UK
‘Complete ban’ on UK vaping adverts needed, says medical research group after study on young people
A “complete ban” on e-cigarette advertising is needed in the UK to protect young people, a leading medical research institute has said.
The George Institute conducted a study with more than 4,000 15 to 30-year-olds from the UK, India, China and Australia, many of whom had never vaped before.
Of the UK participants, 55% indicated they were curious about vaping, while half said they would use a vape if a friend offered one to them.
They were also less likely to believe that vaping was addictive (74%) or harmful (67%), compared to Australians (87% and 83% respectively), where susceptibility was the lowest.
Young people in the UK were also more likely to have seen an e-cigarette advert (63%) compared to other countries – Australia coming in at the lowest (30%).
Children were also included in the poll and when asked if they had ever tried vaping once or twice, 11.6% responded positively compared to 5.6% in 2014.
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The researchers concluded four factors contributed to the likelihood of young people taking up vaping: exposure to advertising, past tobacco use, high incomes, and having friends or family who vaped.
Programme director of health promotion and behaviour change Professor Simone Pettigrew of The George Institute outlined how some e-cigarette promotion was banned, but adverts on “posters, billboards and buses [were] still prevalent in the UK”.
Ms Pettigrew said: “A complete ban on e-cigarette advertising should be considered, as it is clearly influencing young people’s attitudes towards these addictive and potentially harmful products.”
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) also warned that vapes were “not a risk-free product and can be just as addictive, if not more so than traditional cigarettes”.
The government said it would crack down on vape marketing to stop targeting young people as doctors warned vaping was “fast becoming an epidemic among children“.
In 2019, the promotion of vapes on Instagram was banned which health campaigners described as “a huge step forward”.