We covered the announcement in April 2023 that the UK Government was to provide vape kits to help people who smoke quit. The scheme was called “Swap To Stop“.
In a post on their social media on 28th December, the Department of Health & Social Care encouraged people to quit smoking and announced further progress in the scheme. This is part of the NHS Smokefree campaign launched to encourage the 5.3m smokers in England to make an attempt to quit.
Smoking causes many serious diseases that affect people throughout their lives.
We’re helping adult smokers to quit by providing vapes to local authorities under a world-first Swap to Stop scheme.
This is part of the government’s commitment to create a smokefree generation.
— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) December 28, 2023
I have not seen which areas will be targeted first and it seems to be Local Authority led.
Local Authorities have to request to join the scheme and apparently there have been requests for 259,000 vapes so far nationwide.
Also it appears that the government are still looking to create a “smokefree generation” by phasing out tobacco sales. It says they are…
“set to introduce a new law to stop children who turned 14 in 2023 – or are younger – from ever legally being sold tobacco in England.
Three quarters (76%) of people in England support the principle of creating a smokefree generation a YouGov survey – commissioned by campaign group Action on Smoking and Health –has found with only 9% opposing. Support for creating a smokefree generation is similar regardless of age or region.”
Visit the NHS Better Health website to find out what support is available and details on methods of smoking cessation.
Plus we have many guides and resources to help you if you would like to try vaping to stop smoking…
- Our favourite vaping starter kits.
- Our favourite pod kits
- All about e-liquid
- Guide to vape batteries
Plus of course you can use our comments section to ask us for any help you need!
cant see swap to swap helping smoking rates a great deal, when the news first come out i was hopeful but since then we also find Gov are restricting flavours to tobacco only & implementing a smoking like tax on vaping products.
any vaper will tell you flavours & price are the two most important things about vaping that make it work, either a flavour ban or higher tax will have a detrimental effect on vaping numbers & this has been shown in places where either one of these have been enacted, both together is even worse & there will be a substantial & significant rise in smoking rates if this plan goes ahead.
in the end even if swap to stop does help some people despite the tax & flavour ban the statistics will show that smoking figures will rise quite rapidly overall.