Smoking Rates In England Have Fallen To The Lowest On Record

[♥ Lily ♥]

Smoking rates in England fall to lowest on record

20 September 2016


In 2015 there were 7.2 million smokers in England

Smoking rates in England have fallen to the lowest on record, Public Health England (PHE) has said.

In 2015, 16.9% of adults described themselves as smokers, compared with 19.3% in 2012.

Experts say the decrease may be partly thanks to the availability of e-cigarettes.

More than a million people said they vaped as they tried to quit and 700,000 used a licensed nicotine replacement product such as patches or gum.

Out of the 2.5 million smokers who tried to kick the habit, a fifth were successful.

According to Public Health England, this is the highest recorded successful quitting rate to date - six years ago the success rate was around one in seven.

Year Smoking rate among adults in England

2012 19.3%
2013 18.4%
2014 17.8%
2015 16.9%

Source: Annual Population Survey



The biggest decreases in smoking over the last four years were seen in the South West (18.7% to 15.5%), the North East (22% to 18.7%) and Yorkshire & Humber (21.9% to 18.6%).

At the same time, prescriptions for smoking cessation aids, such as patches and gum have gone down, while sales of e-cigarettes have gone up.

Despite the fall, there are wide variations across the country and a north-south divide.

Kingston-upon-Hull has the highest rate of smoking with almost 27 in every 100 adults. And Wokingham has the lowest, with fewer than one in 10.

Overall, the smoking rate among women was 14.9%, while in men it was 19.1%.




In 2014/15, the number of prescription items dispensed in England to help people stop smoking was 1.3 million, compared to two million 10 years ago.

Health professionals say the most effective way to quit smoking remains through prescription medication and professional support from free local NHS stop smoking services.

Rosanna O'Connor, director of drugs, alcohol, tobacco at Public Health England, said: "The reduction in smoking rates isn't the result of a single magic bullet but concerted policies over decades."

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Gina Radford said: "The best thing a smoker can do for their health is to stop smoking. There is more help and support available now than ever before."

PHE released the figures ahead of its Stoptober campaign, which aims to encourage smokers to quit smoking during October.

According to experts, taking a complete break from cigarettes for at least 28 days greatly increases the odds of being able to kick the smoking habit for life.

Latest data (for 2014) shows that 20% of adults in Scotland are current smokers. In Wales the figure is 19% and in Northern Ireland it is 18%.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37406105

[♥ Lily ♥]

I started vaping e-cigarettes two weeks ago and since then I've been experimenting with different e-liquid nicotine strengths and trying different ratios of PG/VG bases and a range of e-juice flavours, as well as buying and trying-out various clearomizers, cartomisers, and atomisers of various resistances and Ohm levels.

Since the way you inhale and vape can be customised and adjusted to your preferences, the lower the Ohm unit of resistance in a coil, the less resistance there is while inhaling on the vaping pen, producing more vapour, flavour, and throat hit: although lower Ohm coils can produce a slightly burnt taste on the wicks and different people prefer various types of resistance levels during their inhalations.

You can also buy MTL (Mouth-To-Lung) pre-wicked coils where the vapour is inhaled through the mouth before passing to the lungs (like the action of smoking a cigarette) or the DL (Direct Lung) coils which gives more experienced vapers a direct lung inhalation like sucking on a large straw with little resistance. Experienced vapers often like box-mod vaping kits and customising their coils and wicks using organic cotton for a greater vaping experience.

I've also spent the last two weeks trying different coloured LED light tips on the cig-a-likes, and various mouth-pieces on the mini and larger range of tanks I purchased, buying spare chargers and rechargeable carry-cases, buying and trying-out both auto and manual style batteries, and learning how to steep the e-juices to enhance the flavours.

I've been learning how to clean the batteries and chargers and clearomisers, inbetween doing lots of technical research on these products and health research about them too over the previous fortnight.

I've suddenly stopped smoking altogether within two weeks (I thought I'd give myself at least a few months to get used to the switchover) through the help of e-cigarettes - without the mental pressure of being expected to quit smoking cigarettes;- I just no longer feel like smoking anymore since vaping and finding the e-liquid flavour and strength and coils that suits my preference.

Initial set-up costs can be a case of trial-and-error in adjusting and making the switch in finding the e-cigarette and e-liquid that suits you, but think how much you'd spend on tobacco or cigarettes per week, and how long a pack of coils, rechargeable batteries, and e-juices last and cost in comparison - a tiny fraction of the price of smoking cigarettes.

