Swapping smoking for vaping in England with Vera Buss and Leonie Brose

Swapping smoking for vaping in England with Vera Buss and Leonie Brose

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? This episode of Addiction Audio takes a clear, research-focused look at smoking cessation in England, with a particular focus on swapping cigarettes for vapes. Host Annika Theodoulou chats with Dr Vera Buss from University College London and Professor Leonie Brose from King’s College London about their study on England’s national ‘Swap to Stop’ programme.

The scheme offers free vape starter kits and behavioural support to people who want to quit smoking, with a strong focus on reaching more deprived communities through services like stop smoking clinics, homeless centres and job centres. Vera and Leonie walk through how they used data from the long-running Smoking Toolkit Study and an "autoregressive integrated moving average" (ARIMA) model to see whether the start of Swap to Stop was linked with more people using vapes in their quit attempts.

They also explain why their planned difference-in-differences comparison with Scotland and Wales didn’t work out, because the trends and populations weren’t similar enough to compare fairly. A key message is summed up when Vera says, "we did not look at quit success, so we cannot say whether the people who tried to quit actually succeeded.

But I think seeing that it actually led to a significant increase in people trying is already quite an encouraging result." Leonie also highlights how unusual it is for a country to provide free vape kits at national level, and why this might matter for future tobacco control policy. If you’re interested in evidence-based ways to support people away from cigarettes, or you work in public health and addiction services, this conversation gives you plenty to think about.

How might free vaping kits and behavioural support change the way your community approaches quitting smoking?