E-cigarette use shifts towards lower socioeconomic groups

The use of e-cigarettes among smokers has shifted from more affluent early adopters to being used more widely across all socioeconomic groups, according to new UCL research. The study, published today in  Addiction  and funded by Cancer Research UK, is the first of its kind to look at the use of e-cigarettes, which includes vape pens and vape mods, by socioeconomic groups at the population level. The research team analysed data from over 80,000 adults in the UK aged 16 or over on a monthly basis for four years from 2014, which marked the time that use had stabilised after the initial rapid rise in e-cigarette use at the beginning of the decade. Tobacco smoking currently leads to an estimated 96,000 premature deaths in the UK annually. It is one of the biggest causes of health inequalities, with the burden of mortality and disease heaviest among more disadvantaged groups. "E-cigarettes have the potential either to decrease or increase health inequalities depending on levels of smoking cessation, so we wanted to explore the associations between socioeconomic status and e-cigarettes and whether that changed over time," said lead author, PhD researcher, Loren Kock, (UCL Epidemiology and Public Health). "Our research indicates that from 2014 to 2016, e-cigarette use among smokers was generally higher among those from more affluent socioeconomic groups, with disadvantaged groups around half as likely to use an e-cigarette in 2014, but this gap was no longer evident in 2017." Participants answered questions via the Smoking Toolkit Study- a monthly household survey of smoking and smoking cessation among adults.