I dual smoked and vaped for the first week of the transition and switchover period, (vaping at first and cutting down smoking, and then if I still craved a cigarette after vaping, I'd have a small one, as I tried to get used to vaping instead,) then suddenly cut-down smoking to two a day yesterday and the previous day.... and today I smoked none at all - courtesy of JAC Vapour helping me who are brilliant: http://www.jacvapour.com (I already feel ready to cut the nicotine strength down too as the very high strength nicotine makes me feel a bit sick as I've been going through an adjustment period of finding which strength, coil, atomiser, base, flavour, etc, suits me.)

I've experienced flu-like symptoms and headaches from rapid cigarette withdrawal over the previous week as traditional cigarettes contain other chemicals. The body goes through a detox stage of headaches and runny noses as the body clears out the toxins after withdrawing from smoking traditional cigarettes, but those cigarette withdrawal symptoms are easing-off now. (Kind of like heavy caffeine addicts or alcoholics getting tremors and palpatations from sudden rapid withdrawal as the toxins clear from the body with headaches, etc.)

The nicotine in vapourisers is effective in giving nicotine relief, but it's not as efficient at delivering nicotine to the body as analogue cigarettes are, so e-cigarettes are actually less addictive in terms of the nicotine, and they're also a better substitute for analogues and a healthier alternative, (although not totally safe due to the presence of nicotine - but still much safer than smoking traditional cigarettes.) The strengths of nicotine can also be reduced right down to zero (nicotine-free) in vapourisers.

I've compiled a list of all the benefits of e-cigs and vaping vs smoking, which is only a small fraction of the cost of buying tobacco or cigarettes, such as food and drink tasting so much better as the sensations of the taste-buds begin to normalise after quitting smoking. No lingering tobacco odours. No tar and carbon monoxide and dangerous chemicals. No tobacco breath. 4000 chemicals in cigarettes compared to 16 in an e-cig (none of which are carcinogenic.) Vaping is more socially acceptable. No smokers cough and can breathe much better. No tobacco dust in the corners of your handbag. No cigarette holes in your favourite clothes from accidental dropped hot ash... and there's more advantages of vaping over cigarettes too.

In addition to being able to choose the nicotine strength of your e-liquids (from 0mg to 24mg,) there's also a huge range of delicious flavours available of e-liquids available to choose from, such as various tobacco flavours, vanilla, strawberry, cherry, chocolate, coffee, pina colada, kitten's breath, peppermint, menthol, spearmint, apple pie, blackcurrant, caramel, cream, fudge, ice-cream, banana milkshake, mango, peach, passionfruit, toffee, etc.... plus you can mix and create your own unique picNIC flavours too, so you customise your e-liquids to be exactly as you like them to taste!

All these ranges of different flavours isn't a choice available to smokers - especially with the EU ban on the sale of menthol and flavoured cigarettes that's coming into force this year. Vapers can choose from so many flavours in contrast.

A 10ml bottle of e-liquid (approximately costing £3.99) can last an ex-smoker (with a smoking habit of 15-a-day) for a week. The rechargeable batteries can be purchased for under £10 and can last anywhere between 4-6 months before a new battery is required. Some people's batteries have lasted them a year with good care.

Tanks (clearomisers) are usually under £10 and can last a year if they're cleaned once a month and looked after properly.

A pack of 5 coils costs around £10 and should last the average vaper for at least two months as each coil lasts for between 7-10 refills of e-liquid in a tank before the coil needs to be replaced. So a pack of 5 coils (giving 10 refills each) would allow for a total of 50 refills of e-liquid in a tank. A refill of e-liquid in an average-sized tank can last a person all day. An average smoker spends nearly £10 a day (£70 a week) on 20 cigarettes in comparison!

Compared to how much a smoker spends every week and year, it's a massive saving of money when you calculate and compare the different costs of both smoking vs vaping per month and year.

Nicotine (like caffeine) is highly addictive, but the hand-to-mouth habit of putting a cigarette to the mouth many times while taking inhalations on each cigarette is done on average over 70,000 times a year by smokers according to research.

There's techniques and methods available though to overcome both the addiction and the habit... via NRT inhalators, patches, e-cigs, chewing-gum, holding straws, cinnamon sticks, sewing, writing, drawing, playing with a rubber band with your fingers, or finding other methods in being mentally-prepared to break the habit of placing the fingers to the mouth when feeling nervous, anxious, or stressed, etc, after quitting.

Vaping is the lesser of two evils by far and the vapour (especially in PG based liquids and in vapourless liquids) quickly evaporates within seconds and doesn't linger in a room like the tar does in cigarettes which can cause tobacco stains.

