Disposable vape ban 'could mean people return to smoking', says Northants vape seller
A rising number of adults in England are both smoking and vaping
A vape shop owner in Northampton claims a Government ban on disposable vapes, coming into force this summer, could mean more people return to smoking.
It's as new figures show the number people who both smoke and vape is rising, many of them trying to quit tobacco.
A study says "dual use" is being seen especially among 59% of young smokers.
Ryan Mitchlig, who runs Right Vape in Northampton, says the figures are concerning.
He told Greatest Hits Radio: "We do have a very low rate of young users using disposables, but that's because we've done the work, but that proves to me it can be done.
"We're not quite seeing that in society yet.
"There's going to be a lot of people that hopefully will go into reputable retailers and transition onto reusable, or we may see a proportion of those people returning to smoking.
"My gut feeling is that we've got a lot of work to do and we'll potentially see smoking rates increase, and an increase in illicit products."
"Dual use" as a "transitional state"
A new study by experts from University College London (UCL) found that in 2016, some 3.5% of adults in England were dual users of both cigarettes and vapes.
This rose to 5.2% in 2024, they found.
Researchers have been performing a series of questionnaires since 2016 to track smoking and vaping habits in the population.
So far some 128,588 adults in England have taken part in the Smoking Toolkit Study.
The latest analysis highlights how the proportion of smokers who also vaped was "relatively stable" - at around 19% - until mid-2021 when disposable vapes saw a bump in popularity.
In April 2024, this figure stood at 34%, they found.
The greatest rise was in young adults, with almost three in five (59%) of young smokers also vaping - a leap from 19.6% at the start of the study.
The findings suggest that dual use may be linked to some people smoking less and vaping more.
Over time the proportion of smokers who smoked daily and vaped occasionally halved from 32% to 15%, while the proportion vaping daily and smoking non-daily more than doubled from 8% to 22%.
This may be down to dual use among younger smokers who are more frequent vapers and less frequent smokers than older adults, the researchers said.
Nonetheless, the research team raised concerns that "misconceptions" around the harms of vapes may be hampering smokers' attempts to quit.
They found that daily vaping was more common among dual users who thought e-cigarettes were less/equally harmful as cigarettes, or were unsure.
"In England, vaping prevalence has increased rapidly among adults who smoke since 2021, which was when disposable e-cigarettes started to become popular," the authors wrote in the journal Addiction.
"Since 2016, patterns of dual use have shifted away from more frequent smoking towards more frequent vaping.
"This may be the result of increasing prevalence of dual use among younger adults, who are more likely than older dual users to smoke non-daily and vape daily."
Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson, from UCL's Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care, said: "Dual use of vapes and cigarettes is often a transitional state as people seek to quit smoking or reduce their smoking. Therefore, it is not necessarily bad for people's health over the long term, if it helps people move away from smoking.
"In our study, we found a shift in the behaviour of dual users away from more frequent smoking to more frequent vaping. This may be good news, as dual users can reduce the harm they are exposed to by vaping more and smoking less.
"However, it is important that people quit smoking completely to get the full health benefits."