright colours and sweet flavours that helped drive uptake among never-smokers; a government consultation on new rules is due to report soon. Hazel Cheeseman of Action on Smoking and Health says some of the 1.1 million never-smoker vapers likely wouldn’t vape at all without that marketing. Disposable vapes, seen as a major driver of youth uptake, were banned last year, and selling vapes to under-18s remains illegal. Dr Wall blames the marketing for a lingering “misconception” that vaping is “safe and not addictive”. Gracey, who spends roughly £35 a week on her habit, wants plain packaging like cigarettes: “With vapes, they have all these flavours, all these pretty colours – it’s just making us more attracted to it.” Quitting is proving just as hard as it has always been for smokers.
Source: BBC News