UK Releases E-cigarette Smoking Data For Minors: Almost Doubled in Two Years

According to foreign reports, according to the annual survey of you gov youth smoking and health action (ash) carried out in March and released on July 7, the current e-cigarette use rate among children aged 11-17 in the UK rose from 4% in 2020 to 7% in 2022. The proportion of children who admitted that they had tried electronic cigarettes also increased from 14% in 2020 to 16% in 2022.

Disposable e-cigarettes are now the most used products among current e-cigarette users, with an increase of more than seven times from 7% in 2020 and 8% in 2021 to 52% in 2022.

Elf bar and Geek Bar are definitely the most popular, and only 30% of current users have tried any other brand.

In the past year, more and more people are worried that disposable e-cigarettes are becoming more and more popular among young people, but this is the first time that national data show the scale of change.

ASH said that the increase of e-cigarettes shown in the survey is worrying and needs to be closely monitored.

However, the organization pointed out that 92% of people under the age of 18 who have never smoked cigarettes have never smoked electronic cigarettes, and only 2% of people smoke electronic cigarettes more than once or twice.

The behavior of smoking e-cigarettes is closely related to age. 10% of people aged 11-15 have tried to smoke e-cigarettes, while the proportion of people aged 16 and 17 is 29% (at present, the number of people smoking e-cigarettes is 4% and 14% respectively). Although minors' smoking of e-cigarettes has increased, the smoking rate of minors is lower than that in 2020 (14% in 2022 and 16% in 2020).

This year, the survey asked about the promotion awareness of e-cigarettes for the first time. More than half (56%) of the 11-17-year-old teenagers said they knew about e-cigarette promotion activities. The most common ones were in stores or online. Among them, those who had smoked e-cigarettes (72%) had the highest awareness. Tiktok is the most frequently cited online promotion source (45%), followed by instagram (31%).

In response to the findings, the UK Electronic Cigarette Industry Association (ukvia) called for a series of strict measures to crack down on unscrupulous retailers who sell electronic cigarettes to young people.