In her latest, Georgia Michelman talked to scientists and tobacco harm reduction advocates about the two sides of #vaping, and whether anti-vaping campaigns have gone too far, failing current smokers. Read more on Scienceline at buff.ly/2XkqiE5
Interesting substack by Bella Mackie on anxiety and giving up vaping
bellamackie.substack.com/p/giving-up-...
The changing face of nicotine use in England: Age-specific annual trends, 2014 to 2024 buff.ly/5dsMlAa @drsarahejackson.bsky.social @lionshahab.bsky.social @tattanbirch.bsky.social @sharoncox.bsky.social @jamiebrown.bsky.social
About 1.6 million adults in England, Wales and Scotland used drugs such as Mounjaro to help lose weight between early 2024 and early 2025, with another 3.3 million interested in doing so in the near future, finds a new study led by @drsarahejackson.bsky.social @ucliehc.bsky.social
Our new paper suggests that approximately 1.6 million adults in Great Britain have recently used weight loss jabs (most commonly Mounjaro) and a further 3.3 million are interested in doing so in the near future.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A declining proportion of adults who vape also currently smoke.
This is mostly offset by:
- In 18-24s: an increase in the % who have never regularly smoked, suggesting initiation of nicotine use with vaping.
- In >25s: increases in ex-smokers, suggesting continued use after quitting with a vape.
Among young adults who smoke, the proportion smoking cigarettes daily has fallen considerably, offset mostly by an increase in non-daily cigarette smoking.
Fewer than half of 18-24yos who smoke now smoke cigarettes every day.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Among young adults who smoke or vape, there has been a sharp decline in exclusive smoking and increases in exclusive vaping and dual use. Similar, smaller, changes have also occurred in older age groups.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Nicotine use among 18-24 year olds in England is rising, despite declines in smoking. Largely due to rapid increases in vaping prevalence.
Vaping is now more common than smoking in 18-24s and similar in 25-34s.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
New paper shows nicotine use is rising among young adults in England, but they are increasingly moving away from daily cigarette smoking towards vaping or non-daily smoking.
Traditional daily smoking patterns remain more prevalent among older adults.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
You may be interested in this preprint that Sarah Jackson, Linda Ng Fat and I have just published on improved mental wellbeing following health-behaviour changes. If you have any comments or suggestions please let us know. www.qeios.com/read/NY0ZS1
We've got a new paper out in @addictionjournal.bsky.social led by @drsarahejackson.bsky.social looking at trends in cost as a motivating factor for people looking to reduce their alcohol consumption.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
In a letter published today in the BMJ, we call for urgent action to correct misperceptions of vaping.
As long as public perceptions of vaping are misaligned with evidence, the opportunity for vaping to further reduce smoking is being missed.
www.bmj.com/content/391/... @ashorguk.bsky.social
SRNT Europe's 2025 conference kicks off two weeks today and I'm delighted to be presenting alongside most of my colleagues from UCL's Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group.
You can catch us across the three days at the following times. Hope to see lots of you there!
#SRNTE2025
Associations between non-daily smoking and motivation to stop smoking: A population study in England 2021–2024 buff.ly/GigcYWP @drsarahejackson.bsky.social @jamiebrown.bsky.social @lionshahab.bsky.social @sharoncox.bsky.social
New in @addictionjournal.bsky.social , we find adults who smoke cigarettes non-daily tend to be more motivated to quit smoking than those who smoke every day, especially among older and less advantaged people.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The SRNT-E 2025 conference programme is now online! 🎉
See what we've got lined up here: srnt-e.org/conference/2...
Looking forward to seeing many of you in Romania!
The UK Government uses the Annual Population Survey (APS) as its official smoking estimate.
APS only captures cigarette smoking and may miss some non-daily use. Our findings suggest that relying solely on APS data could overstate reductions in smoking.
The Smoking Toolkit Study shows substantial declines in smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption among adults in England since 2007.
However, the extent of these changes differs according to how the outcomes are defined.
Research letter - Tobacco Control
tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/earl...
Although smoking prevalence is now similar across regions of GB, there is variation in cigarette consumption among adults who smoke.
Mean cigarettes smoked/day and % smoking >20/day:
🟡Highest in North East and Scotland
🟡Lowest in London and South West
academic.oup.com/ntr/advance-...
Our new paper provides up-to-date evidence on cigarette consumption across Great Britain.
🟡~28.6 billion cigarettes are smoked each year.
🟡There are persistent disparities across socioeconomic groups, regions, and nations.
academic.oup.com/ntr/advance-... @ntrjournal.bsky.social
Enjoying listening to this on my commute… and adding ‘profsplaining’ to my vocabulary!
open.spotify.com/episode/5L7P... @robertjwest.bsky.social
Changing patterns of nicotine product use and nicotine dependence among United States high-school students: The National Youth Tobacco Survey, 2014–2023 buff.ly/XL93VOm @drsarahejackson.bsky.social @jamiebrown.bsky.social @tattanbirch.bsky.social
Worth a read. We need to move beyond arbitrary categorisation of continuous variables or assuming that associations are linear - and use more flexible modelling approaches to capture non-linear relationships.
www.bmj.com/content/390/...
New commentary with @hazelcheeseman.bsky.social, @jamiebrown.bsky.social, and @katieeast.bsky.social
To reduce smoking harms, there is an urgent need to correct misperceptions about the risks of vaping.
www.bmj.com/content/388/...
Likewise, the spike in e-cig use did not lead to a sustained increase in the population burden of nicotine dependence, which is now at a historically low level.
However, dependence symptoms increased over time among those only using e-cigs.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Our results show no evidence of a gateway effect from vaping to smoking at the population level: despite a sharp rise in e-cigarette use in 2019, use of cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products continued to fall and in 2023 were lower than ever.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
While dependence symptoms were consistently highest among cigarette users, they were increasingly prevalent among those using only e-cigarettes after 2017.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
The overall burden of nicotine dependence was substantially lower, but showed a similar pattern, with a peak in 2019 and a notable reduction by 2023.
Even when we re-estimated dependence to account for potential underreporting by students using e-cigs only.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Our new analysis, using NYTS data up to 2023, shows the proportion of high-school students using any nicotine product in the past 30 days peaked at 31.4% in 2019 and has since fallen steeply to a record low of 12.5% in 2023.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
