Various surveys in recent years have shown that Britons are increasingly swapping cigarette smoking for vape liquid, with the numbers lighting up falling consistently in recent years while more taking up e-cigarettes.
This being the case, it can be of interest to see what the situation is among Britain’s neighbours. We may no longer be in the EU, but the situation there is relevant for various reasons, chiefly because anyone visiting Ireland or the continent may be keen to know both the availability of vapes while they are there and the kind of laws that are in place regulating their sale and use.
Spain is a country Britons tend to visit more than most in the EU and while sun, sea and sand may be foremost on many people’s agenda, smoking is up there for Spaniards. Indeed, as Yahoo News reports, so high is the level of cigarette use in Spain that new environmental legislation has been brought in to oblige tobacco companies to clean up discarded butts from the streets.
The move has more to do with the European Union’s Green Deal directive than trying to get people to switch away from cigarettes, but the fact that Spain’s streets are more likely to be covered in discarded butts is not just about carelessness in binning them, but the country having one of the highest daily rates of smoking in the EU at 23.1 per cent of the adult population.
According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, there are only five nations in the 27-country bloc with a higher rate of smoking than Spain are in eastern Europe. The highest rate was 28.2 per cent in Bulgaria, with higher rates also found in Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Latvia and Hungary.
The overall rate of 19.7 per cent who smoked daily was notably higher than the 19.0 per cent that would apply if the EU’s former member state was included. However, the UK is not alone in having a significantly lower smoking rate.
Sweden is at the bottom of the list at 9.3 per cent, with Luxemburg on 13.5 per cent and Ireland on 14.1 per cent. The most recent Eurostat figures also include non-EU Iceland, which has a smoking rate of 11.1 per cent and Norway at 12.9 per cent, while the UK comes in at 13.9 per cent.
While these figures do not include vaping rates by comparison, it should be clear enough that, at least, the UK is doing a lot better than most of its neighbours when it comes to avoiding the carcinogenic health risks posed by lighting up.
The latest UK figures show the smoking rate has dropped even further since the Eurostat data was compiled, down to 13.3 per cent in 2021. Most significantly, the Office for National Statistics observed: “The decrease in the proportion of current smokers may be partly attributed to the increase in vaping and e-cigarette use.”
It may be that a few years from now, smoking rates will be much lower across the EU and vaping will have increased. But for vapers in the UK, it may be reassuring to know that, whatever one thinks about Brexit, there is one area where the UK is definitely doing better than the average of their neighbours.
