The number of smokers in Britain has reached its lowest point since records began in 1974, according to new data, while more than a million people say they are using e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that 17.2% of adults in the UK smoked in 2015, down from 20.1% in 2010.

Smoking levels are highest in Scotland, at 19.1%, followed by Northern Ireland, where it is 19%, Wales on 18.1% and England on 16.9%. The numbers have been dropping fastest in recent years in Scotland and Wales. Among local authorities, Blackpool is the only one to feature consistently in the 10 heaviest smoking areas between 2012 and 2015. In 2015, 25.3% of adults in Blackpool smoked.

The data also shows that 2.3 million people were e-cigarette users in England, Scotland and Wales in 2015, about 4% of the population. Their survey also shows that 4 million more people describe themselves as former e-cigarette users. A further 2.6 million say they have tried them but not gone on to use them regularly.

Half of the 2.3 million who were current users of e-cigarettes at the time of the survey said they were doing it to quit smoking. A further 22% said they were vaping because it was less harmful than smoking. Only 10% said they chose to vape because it was cheaper than buying cigarettes. Others – 9% – said they used e-cigarettes mainly because they were permitted indoors.

The figures will bolster the arguments of those who believe e-cigarettes have a major role to play in ending the tobacco epidemic. The issue has been hugely controversial among public health doctors and campaigners, some of whom consider e-cigarettes to be a stalking horse for the tobacco industry which hopes to make smoking acceptable again and has invested in vaping.

The World Health Organisation has expressed concern over e-cigarettes, but Public Health England has said vaping may be 95% safer than smoking tobacco.

Half of current smokers say they have tried e-cigarettes, and 14.4% of current smokers also vape.

Some of the statistics suggest that it is often the heavier smokers who turn to e-cigarettes. Those who also vape smoke marginally more cigarettes per day on average than those who do not – 11.8 versus 11.3. Smokers who have given up on e-cigarettes smoke 12.2 per day versus 10.6 among those who have never used an e-cigarette. Smokers who have children at home are also more inclined to use e-cigarettes.

The ONS vaping data is from the opinions and lifestyle survey 2014-15 and relate just to Great Britain. The ONS figures on general smoking trends include northern Ireland.

Men are more likely to smoke – 19.3% do, compared with 15.3% of women. Smoking is most common in the 25-34 age group, where 23% smoked in 2015. It is least common in the over-65s, among whom 8.8% smoke. But the biggest decline since 2010 has been among the 18-24 year-olds, where it has dropped five percentage points to 20.7% in five years.

Figures for Great Britain also show that smokers have been cutting back on the numbers of cigarettes they consume. Average consumption is down to 11.3 cigarettes per day, the lowest number since 1974.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH said: “The decline in smoking is very encouraging and shows that strong tobacco control measures are working. However, the government can’t leave it to individual smokers to try to quit on their own. If the downward trend is to continue we urgently need a new tobacco control plan for England, and proper funding for public health and for mass media campaigns. That’s essential if the prime minister is to live up to her promise to tackle health and social inequality.”

Use of electronic cigarettes, popularly known as e- cigarettes, has helped more than six million smokers in the European Union quit smoking, estimates a new study.

In addition, the researchers found that use of e-cigarettes has helped more than nine million Europeans to cut smoking consumption.

“These are probably the highest rates of smoking cessation and reduction ever observed in such a large population study,” said principal investigator of the study Konstantinos Farsalinos from University of Patras, Rio, Greece.

For the study, the researchers analysed the data from the 2014 Eurobarometer on smoking and the use of the electronic cigarettes among a representative sample of 27,460 Europeans.

Eurobarometer is a survey performed by the European Commission, assessing, among others, smoking and electronic cigarette use patterns in all 28 member states of the European Union.

The study, accepted for publication in the journal Addiction, also found that the use e-cigarettes has largely been confined to smokers, with minimal use by non-smokers.

“The European Union data show that the use of electronic cigarettes seems to have a positive impact on public health for two main reasons — high smoking cessation and reduction rates are observed, and electronic cigarette use is largely confined to smokers (current and former), with minimal use by non-smokers,” Farsalinos noted.

There is a lot of controversy over the use of the electronic cigarettes by non-smokers, but researchers appeared reassuring.

Just 1.3 percent of non-smokers reported current use of nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes and 0.09 percent reported daily use, the study said.

A Perth man has lost an attempt to overturn a conviction for selling electronic cigarettes in Western Australia.

Vincent Van Heerden, 33, was convicted by the Supreme Court in 2014 of breaching tobacco control laws by selling e-cigarettes online.

Van Heerden was fined $1,750 and ordered to pay $14,000 in court costs.

The landmark case effectively made the sale of the electronic smoking devices illegal in WA.

The devices turn fluid into vapour that can be inhaled, and Van Heerden maintained he believed they were a healthy alternative to cigarettes.

He appealed the verdict in the Court of Appeal, but the case was dismissed.

Outside the court, Van Heerden said he was shocked by the decision.

“It doesn’t make any sense from a common sense point of view, from a moral point of view and from a legal point of view. I don’t understand it,” he said.

“I think society has been done a massive disservice today. This was a technology that is saving lives all around the world.