Vapourised e-liquids produce only a very faint scent of vanilla, cherry, chocolate, (or whichever flavour e-liquid is used) for a few seconds after the exhale (depending on how long you hold it inside you before exhaling it out,) and can only be detected by someone else if they were standing very close to a person who is vaping in order to be able to smell a slight scent of strawberry, etc. Some people describe the scent as being similar to 'cotton-candy.'

One vaper said his wife was craving cookies after he vaped on a cookie flavoured e-cig in their car which gave off a slight cookie aroma, and another person said his friend suddenly wanted to eat some chocolate after he was standing next to him while he was vaping on chocolate flavoured e-liquid.

And the vapourless e-liquids (which are designed to be used with small and discrete vaping pens) can give a person nicotine relief in an office toilet without being detected by anyone as no vapour is produced from vapourless e-liquids.

If it wasn't for e-cigs, many people would still be addicted to getting their nicotine from smoking analogue cigarettes, which is far more dangerous, way more expensive, and more anti-social.

Nicotine can be obtained via invisible nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) patches and vapourless and smoke-free nicotine cartridges that are inserted into inhalators, (handy for long-distance flights or wherever smoking is prohibited in order to help ease nicotine cravings,) which can both be purchased from pharmacies (or even given to people for free by any National Health Service doctor at the Stop Smoking help clinics in the UK,) in addition to nicotine-addicts being able to obtain nicotine through e-cigarettes without all the dangerous chemicals that are present in smoking analogue cigarettes.

https://quitsmokingcommunity.org/how...ng-vs-smoking/

No smoke is produced from an e-cigarette - only vapour which only lingers for a few seconds (unlike toxic cigarette smoke which contains carbon monoxide and tar,) and furthermore, the vapour from e-cigarettes causes no known harmful effects to anyone else in the surrounding area.

Vapourisers have now become so popular in the world, that cloud-chasing amongst teens using high vegetable VG bases in their e-liquids and special coils to create large plumes of vapour has become a competitive sport. E-juices are also available that are totally nicotine-free:




'Cig-a-likes' e-cigarettes resemble the look and feel of a cigarette and they're simple to operate and are lightweight and comfortable to hold (like the feel of a cigarette) which is also more elegant, sleeker-looking, and more discreet than holding a heavier and larger vaping pen device that resembles the look of a cigar. Although the smaller and lighter batteries in cig-a-like models of e-cigarettes need recharging more frequently (every 2 hours) than the larger vaping pen batteries which can last all day and produce more flavour, throat hit, and vapour, without needing to carry a portable battery charging case or spare batteries around, so you can still vape while the other battery is being recharged.

Smokers making the changeover to vaping often want to adjust the vapour, throat hit, and nicotine strength, to their personal preference, so will try various batteries and clearomisers and atomisers and flavours at first until they find the vaping device and e-liquid that suits them best.

It's best not to smoke or vape nicotine at all, but if a person gives-in to their temptations and cravings, then vaping is a safer alternative to smoking.

There's 4 main ingredients used in e-liquids;- either a PG or a VG base, but usually there's a combination of the two in e-liquid bsaes, (PG is a pharmaceutical-grade ingredient that's often used in asthmatic inhalers and it produces more throat hit and flavour. Some people are allergic to PG bases and can only use 100% VG based e-liquids instead.)

VG (vegetable bases) which are sweeter and produce lots more vapour clouds, but the flavours and taste can be reduced in the e-liquid with a VG liquid - plus VG bases use up coils and wicks more quickly than PG bases.

Most e-liquids combine both PG and VG and customise a ratio of PG/VG bases to produce throat hit, vapour production, and flavour, depending on a person's preference, (eg; 80PG/20VG or 30VG/70PG base, etc.)

Then pharmaceutical-grade flavourings are added to the inhaled liquid, along with a nicotine strength. The flavouring is diluted so that it doesn't effect the nicotine strength.

No tobacco (not even in the tobacco flavoured e-liquids,) no carbon monoxide, and no tar is present in vapourised e-liquids.

An ex-smoker shows his hospital x-ray pictures of his lungs (below) while he was smoking, and after he switched from smoking to vaping instead - and you can see the improvements.

E-cigarettes can also be found and purchased inside chemists and pharmacies too.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Britain's best E-cigarettes tested by GQ magazine:

'With everyone from DiCaprio to Depp now vaping, we test the best e-cigarettes on the market.'

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article...gma-vapoursson

[♥ Lily ♥]

Furthermore, the Government's Department of Health in England has found in their studies that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco.

