Government urged to prioritise public education on vaping amid criticism of years of underfunding

The government has been called upon to prioritise public education on smoking and vaping, as stark new research shines light on years of underfunding by the Conservatives.

Freedom of Information data from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) reveals just £4.88 million was spent on stop smoking campaigns over the past two financial years – amounting to an average annual spend less than 50p per smoker.

This is a far cry from the recommendations made in the Khan Review – a government-commissioned report which laid out steps to ‘make smoking obsolete’ and called for £15 million per year to be invested in a national mass media campaign designed to help smokers kick the habit.

The Khan Review emphasised the “need to create a climate that supports quitting” and noted that, at the height of the COVID pandemic, the government reportedly spent upwards of £50 million to effectively market key messages. It said: “When there is a will to save lives, money can be found.”

The report also warned of worsening public perceptions about the relative harms of vaping, stating that the government ‘must embrace the promotion of vaping as an effective tool to help people quit smoking tobacco.’

Despite this, the DHSC confirmed it does not run any campaigns solely focused on vaping and recent data from Action on Smoking and Health UK shows misperceptions about the reduced risk alternative are now at an all-time high, with half of all smokers wrongly believing it to be as, or more harmful, than smoking.

The new FOI research, conducted by the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), comes as Labour considers a ban on all vape advertising and sponsorship under the newly-revived Tobacco and Vapes Bill – a move which critics fear could reduce the number of adults making the switch and push the nation’s smokefree ambitions further out of reach.

“The Tories failed to deliver much needed investment in stop smoking campaigns and balanced communications around the relative risk of vaping. We are now in a situation where there are still six million adult smokers in the UK and a huge proportion of them are completely misinformed about the most effective tool available to help them quit,” said John Dunne, UKVIA director general.

“Labour has a duty to correct this course but a ban on all advertising risks limiting the industry’s ability to highlight the quitting power of vaping, potentially impacting the number of people who attempt to make the switch and widening the trust gap we’re already fighting to close.

“If the government truly believes in the public health benefits of vaping – which has been instrumental in helping bring down the nation’s smoking rates – it needs to prioritise the development and roll out of a well-funded programme which directs smokers to support and dispels myths about the reduced risk alternative, as well as allow the industry to run education-focussed campaigns which communicate the facts about vaping as the most effective quitting tool available…if it doesn’t, the price paid will be the lives of smokers and the possibility of a smokefree future.”

He added: “We welcome news that the government will provide £70 million for stop smoking services and will be interested to see how much of this funding will be used for public education and advertising to encourage smokers to visit their local service.”

The UKVIA has written has to the secretary of state calling on the DHSC to back vaping and smoking public education with the much-needed funding that the Tories failed to deliver.

“According to the NHS, vaping is twice as effective than NRT at helping people quit and is substantially less harmful than smoking. Seeing that smoking kills two thirds of smokers if used as intended the government should be striving to get these evidence-based facts out to smokers so that they can pick up a vape with confidence and use it to potentially prevent smoking related death and disease,” commented Sairah Salim-Sartoni, a chartered health psychologist and award-winning stop smoking clinician with 20 years of experience within the smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction sector.

“Let’s arm smokers with evidence and support so that they can learn to trust vaping as a smoking cessation tool and use them effectively to become smokefree.”

The Royal College of Physicians previously said mass media campaigns are ‘effective and relatively inexpensive’, calling for funding to be increased to at least £23 million – the level seen in 2008 – ‘to provide a low-cost, high-impact intervention to strengthen a comprehensive tobacco control strategy’.

It also said media campaigns should also ‘encourage switching from smoked tobacco to e-cigarettes’ and ‘provide balanced information on other harm reduction options’.