“They’ve been proven to be 95 per cent safer than actual tobacco cigarettes.”

Van Heerden’s home was raided by Health Department officials in 2011, and he was later charged with breaching state law by selling a product that resembled a cigarette.

He was one of the operators of an online business called Heavenly Vapours which sold e-cigarettes.

Van Heerden was originally acquitted of the charge, but was later found guilty on appeal.

The court ruled e-cigarettes not containing nicotine still breached the tobacco control act, which prohibits any “food, toy or other product” that looks like a cigarette or cigar.

E-cigarettes containing nicotine liquid are banned across Australia.

Van Heerden said he was yet to decide whether to take the case to the High Court.

“I’m going to have to talk seriously with the lawyers and do some costings,” he said.

“It’s going to be a very expensive exercise and this has been a non stop David versus Goliath scenario.”

E-cigarettes. For a product barely anyone had heard of five years ago, they now seem to be on everyone’s lips. While much has been written about the safety of these products and their potential to either support or sabotage efforts to reduce smoking rates, it’s timely to consider why the global tobacco industry has taken such a keen interest in buying e-cigarette companies.

Despite e-cigarettes seemingly dominating public and academic debate on tobacco control, the global e-cigarette market is minuscule compared to traditional tobacco products. Euromonitor estimates that the global e-cigarette market was worth US$3 billion in 2013.

Compare this to the global tobacco market, one of the most valuable fast moving consumer goods industries, worth an estimated US$800 billion – more than 260 times the size of the e-cigarette market. This highly profitable tobacco market, outside of China, is dominated and controlled by just five major players: Japan Tobacco International, Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International, and Altria/Philip Morris USA.

All the major global tobacco companies now have a stake in the e-cigarette market, with most buying up independent e-cigarette companies.

Philip Morris International, known as PMI, has taken it a step further: in addition to recently purchasing UK e-cigarette company Nicocigs Ltd, it will be launching the Marlboro HeatStick. Unlike e-cigs, which vapourise liquid nicotine, the HeatStick takes normal tobacco and heats it to 350 degrees Celsius to create a tobacco vapour.

PMI plans to introduce the Marlboro HeatStick in test markets in Japan and Italy later this year. Similar sorts of products were introduced in the 1990s, but failed dismally when smokers rejected both the taste and lack of smoking satisfaction. PMI appears hopeful this latest generation of heat technology will be more acceptable to smokers.

On the surface, it might look like the tobacco industry is simply buying up these companies before they become a major threat to its profits. Or even, that it sees a bright future for e-cigarettes and wants to control the market.

But considering just how much more profitable traditional cigarettes are than e-cigarettes, and the tobacco industry’s long and chequered corporate history, it’s important to question what other motivations they might have.

Tobacco advertising on television is nearly universally banned, the tobacco-friendly states of Indonesia and Zimbabwe being two holdouts. It has been decades since a tobacco ad appeared on television screens in the United States and United Kingdom. But e-cigarette marketing is a booming business in both countries with controversial television ad campaigns and celebrity endorsements.

Using celebrities, sex, glamour, adventure, rebelliousness, youth and beauty to sell addictive products is very familiar territory for the tobacco industry. These sorts of campaigns contradict the tobacco industry’s pubic relations message that it is only interested in selling e-cigarettes to adults who are unable to quit smoking.

Add to the fact that PMI can no longer show packs of Marlboro on store shelves or splash the iconic red Marlboro chevron on Formula One cars, it can promote the US$69 billion Marlboro brand by putting it on the HeatStick product.

E-cigarettes could also help the tobacco industry undo the effects of policies that have seen cigarettes pushed out of social settings that kept people smoking. While smoking bans are principally about protecting people, especially workers, from secondhand smoke, they have an additional positive benefit of reducing smoking rates.

Pushing to allow e-cigarette use in pubs and restaurants means there is no need to quit, because when you can’t smoke, simply use an e-cigarette instead. But, don’t forget to keep smoking the real stuff when you can too.

Since acquiring e-cigarette brands, not one tobacco company has stepped out of the way of tobacco control policy makers working to reduce smoking. The industry has not raised a white flag and agreed to no longer oppose effective tobacco control policy reform.

It is business as usual: oppose, lobby and litigate when countries implement laws that impact on cigarette sales. Which is why the global treaty to reduce tobacco use, the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, is explicit in banning tobacco industry influence in tobacco control policy. Finding a “fundamental and irreconcilable conflict of interest” between the industry and public health means the industry is not a welcome stakeholder in formulating public health policy.

E-cigarettes are a potentially useful tool in giving the tobacco industry a seat back at the policy table. If it can point to e-cigarettes as “proof” it cares about consumers and is working to reduce tobacco harms, then perhaps it will no longer be shut out of the regulatory process. No matter that e-cigarettes are a tiny portion of its total business.

And finally, e-cigarettes are a huge distraction to tobacco control advocates and policy makers. No doubt the tobacco industry celebrates witnessing the debate and division among tobacco control colleagues over the utility of e-cigarettes in reducing the harms of tobacco use. The less attention paid to the deadly US$800 billion arm of the business the better.