UK Disposable Vape Ban May Push Some Young Adults Back to Cigarettes

University of Bristol

The UK banned disposable vapes on June 1, 2025, aiming squarely at the sharp rise in youth vaping. The policy was popular. The question now is whether it worked the way it was supposed to, and a study from the University of Bristol suggests the answer is complicated.

Researchers interviewed 22 regular disposable vape users aged 18 to 30 before the ban took effect, asking how they expected to respond. The results, published in PLOS Global Public Health, paint a picture of a policy that may achieve its primary goal while creating secondary problems that deserve attention.

What the vapers said they would do

Most participants supported the ban. They linked it to the visible surge in teenage vaping and saw the policy as a reasonable public health measure. Many said they would simply switch to reusable or rechargeable devices once disposables disappeared from shelves.

But not everyone planned to make that transition. Some dual users, people who both vaped and smoked cigarettes, said they might increase their cigarette use rather than invest in a reusable vaping setup. A smaller number of never-regular smokers and one ex-smoker also said cigarettes were a possibility. For people who had used disposable vapes as a convenient, low-commitment alternative to smoking, the removal of that option created a gap that reusable devices might not fill.

The reasons varied. Some found reusable vapes inconvenient: they require charging, refilling, coil replacement, and more knowledge to use. The appeal of disposables was their simplicity. You buy one, use it until it is empty, and throw it away. For users who valued that ease, the jump to a reusable device felt like more effort than they were willing to invest. Cigarettes, by contrast, are as simple as disposable vapes were.

The illicit market question

Participants were divided on whether the ban would affect the illegal vape market. Some believed it would reduce illicit sales by removing the product category entirely, making enforcement simpler. Others worried the opposite: that demand for disposables would persist and simply shift underground, creating a market for unregulated products with unknown contents and no quality controls.

This concern is not hypothetical. Illicit disposable vapes were already a problem before the ban, with products circulating that exceeded legal nicotine limits, contained undisclosed ingredients, or failed basic safety standards. Whether the ban has reduced or expanded that market is an empirical question that future research will need to answer.

Who was in the room

The study's sample was predominantly white, female, aged 18 to 22, and about half were University of Bristol students. The researchers are transparent about this limitation. The findings may not generalize to older adults, men, ethnic minorities, or people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. A university-age sample in a single city captures one slice of the vaping population, not the whole picture.

The qualitative design, semi-structured interviews with 22 people, provides depth of insight but not statistical generalizability. It can tell us what kinds of responses are possible and what reasoning underlies them, but it cannot tell us what proportion of the UK's 2.5 million adult disposable vape users will actually switch to cigarettes, switch to reusable devices, or quit nicotine entirely.

A policy that did not aim for this outcome

The ban was not designed to encourage cigarette use. It was not designed to expand illicit markets. Yet both outcomes appeared in the anticipated responses of the people it affects. This does not mean the ban was wrong. Reducing youth vaping is a legitimate public health goal, and the participants themselves largely agreed with it. But it does mean the policy may need complementary measures to limit unintended harm.

Jasmine Khouja, a co-author now at the University of Bath, noted that the findings could help guide future research on the ban's actual impacts and inform efforts to reduce collateral consequences. Richie Carr, the corresponding author, described the study as offering an important early signal about how young adult users might respond to a policy designed primarily with teenagers in mind.

The researchers recommend that future studies use larger, more diverse samples and measure behavioral changes objectively rather than relying on anticipated responses. Tracking smoking initiation, smoking frequency, use of other nicotine products, and illicit vape use in the post-ban period would provide the evidence needed to assess whether the ban's benefits outweigh its costs.

For now, the study adds nuance to a policy debate that has often been framed in binary terms: ban or do not ban. The reality, as these 22 interviews suggest, is that removing one product from the market does not remove the demand it was serving. Where that demand goes next is the question that matters most.