When Gracey Mungulu first saw a vape at school, she was repulsed. “I literally used to tell people, ‘Er, why are you doing that?'” the 21-year-old Londoner recalls. Today, she spends £35 a week on refillable devices, reaching for one whenever her hands aren’t busy cutting hair or working in a school. She is one of more than 1.1 million adults in the UK who have never smoked a cigarette but now vape daily or occasionally, according to the latest Office for National Statistics data — a figure that has climbed steadily year on year.
From quit aid to recreational habit
Vaping arrived on the British market as a harm-reduction tool: a way to deliver nicotine without the tar and carbon monoxide that make cigarettes the leading cause of preventable death. The NHS remains clear that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. Yet the long-term health effects are still unknown, and the demographic profile of users has shifted dramatically.
Professor Sarah Jackson of the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group urges nuance. “Alarm bells may ring at the recent ONS figures,” she says, “but it could be the case that some of the people in this group would have started smoking if they hadn’t started vaping. In which case, vaping has diverted them away from a more harmful behaviour, which is good news.” A 2024 UCL study supports this: nicotine use among young adults in England has risen even as cigarette smoking continues to fall, suggesting a complex substitution effect.
But the data also reveal a cohort exposed to risk they would otherwise have avoided. Nearly one in six people aged 25 to 34 now vape, the ONS reports. For many, the entry point was not a desire to quit cigarettes but curiosity, social pressure, or the search for a coping mechanism.
The psychology of the ‘mindless action’
Gracey describes her habit as a “mindless action.” During our interview, she was lying in bed, phone in one hand, vape in the other, scrolling Instagram without conscious thought. “It’s the hand action,” she explains. “Just having something in your hand, just having something in your mouth.” She believes it helps manage social anxiety.
Dr Helen Wall, a GP, hears this repeatedly. “It’s that kind of psychological dependence on something else to almost regulate their emotions,” she says. The device becomes an emotional prop — a way to punctuate boredom, soothe stress, or fill silence.
Malin Andersson, 33, a domestic abuse campaigner and former Love Island contestant, puts it bluntly: “It’s a dopamine hit. It’s literally an adult’s version of a dummy.” She started vaping during a painful break-up, chasing comfort in the banana-ice flavour. Within months, the device was dulling her senses and sapping her motivation. “It was annoying me so much that it was always in my hand that I’d end up throwing it across the room,” she says. She quit in May 2024 and reports improved mental and physical health since.
Marketing, flavours and the ‘misconception’ of safety
Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), argues that aggressive marketing bears responsibility. “Within the 1.1 million vapers who never smoked, there probably is a group who would not be vaping without the marketing of vaping which is very prominent,” she says. Bright packaging, sweet flavours, and lifestyle branding have fostered what Dr Wall calls a “misconception that they are safe and not addictive.”
Gracey agrees. She believes vapes should be sold in the same standardised plain packaging as cigarettes. “With vapes, they have all these flavours, all these pretty colours — it’s just making us more attracted to it,” she says. Disposable vapes, identified as a key driver of youth uptake, were banned in 2025. A government consultation on further restrictions — including flavour names and packaging — is expected to report shortly.
The NHS advises that non-smokers and anyone under 18 should never vape. It is illegal to sell vapes to under-18s. Yet enforcement remains patchy, and the cultural normalisation of vaping among young adults is profound. For Gracey’s generation, it is far more socially acceptable than smoking ever was.
The quitting gap
Wanting to stop and being able to stop are different things. Gracey has considered quitting to save money but finds the prospect frightening. Alex, 26, from Manchester, managed to quit while travelling abroad — only to start smoking cigarettes when she couldn’t access a vape. Experts stress that switching to cigarettes is not a cessation strategy; smoking remains the single largest cause of premature death in the UK.
The NHS recommends gradually reducing nicotine strength, extending the intervals between sessions, or using licensed nicotine replacement therapies. Yet professional support is inconsistent. A recent survey found fewer than half (45%) of healthcare providers in England offer dedicated vaping cessation services. The picture across the rest of the UK is similarly mixed.
Dr Wall believes a core public health message has been lost. “Vaping was only intended by the NHS to be a replacement for cigarettes,” she says. “For people like Gracey who go straight to vapes, a bit of the messaging has been missed.”
Why it Matters
Britain has made remarkable progress in driving down smoking rates, but a new public health challenge is emerging in its shadow: a generation of never-smokers chemically dependent on nicotine through devices designed to help smokers quit. The rise of vaping among non-smokers — particularly young adults — represents a significant shift in the nicotine landscape, one that current cessation services are ill-equipped to address. Without targeted support, clearer regulation of marketing, and honest public messaging about addiction risk, the UK risks replacing one epidemic with another, locking hundreds of thousands into a dependency they never chose and may struggle to escape.
