Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to help ensure that people using vapes don't start using cigarettes.

The Government is clear that e-cigarettes should only be used by smokers to support their route to quitting smoking.

In the current Tobacco Control Plan for England, the Government commissioned Public Health England to publish annual updates on the evidence on e-cigarettes, including on their patterns of use. Their latest report, published in March 2020, found no evidence that vaping among adults leads them to start smoking and little evidence that increases in vaping among young people leads to increases in smoking. The report is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vaping-in-england-evidence-update-march-2020