THE GUARDIAN: Findings suggest e-cigarettes increasingly act as ‘gateway’ to nicotine for children, undermining earlier falling rates
A third of UK teenagers who vape will go on to start smoking tobacco, research shows, meaning they are as likely to smoke as their peers were in the 1970s.
A long-term intergenerational study found that the likelihood of starting to smoke among people aged 17 in 2018 was about 1.5% if they did not vape compared with 33% if they did.
The findings suggest that e-cigarettes are increasingly acting as a “gateway” to nicotine cigarettes for children, undermining falling rates of teen smoking over the past 50 years. » | Rachel Hall | Tuesday, July 29, 2025
This is what I have been saying all along. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. Real cigarettes are often super unappealing to young children—when I was a child, I couldn’t bear the smell of smoke and avoided people smoking!—but those vapes are a different story altogether. They come in all manner of appealing flavours—strawberry, apricot, blackcurrant, chocolate, etc.—so how would they not be appealing to children. Once children get into the habit of enjoying puffing away on an e-cigarette, when they mature, they will naturally be tempted to graduate to the real thing: cigarettes. Smoking is here to stay! And that killjoy Starmer will never be able to enforce a generational smoking ban. For starters, who on earth is going to be able to police it? Our police forces can’t control theft from supermarkets, still less will they ever be able to enforce a smoking ban. – © Mark Alexander
