“Figures from 2021 suggest that 22 per cent of secondary school pupils have tried an e-cigarette. This is no higher than it was in 2014 but regular use among this cohort seems to be accelerating. Indeed it has more than doubled from 4 per cent to 9 per cent over the same period. Sales are supposedly prohibited to under-18s, so this seems alarming.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to compare these statistics to a counterfactual. How many of these kids would be puffing away on traditional cigarettes, as was quite common in the 1980s when I was at school, if they were not vaping? Although one gets into very small sample sizes, it seems that only 1 per cent of regular secondary-school e-cigarette users have never smoked an old-style cigarette, equating to 0.09 per cent of that population.”