Plymouth is UK’s most vape-obsessed city, claims new research
Residents in Plymouth spend four times the national average per person on vaping products online and 27 times more than those in neighbouring Exeter.
Plymouth is leading the vaping boom after being crowned the UK’s most vape-obsessed city in the country and this comes as no surprise to Plymouth’s director of health.
Leading online vape retailer Vape and Go has found through analysing its sales data alongside Google search volumes that residents in Plymouth spend four times the national average per person on vaping products online and 27 times more than those in neighbouring Exeter.
Sales in Plymouth have surged 223% since 2024 making it the second fastest growing vaping city in the UK.
The company’s vape obsession score for Plymouth was 98.2 out of 100 with Norwich in second place with 96.5 and Swindon 96.3 (which also came out as the fastest growing vaping city).
Vaping has officially overtaken smoking in the UK, with one in ten adults now vaping.
Professor Steve Maddern, director of health for Plymouth, said health services in the city continued to promote the use of vapes as one of the ways people can stop smoking tobacco.
“We would expect slightly higher levels of vape use in Plymouth compared to the general UK population, following the same pattern as smoking but we do not have any local data to prove it,” he said.
Figures from the government released at the end of 2024 revealed that one in six people in Plymouth still enjoyed a cigarette with some 16.7% of adults in Plymouth considering themselves smokers in 2023. That was up from 14.7 % two years earlier.
It meant that adults in Plymouth were more likely to smoke than people across the country as a whole at that time.
Professor Maddern said: “Through our commissioned smoking cessation services, delivered by Livewell Southwest, we continue to promote the use of vapes as one of the ways people can stop smoking tobacco alongside traditional nicotine replacement therapy and newer therapies such as varenicline.
“Smoking remains the leading modifiable cause of mortality in England and is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory disorder.
“Although the risk associated with use of vapes is not fully understood, the consensus is that it provides a significant risk reduction in comparison to smoking tobacco.”
He added that while vapes were safer than smoking and could help smokers quit “if you don’t smoke don’t vape.”
Salmon Essap, founder of Vape and Go said while the population in Plymouth was double that of Exeter, there was a completely different relationship with vaping between the cities.
“It’s clearly become embedded in the city of Plymouth,” he said.
“You might’ve expected regulations – like the disposable ban and public space restrictions – to put people off vaping, but what we’re actually seeing is a generation of smokers making a permanent switch.
“Vaping overtook smoking in the UK for the first time in November, and initiatives like the NHS handing out vapes in A&E are accelerating that shift.
“When disposables were banned, customers didn’t stop as many expected. They actually adapted and moved to reusable devices. The regulation has helped to push Brits toward longer-term alternatives. Our ‘vape obsession index’ is interesting proof of the growth, despite what people may have thought a year ago.
“When we started analysing the data, we expected the usual London, Birmingham and Manchester dominance but we didn’t expect Plymouth and Swindon to sit at the top of the table. Vaping has become mainstream and spread into cities that rarely come up in these conversations. Residents are spending significantly more per person than almost anywhere else in the UK.”