Will Vapers Decide The EU Referendum?

In conjunction with the 100K campaign and the Change.org petition, we at Vape Club recently funded the first survey by an independent polling company to look at the current political views of vapers.

The survey was conducted by Populus between the 3rd and the 5th of June, capturing the opinions of 581 vapers. There were a broad mix of people at different stages of their vaping journey; from people just starting out and still in the process of cutting out tobacco, to vapers who have switched completely.

It shows that there is a 260,000+ vote advantage to the leave campaign, so if on the 23rd of June there is a Brexit majority of less than 260,000, it was 'the vapers that won it'.

This information has been passed onto the main political parties, the Department of Health and to the European Commission, in particular Martin Seychell; the official who was in charge of getting the TPD through. The choice of whether to respond to vapers concerns about the TPD remains with him and his colleagues.

The complete set of survey results are available to view online.

There were some very interesting findings, and here are some of the key outcomes;

• 39% of all vapers (2.8 million) said that they are angry with the heavy EU regulations of e-cigarettes (Page 18 on the attached table).
• 45% of all vapers said that the rules were the result of "excessive influence" by big tobacco and big pharma companies (Page 16).
• More than half a million vapers plan to get around EU rules by using unregulated black market sources and foreign websites (Page 14).
• In the EU referendum vapers are giving a 260,000 vote advantage to Brexit with 49% planning to vote Leave and 40% remain (Page 28).
• None of the political parties are seen as overall supportive of vapers but Labour is currently seen as the least unhelpful with a -3% net score compared with the Conservatives at -24%, Liberal Democrats at -20%, and UKIP at -8% (Page 19).
• Vapers are smoking 8 billion less tobacco cigarettes every year with the average vaper down from 17 cigarettes a day to 9 a day (Page 6).
• Vapers are saving £3.4bn a year from switching, with an average vaper weekly saving of £24
• Of the daily vapers 66% said that their health was improved due to vaping, and only 1% said it had got worse (Page 12).

If you have questions or queries, or you would like to speak to us directly, please contact our team.