Smoking causes disease, poor health and early death. Many adult smokers switch to nicotine vapes to help them quit smoking. Vaping is less harmful than smoking because you don’t inhale the toxic tar and carbon monoxide found in tobacco smoke.
But vapes are not harmless!
Short-term effects of vaping can include coughing, headaches, dizziness and sore throats. And the long-term effects are, as yet, unknown.
Vapes and vaping products that contain nicotine are age-restricted. It’s against the law to sell them to anyone under 18, It’s also illegal for adults to buy vapes for anyone under 18. Anyone who knowingly sells vapes to under 18s is driven by profit and doesn’t care who they sell to.
Vapes can have an impact on the environment. Approximately 1.3 million disposable vapes are thrown away every week in the UK: enough to cover 22 football pitches.
The tobacco supply chain is extremely environmentally harmful on a global scale. Environmental impact at all stages:
These result in:
- Pollution
- Soil degradation
- Biodiversity losses
- Deforestation
Death: Tobacco kills 8 million people a year
Around six trillion cigarettes are manufactured each year globally using 5.3 million hectares of land and 600 million trees. Cigarettes are the most littered item on the planet with 4.5 trillion cigarette butts polluting our pavements, parks, soil, rivers, beaches and oceans. All of this produced 25 megatonnes of solid waste, 55 megatonnes of waste water, almost 84 megatonnes of CO2 emissions to climate change – approximately 0.2% of the global total.
The free Stop Smoking London Helpline provides telephone support 7 days a week. If you would like to talk to one of their trained advisors call: 0300 123 1044
Helpline opening hours
Monday to Friday: 9am to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11am to 4pm
If you would like to chat to someone online about support to stop smoking then you can contact the Stop Smoking London helpline team.
It can be difficult to keep motivated when stopping smoking, which is why the NHS provides a free 28 day course of support e-mails to help you to get through the first month of stopping smoking.
If you would like to join an online group to get advice from other smokers on their experience of stopping smoking and also share your own experiences then you can join the NHS Smokefree Facebook group.