1. What action is the Welsh Government taking to help promote e-cigarettes to encourage existing smokers to quit smoking? OQ58468

Llywydd, our approach to e-cigarettes is set out in our tobacco control strategy and its delivery plan, published in July of this year. As set out in the plan, we will commission an evidence-based review of the use of e-cigarettes in Wales.

Thank you, First Minister. In my region of south-east Wales, the highest smoking rate is actually in Merthyr Tydfil, where 23 per cent of adults are smokers. This is higher than both the Welsh and UK averages. If Wales is to achieve its smoke-free target by 2030, then the rate of quitting will need to increase by 40 per cent. A recent study by Queen Mary University, supported by Cancer Research UK, found that vaping could be twice as effective as traditional nicotine replacement treatments in helping smokers quit. Several reviews, including those from Public Health England and the UK Royal College of Physicians, have found there are no identified health risks of passive vaping by bystanders. The current evidence therefore does not justify bans in public places of tobacco-free vaping. First Minister, do you agree it is critical that smokers understand that switching to vape products is likely to significantly reduce their risk of harm compared to smoking conventional cigarettes, and what is your Government doing to encourage the NHS in Wales to work with vaping companies to supply their products to those who wish to quit smoking to help you meet your target of a smoke-free Wales by 2030?

Well, Llywydd, let me first of all pay tribute to all of those who have been involved in the smoking cessation campaigns in Wales in recent times. In 2012, we set a target for reducing smoking in Wales—the prevalence of it—to 20 per cent by 2016. We exceeded that; we got to 18 per cent by 2015. We then set another target to get to 16 per cent by 2020. We exceeded that again, and the current level of smoking prevalence in Wales is the lowest it has been ever since these records began, at 13 per cent. So, we undoubtedly have had a very significant success. It's one of the great social changes of my lifetime, I think, to have seen the way in which smoking prevalence has been reduced. 

Where e-cigarettes lead to people ceasing the use of tobacco, then, undoubtedly, e-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes. Sadly, the evidence is that, for most people who use an e-cigarette, it is as well as, not instead of, a conventional cigarette. Eighty-five per cent in recent studies are dual use, and dual use, I'm afraid, does not eliminate the harm that smoking conventional cigarettes brings. In fact, it adds additional harms, particularly in relation to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So, on the terms that the Member put it, I agree with her—if we can persuade people to move from conventional cigarettes to e-cigarettes, they are definitely less harmful. The evidence is that we are not succeeding in doing that, and people who believe that adding an e-cigarette into the repertoire and thinking that that's helping them, I'm afraid the evidence there is that it quite definitely doesn't. 

I recall, First Minister, that you endeavoured to control vaping when you introduced the Bill in 2015, but there was no support from the Conservative benches for this measure so it had to be withdrawn. So, I'm glad to see that the tobacco control strategy recognises that vaping is a gateway into smoking, and we now have a veritable epidemic amongst young people of vaping. I just wondered what plans, if any, the Welsh Government has to really clamp down on this in schools and colleges, because, undoubtedly, the tobacco companies are using it as a way of getting people to take up smoking, which we know is so harmful. 

Well, Llywydd, Jenny Rathbone is absolutely right—one of the primary motivations for the public health Bill that failed to pass in 2016 was the desire to protect children from the gateway to nicotine addiction that is represented by the threat of e-cigarettes to children and young people. And, very sadly, the latest evidence on that is very discouraging. At a UK level, the number of children and young people reporting that they are using an e-cigarette rose from 4 per cent in 2020 to 7 per cent in 2022, and that was amongst 11 to 17-year-olds. And there is a tide across the world that is flowing even faster than that. Members here will have seen, no doubt, the advice of the US Surgeon General, providing public health advice to states across America that we must take aggressive steps—aggressive steps—to protect our children from these highly potent products. E-cigarettes contain nicotine; nicotine is highly addictive. Nicotine is particularly damaging to the developing brains of adolescents; indeed, it continues to cause harm to the brain up to the age of 25. So, whatever steps we might take to derive the public health benefits from adults who genuinely use e-cigarettes to quit conventional cigarettes, we must do everything we can to protect children from the way in which using an e-cigarette becomes an addictive tool, which then leads on to even worse consequences.