Many ex-smokers who have tried using NRT patches and inhalators and nicotine gum, but found it ineffective in helping them to quit smoking, have managed to quit since the 21st century revolutionary introduction of vaping e-cigarettes instead.

The TPD laws regulate how e-liquids are made using pharmaceutical-grade ingredients only, and 30ml bottles of e-liquid will be banned and limited to small 10ml bottles with child-safety locking caps, to prevent the nicotine in the liquid from accidentally being swallowed.

Most of the manual electric cigarette batteries sold in the UK have a 5-lock safety mechanism of clicking the button quickly five times to unlock the switch on and off in order to prevent the button from accidentally being pressed and firing the coil and wicks and wasting the battery life when they're placed inside of a carry pouch or being stored in a draw.

Manual batteries with a vaping switch button on them save more battery-life than auto batteries which operate simply by inhaling on them with no on-off switch.

A lot of British people were found to be selective of where their E-liquids are made, and prefer to buy their nicotine e-liquids from the UK which are made from pharmaceutical-grade ingredients only and have stringent batch safety-testing and adhere to the strict TPD laws of E-liquids that are produced and sold in the UK, as opposed to obtaining cheaper and unregulated versions of e-liquids from China.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e...andmark-review

[BeerBaron]

Vaporizers stopped me from smoking after 15 years or so of it.

[♥ Lily ♥]

UK: 2.8 million vapers, a 4-fold increase over 4 years

ASH released last figures from its Smokefree GB surveys on use of electronic cigarettes among adults and young people in Great Britain. Among the 2.8 million adults currently using electronic cigarettes almost half of them are ex-smokers.

http://www.vapingpost.com/2016/05/19...-over-4-years/

The laws on where you can vape in public places in the UK and abroad in other countries: https://vapeshoreditch.com/blog/vape...-uk-and-beyond

[♥ Lily ♥]

The WHO (World Health Organisation) list of countries of the world with the highest amount of smokers:

2014 rankings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ion_per_capita

2017 rankings
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...ost-Cigarettes

[♥ Lily ♥]

'The statistics show that smoking prevalence has declined continuously and dramatically over the past 50 years by about two-thirds.

In 1974, over 50% of men in Britain were smokers; that had fallen to just 19.1% in England in 2015.

Similarly, just over 40% of women smoked back then; last year it was only 14.9%.'

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...o-lowest-level

[♥ Lily ♥]

My boyfriend is a non-smoker who's never ever smoked in his life, (and neither of us drink alcohol or caffeine,) but he's been really supportive towards helping me to gradually quit smoking without putting too much mental pressure on me to quit.

I've quit much sooner than I initially planned to give myself in time to make the adjustment though, (two weeks to quit is something I feel good about achieving) and it's been a heck of a lot quicker than I anticipated since switching to e-cigs, and my relatives have been supportive too, which has also helped.

Maybe other people need more months to a year to fully quit during the transition period though as everyone is different and needs their own time if they want to adjust to vaping.

I've read a lot of reports from people who said they were heavy smokers who smoked 30-40 a day for 20 or more years and they said they've quit eversince using e-cigs when patches and nicotine gum didn't help them to quit.

Without e-cigs to help smoking-addicts, millions more people would still be addicted to smoking. So if heavy smokers can quit through switching, then it gives hope to lighter smokers and many others who are trying to overcome a smoking addiction. (It's not the tar and chemicals nor the carbon monoxide that smokers are addicted to in cigarettes - but the nicotine.)

I still get those early morning nicotine cravings for a smoke upon waking-up, but I use my vape pen now instead and no longer feel to smoke after vaping. I plan to gradually reduce the nicotine levels in my e-liquids next. But one step at a time.

Maybe my goals are too ambitious (too high of an aim too soon,) but I'm pleased with the results I've had so far, and I'd definitely recommend electric cigarette alternatives to help anyone out there who still has a smoking addiction.

[♥ Lily ♥]

I had to thumb-up this hilarious top-rated comment under a video stating that 'the fruity flavours of e-liquids are attracting kids.' SMH.

Then what about fruity-flavoured alcohol drinks, fruity-flavoured laxatives, etc?

Gee, it's illegal to sell e-liquids to kids, and besides this, the TPD laws make e-liquids be sold with child-proof safety locking caps on them in the UK.

(It's the parents common-sense and responsibility to keep e-liquids, medications, large bottles of vitamin supplements, paracetamol, caffeine, alcohol, matches, sharp kitchen knives, etc, etc, safely out of the reach of children;- or should there be a ban on stores selling adults with sharp food blenders and electric drills and sharp work-tools if the government states that kids might play with them...? )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzpQWrocrkQ