Three quarters of Irish 15- and 16-year-olds who vape have never smoked a cigarette, up from half a decade earlier, according to research presented Tuesday at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Barcelona. A separate Austrian study found the average age people start smoking has fallen from 20 in those born in the 1930s to around 15 in those born in the 2000s.
If you are a parent, the practical version is this: the conversation about nicotine now has to happen before the teenage years, and it has to name vapes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco and shisha, not only cigarettes. Most young people reaching nicotine today are not arriving through a cigarette. Nothing here tells you how to help a teenager who is already dependent, and that part belongs with their doctor.
Key takeaways
- In Ireland, the share of teen vapers who had never smoked first rose from 50.2% in 2015 to 76.2% in 2024.
- In Austria, smoking fell from 24.2% to 16.3% between 2012 and 2024, while use of alternative nicotine products rose from 0% to 17.2%.
- The proportion of Austrian under-18s who smoke almost doubled over the same period, from 2.6% to 5.0%.
What the studies found
The Austrian study, presented by Dr Charmaine Helk-Lim of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Lung Health and Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna, surveyed 15,056 people aged six to 82 about their tobacco and nicotine use over 12 years, from 2012 to 2024. Smoking dropped by about 8 percentage points. Over the same window, use of alternative products such as vapes went from 0% to 17.2%, and the proportion using more than one tobacco or nicotine product rose from 5.2% to 18.3%.
The second study, led by Professor Joan Hanafin of the TobaccoFree Research Institute Ireland and presented by Salome Sunday, looked at 5,265 Irish 15- and 16-year-olds at three points: 2015, 2019 and 2024. Smoking went from 13.9% to 11.7%, after a peak of 14.4% in 2019. Vaping went from 10.1% to 15.7%, after a higher peak of 18.1% in 2019. The share of vapers who had taken it up without prior cigarette use climbed from 50.2% to 76.2%.
A third study from the same Irish institute, presented by Professor Luke Clancy, followed 3,380 young people from age 13 to 25. By 25, 38% were currently using e-cigarettes and 25% were currently smoking. The people least likely to be smokers at 25 were those who had never vaped.
Dr. Kumar’s take
The gateway argument has reversed direction. In 2015, half of Irish teen vapers came to vaping after cigarettes, which is the picture harm-reduction advocates built their case on. By 2024, three quarters of them had never smoked at all. For most of these teenagers, vaping is not a substitute for something worse. It is the entry point.
There is also a measurement problem worth naming. “Smoking rates are down” is true in both countries and it is being treated as a scoreboard. But in Austria the same population picked up 17.2 percentage points of alternative nicotine use and more than tripled the rate of using multiple products at once. A metric that counts only cigarettes will keep showing progress while nicotine dependence spreads through products it was never designed to see.
These are conference presentations, not peer-reviewed papers, and I am reading them from the congress release rather than full manuscripts. They are also surveys of two countries, so they describe trends, not causes. The Irish finding that never-vapers were least likely to smoke by 25 is an association in a cohort study and does not on its own prove vaping causes later smoking.
What tempers the alarm slightly: Irish teen vaping peaked in 2019 at 18.1% and has come down to 15.7%, so the trend is not one-directional everywhere.
What it means for you
Start earlier than feels necessary. The Austrian data put average smoking initiation around age 15, and the researchers advised families to begin the conversation before the teenage years.
Cover the whole category. If a child hears only about cigarettes, the warning misses the product most of their peers are actually using.
Do not treat a vape as the safe option for a teenager who does not smoke. The harm-reduction case for vaping was built on adult smokers switching, and it says very little about a 15-year-old who would otherwise have used nothing.