E-cigarettes in Europe

Slovenia: The government has announced that the Health Inspectorate is planning to step up action against the use of e-cigarettes in public places. Since the Covid pandemic, the inspectorate has found that people were under a false impression that the public smoking ban did not apply to novel products. Vaping in enclosed public spaces is punishable by a fine ranging from €4,000 to €33,000 for a business and €125 for an individual.

UK: In a House of Commons debate today on health inequalities, Labour MP Andrew Gwynne asked if the government was going to deliver a number of promised health-related strategies, including the tobacco control plan. Conservative Bob Blackman also asked when the plan would be delivered. Without giving specifics, junior health minister Neil O’Brien replied: “Whatever format our next steps forward are set out in, we will be pushing forward very quickly and aggressively on this.” He added that the government was also supporting “a future medically licensed vaping product as a quitting aid” and would be “pressing forward at the greatest speed”.

UK: The Office for National Statistics yesterday published its annual dataset on the proportion of adults in Great Britain who use e-cigarettes. The figures for daily vapers in 2021 were up on those in 2020 for both men (4.7% to 6.4%) and women (3% to 3.5%). The number of daily vapers who were not smoking increased for men from 0.5% in 2020 to 1.2% in 2021, but fell among women from 0.5% to 0.2%.

Ireland: The newly published Healthy Ireland survey 2022 shows 3% of the population are regular vapers, while 22% of people who have successfully quit smoking in the past year did so with the aid of e-cigarettes. Vaping is most common among the under-25s, with 6% of that age group currently using e-cigs.