King's College London

The project aims to understand how new tobacco and vaping laws are affecting adults who smoke or vape. It will track changes in what people know and think about smoking and vaping as the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill is introduced. It will also look at how well the Swap to Stop programme (i.e., providing free vapes to people who smoke) is working.

The project will look at:

• how people respond to the 2025 disposable vape ban, including whether they switch products, quit vaping, or return to smoking cigarettes or other substitutes
• where people buy tobacco and vaping products as retail rules change
• how people try to quit smoking and what helps them succeed
• how people use other tobacco products such as cigars, shisha, and smokeless tobacco as policymakers introduce more regulation on these.
• whether the Swap to Stop programme helps people to quit smoking

The researchers will run the 2026 ITC England Survey, collecting data from 2,100 adults who smoke, recently quit, vape, or use other nicotine products. It will ask updated questions on Swap to Stop and new questions about early effects of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The research will use both a snapshot of people in 2026 and longer‑term data from previous surveys. Data from other countries (the US, Canada, and Australia) will also be used and compared with data in England.

The methods are designed to represent all adults who smoke, recently quit, vape, or use other nicotine products. The survey collects detailed information on age, background, socioeconomic status and health . This allows researchers to check whether policies affect some groups more than others. The survey will be tested with adults who smoke to make sure the questions are clear and easy to understand.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will mean many changes to the sale and use of tobacco and nicotine products. To investigate the results of these changes, we currently only have national surveys among the general population. This project will improve on this by using data from the ITC Project, an international study that follows people over time to understand how policies affect their behaviour. It provides more detailed information specifically on adults who smoke or use nicotine than general population surveys. It also allows us to compare England with other countries like the US, Canada, and Australia where similar policies are not being introduced. Without the 2026 survey, essential evidence needed to guide and measure the results of the new Bill would be missing.