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Smoking among young adults has fallen dramatically over the last decade and that success deserves recognition. In 2000 around a third of 16–24 year olds were active smokers in England. By 2024 that figure had fallen to just 8.6%, the largest decline of any adult age group. 

Yet a walk through almost any town centre tells a slightly different story. The clouds are still there; they just smell a little sweeter these days. 

Vapes, also known as e-cigarettes, are now more common than smoking among adults in England. Their use is particularly high among 16–24 year olds, with 12.9% reporting daily or occasional use in 2024, down from 15% the previous year. 

Smoking remains the leading preventable cause of illness and premature death in England, with more than 60,000 deaths attributable to it each year. It also remains substantially more harmful than vaping. That difference has made vaping an important cessation tool, with good evidence that it can help adults quit smoking. However, that does not mean vaping is without risk. Its long-term effects are still being studied, and for all the fruit-inspired branding, it should not be mistaken for something healthy. 

 The rise of vaping among young people who have never smoked raises a different set of public health questions. A product that has helped many adults move away from cigarettes has also become a highly visible route into nicotine use for a new generation. This has created a difficult balancing act for policy-makers, who seek to discourage young people from starting while preserving the incentive for smokers to switch. Whether that balance can be maintained will depend not only on national policy, but on how it is translated into local action by councils, NHS services and others delivering tobacco control in practice. 

 So, how did vaping become so popular among young adults, the group in which smoking has declined most sharply? And what does that tell us about the next phase of tobacco control?  

The fall in smoking wasn’t down to a single policy. Instead, years of action by policy-makers across successive governments made cigarettes more expensive, less visibleand harder to advertise. At the same time, NHS and local stop smoking services helped people quit. 

Together, these changes recognised that smoking is not simply a matter of individual choice. Rather than solely relying on people to tackle their own barriers to quitting, policy-makers altered the environment in which those decisions were made. In doing so, they chipped away at smoking's social desirability and shifted the conditions that had long supported it. Smoking faded from view, especially for younger generations who were exposed to fewer of the sights, habits and social norms that once encouraged people to start. 

Vaping, by contrast, emerged before many of the restrictions that helped drive down smoking had been extended to e-cigarettes. It was able to gain a prominence that smoking had gradually lost. Among 11–17 year olds, an estimate of 1.1 million have tried vaping and about 140,000 vape daily in the UK. Between 2021 and 2023, the proportion of young vapers using disposable products jumped from 7.7% to 69%, before the introduction of the disposable vape ban. The products were proving troublesome in more ways than one, raising concerns about both youth uptake and environmental waste.  

A new challenge, a new response 

National policy-makers have responded through the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, which moves in two directions. From January 2027, anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never legally be sold tobacco. Alongside this, the act gives government wider powers over how vapes and other nicotine products are advertised, packaged, displayed and sold. 

Vapes might be small enough to slip into a pocket, but their market is impossible to miss. Bright packaging, flashy displays, and a steady stream of new flavours keep them front and centre. Youth vaping is frequently framed as a question of personal choice or awareness of risk, but choice becomes very complicated when a product is cheap, widely available and constantly in your face. 

Perceptions of harm complicate this picture. In 2026, 62% of 11–17 year olds wrongfully believed vaping was as harmful as or more harmful than smoking, including 51% of those who had never tried vaping. Misperception therefore does not appear to prevent experimentation, suggesting education alone is unlikely to be enough. Much of the response has therefore rightly focused on the commercial environment. From June 2027, advertising and sponsorship will be banned, while proposed regulations will move products out of sight and standardise their packaging and flavour names. Free distribution and vending-machine sales will end in October 2026. In the same month, vaping liquid will face a new duty of £2.20 per 10 millilitres, with tobacco duty rising too – keeping cigarettes the pricier option.  

What does this mean for local public health?  

National legislation can set the rules. It cannot inspect a retailer, run a test purchase or sit with someone trying to quit. That work falls to public health professionals, Trading Standards teams and NHS services. Councils must continue reducing smoking while also responding to youth vaping. The two sit under the same policy banner, but they are not the same job. 

England’s public health grant for 2026/27 includes £152.8 million ring-fenced for smoking cessation, funding local services and programmes such as Swap to Stop. However, local authorities cannot use this protected funding for wider tobacco-control activity, including enforcement or youth-vaping prevention.  

Alongside this, another part of the response sits with councils’ Trading Standards teams, who check retailers, seize illegal products and enforce age limits. In the final quarter of 2023/24, 24% of 775 targeted test purchases resulted in vapes being sold illegally to under-18s. While these operations focused on higher-risk retailers rather than the market as a whole, the findings nevertheless point to a significant compliance problem. Addressing it may require Trading Standards to play an even larger role, particularly as new powers to issue fines and establish retailer licensing schemes come into force. 

Policy attention may also be shifting beyond vaping products themselves to the retailers that sell them. In July 2026, the government confirmed lower business rates for social clubs and live-music venues from April 2027, while also announcing a review of the reliefs available to other businesses, including vape shops. No changes have yet been confirmed, but the move suggests that high-street policy is beginning to reflect which types of businesses government wants to encourage, and which it does not. 

Getting the message right is tricky, particularly in schools and public health campaigns aimed at young people. Teachers, youth workers and public health professionals have to communicate uncertainty, relative risk and changing regulations in a way that young people can understand. If the message is too soft, vaping looks harmless; if it lacks nuance, it risks undermining trust in public health advice. 

Translating national policy into local action is rarely straightforward. National policy is uniform, but the realities of prevention and enforcement differ from place to place. The success of tobacco control shows that public health policies can change behaviours, markets and social norms, but sustaining that progress will depend on councils and the people delivering this work having the funding, staff and local knowledge to navigate a more complicated market. Public health has done this before. It just didn't expect the sequel quite so soon.

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