Children aged 11 to 15 in the UK regularly use e-cigarettes and use e-cigarettes.
Data released by the NHS shows the number of pupils using e-cigarettes in 2021 has increased to 9%, up from 6% in 2018, the last time the study was carried out.
Research shows that girls are much more likely to use e-cigarettes than boys.
In fact, more than one in five (21%) 15-year-old girls are reported to be current e-cigarette users, up from 10% in 2021 and compared with just 14% among 15-year-old boys. .
Girls also tend to smoke more than boys, but the difference between the sexes is much narrower than for smoking.
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Students who used to smoke were also much more likely to use e-cigarettes than students who had never smoked, but 13% of e-cigarette users had never smoked.
And 34% of current e-cigarette users say they’ve only tried one cigarette.
Experts have warned that adolescent vaping can be a pathway to nicotine addiction.
But that’s good news.
The number of students who have ever smoked will decrease from 16% in 2018 to 12% in 2021.
And the number of regular smokers, in school years 7-11, fell to 1%, down from 2% in 2018
The government’s tobacco plan aims to reduce the number of 15-year-olds who regularly smoke by 3% or less.
In 2021, 3% of 15-year-olds regularly smoke, down from 5% in 2018 and from 30% in 1996.
Smoking rates have been steadily declining since 1996 when 49% of students smoked, after the sale of all tobacco products was banned under the age of 16.
But the data shows that nearly as many students have started vaping in the past few years as have stopped smoking.
In 2015, Public Health England published an independent review of e-cigarettes concluding they were “significantly” less harmful than smoking, but since then experts at the Health Foundation The world has warned that e-cigarettes are “harmful”.
In 2015, a minimum sales age of 18 was introduced for e-cigarettes in England and Wales in 2015 and it is illegal to purchase these products on behalf of someone under the age of 18.
Even so, more than half (57%) of students who regularly vape said they bought their own vapes, most commonly from newsagents.
