Vapers Vs. The Flavour Ban

What Are The Vaping Community’s Thoughts On The Possible Plans?

There’s been a lot of conflict between the opinions of the vaping industry and the recent legislation proposals recently, with the idea of potentially limiting e-liquid flavours to only menthol and tobacco and adding another tax to e-liquids, but what do our customers think about this?

We sent out a survey to our customers to ask them about their journey from smoking cigarettes to vaping and how these proposals will affect them, and the results aren’t very surprising to us. 

Out of the 500 responses, we found that 82.2% have successfully quit smoking and are now fully transitioned to vaping, with only 15.4% only smoking occasionally or socially. Sounds pretty successful to us!

How Long Did You Smoke Before Trying Vaping?

The NHS say, and we agree, that vaping is the most effective quit-smoking aid, so we wanted to find out how long our respondents smoked cigarettes before they were able to transition fully. 

Our most common answers were 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, and 40 years, but they ranged from 1 year to over 60 years. 

It’s amazing to see individuals who have been smoking for so long be able to kick the habit to the curb with the success of using vape kits. So, vaping shouldn’t be treated in the same category as cigarettes. 

We did get a few respondents who said they hadn’t smoked before vaping, and we want to reiterate that vaping is not for non-smokers, nicotine is addictive but it is around 95% safer to consume through using an e-cigarette than it is to smoke traditional cigarettes. 

Vaping should only be used as a tool to finally stop consuming nicotine altogether. 

Which E-Liquid Flavours Have Helped You to Quit Smoking?

The Tory government is potentially planning to limit e-liquid flavours to only menthol and tobacco flavours.

This has caused the most rage among vapers, as the variety of flavours is the most attractive appeal to vaping which helps smokers to make the switch. Their argument for it was that the flavours are “attractive to minors”, but ignoring the success of vape juice flavours in getting smokers to quit is quite ridiculous. 

It’s caused such an outrage that there is a public petition to stop the government from banning flavoured e-liquids, that we encourage you to carry on sharing to get as many signatures as possible.

Now, out of our respondents the 3 types of e-liquid flavours that helped them the most to quit smoking:

• 31.9% Fruity flavours
• 16% Ice and cooling flavours
• 11.9% Menthol and mint flavours

Ice and cooling flavours can be any flavour that has added an icy/cooled burst when inhaled. 

It’s interesting to see that nearly half of the respondents had chosen fruity e-liquid flavours as the most helpful quit-smoking tool but that’s the flavour the government would like to ban in their proposal. 

The UK Government Is Proposing to Limit E-liquid Flavours to Only Menthol and Tobacco Flavours, If This Happens Will You Continue Vaping or Return to Smoking?

We then asked the respondents what would they do if vape juice flavours were limited to only menthol and tobacco, and we were surprised by the results.

54.2% said they would continue to vape, but try to source flavours from elsewhere.

Now, this could be insinuating that they may have to go to black market sellers to get the e-liquid flavours they enjoy, and we already know the black market for disposable vapes is booming and will continue to grow. 

Not only is this extremely dangerous, but when you take the choice away from the public, they will find other ways to get around it, even if it means going to untrusted and unregulated sources. 

26.6% said they will continue to vape the menthol and tobacco flavours. 

8.4% said they would go back to smoking cigarettes. 

5.3% said they would quit vaping and try other nicotine replacements. 

It’s good to see a quarter of the respondents will still vape menthol and tobacco flavours, but it is nothing compared to the number of respondents that will try and source other flavour variations from elsewhere. 

The Recent Updates to The Government Plans

The restrictions, which were first proposed earlier this year as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, are meant to discourage the youth from vaping, but as research shows, any limitations on vape flavours might have serious unforeseen implications and would probably increase the around 312 smoking-related deaths, more than 13 people an hour, that occur in the UK every day.

The House of Commons has voted 383 to 67 in support of Rishi Sunak’s proposal that would ban the sale of tobacco products in the UK to anyone born in 2009 or later.

The Bill is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons, it still needs to go through a report stage and 3rd reading before it goes through the same steps in the House of Lords before it can get Royal Assent, where the current King formally agrees to make the bill into law. 

The law would also impose “on-the-spot fines” of £100 for selling tobacco products or e-cigarettes to minors, which isn’t really a huge fine for something that is creating an epidemic. 

Additionally, under a separate environmental legislation, the UK is planning to ban the supply and sale of disposable vapes starting in April 2025.

There’s also talks of adding an additional tax to e-liquids, when we asked our respondents what they thought about this, 96.3% had a negative opinion. 

Some had said:

“Honestly don’t understand why they would put a tax on the most successful aid ever to stop smoking cigarettes“

“It will have a detrimental effect on people looking to move away from smoking and could lead to people stopping vaping and return to smoking cigarettes as the financial incentive to quit smoking will no longer be so great.”

“Yet another tax grab, this shouldn’t be the case at all! Why should we pay tax on eliquids especially when we’ve worked hard to give up smoking.”

“They only implemented it because more people vape than smoke now, just another money making scheme.”

At Vapoholic, we’re supporters of healthier lives for former smokers and the promotion of vaping as a useful aid for quitting. 

The ban on flavoured e-liquid because unregulated brick-and-mortar shops have been getting away with selling disposable vapes to underage children will only harm the success of vaping, and may increase the smoking rates again. 

With 54.2% of our respondents saying they’ll source flavoured e-liquids from elsewhere, we already know that the illicit disposable vapes are hospitalising individuals for their banned ingredients and non-TPD compliant, so what will the effects be of black market e-liquids? 

We believe that Trading Standards should be heavily funded to crack down on this, the fine for selling to underage minors to be increased so it is more of a deterrent than a slap on the wrist, or imprisonment. 

Since we haven’t raised the cost of our e-liquids in years and the thought of adding additional tax to them means that the price of shortfill e-liquid will need to increase by £10, we hope that we can continue to keep our products as affordable as possible for all vapers. 

If you have any worries or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out and one of our friendly team members would be happy to assist.