A study in the Harm Reduction Journal has highlighted the impact of increased vaping prevalence on reducing smoking rates among US adults. Its key finding is a notable decrease in smoking rates as e-cigarette use became more common.
For young adults aged 18-34, smoking rates fell from 29.5% in 1990 to just 7.4% in 2022, suggesting that vaping might be replacing traditional smoking habits, providing a less harmful way for people to get their nicotine fix.
Researchers analysed US Government-backed smoking and vaping prevalence data from 1990 to 2022 and found a significant drop in smoking across all demographics but particularly among 18-34 year-olds, which correlates with the rise in e-cigarette use.
Vaping devices were invented by Chinese chemist Hon Lik in 2006, which allowed the researchers to define two specific time periods for comparison: the “pre e-cigarette era” of 1990-2006, and the modern e-cigarette era from 2006 until 2022.
According to the report:
“Significant discrepancies in smoking prevalence were identified, such that observed smoking prevalence in the e-cigarette era was lower than was to be expected based on pre-e-cigarette era trends, i.e., actual smoking prevalence was lower than it otherwise would have been if trends from before e-cigarettes were introduced or became prevalent had continued uninterrupted.”
“The observed association between increasing e-cigarette use prevalence and decreasing smoking prevalence suggests a possible population-level displacement of combustible cigarettes by e-cigarettes. This finding is consistent with many other population-level studies across a range of modelling techniques”.
While the methods and conclusions may sound both simple and common sense, activists arguing for tight restrictions on vapes continue to claim that vaping is a gateway to smoking. One might reasonably ask, on the basis of this data, “if vaping is a gateway to smoking, then where are all the extra smokers?”.
