ANOTHER BUDGET, ANOTHER PRICE INCREASE FOR SMOKERS

The price of cigarettes and tobacco products has yet again increased after Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s October budget. The prices will be increased by 88p for the most expensive cigarettes which will mean their cost will rise from £12.72 to just above £13.60. The cheapest pack of 20 cigarettes will be hit with an addition of 63p to their existing price which will mean they will go up from £9.10 to £9.73. Rolling tobacco has also been affected too, with the price of a 30g pouch increasing from £8.14 to £9.02.

Although these price increases are unfortunate news for smokers in the UK, the price of e-cigarettes has not been affected by the budget and will now, more than ever before, be a more affordable and safer alternative to smoking. We would like to see this as a positive more than anything, giving smokers even more reason to make the switch to vaping.

SHOULD I STOP SMOKING?

Smoking has been widely recognised as the leading factor of causing a variety of diseases including many varieties of cancer, COPD, heart disease and more. Obviously, we would like to avoid these where possible and so we have written our How to Quit Smoking guide to assist you on your journey to being smoke free.

When you take all of the above into consideration, smoking doesn’t really have the appeal it used to have and it doesn’t seem very sensible to continue going through life as a smoker. So now is a great time to give up cigarettes, not only for your health but it will be better for your bank balance too.

If you are a smoker that currently uses an average of 20 cigarettes or more then you would probably class yourself as a heavy smoker and we have a great blog post that will provide you with a selection of the Best Vape Kits and Vape Juice for Heavy Smokers.

THE ICON POD KIT

Another option is the sleek and stylish ICON Pod Kit, a lightweight device that has been designed to be a great alternative to smoking for new vapers. It is a hassle-free kit that is optimised to provide a smooth inhale and impressive flavour production. The ICON Pod Kit utilises replacement pods that are pre-filled with nicotine infused e-liquid and are available in a variety of exquisite flavours.

The ICON Pod Kit and replacement ICON pods are a cost-effective choice also, with the device and a pack of replacement pods currently costing just £11.98. After this initial purchase, packs of replacement pods will cost £6.99 per pack, which includes 3 pods.

HOW DOES THE ICON POD KIT PRICE COMPARE TO SMOKING?

Let’s say that you are a smoker of an average of 20 cigarettes a day. This means that after the price increase on tobacco in the budget, the cheapest pack of 20 cigarettes a day would cost you £9.73 per day. Once this is multiplied by 7 days the cost per week would be £68.11 per week. Now if this sounds like a lot of money, when the figure for a week's worth of cigarettes is multiplied by the 52 weeks in a year, the staggering cost of 1 year of smoking is £3,551.45! If you smoke 20 of the most premium cigarettes per day, the yearly cost would be £4,964.00!

On the flip side, if you purchased the ICON Pod Kit and a year’s worth of replacement pods (1 pack of 3 per week) this would cost £373.47 annually providing a saving of just shy of £3,000 a year, compared to the cheapest cigarettes.

In light of the above, there has also been a development within the NHS, with news emerging on major broadcasting channels such as the BBC and ITV regarding the potential for e-cigarettes to be prescribed on the NHS. This is still in the very early stages, where The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is inviting manufacturers to submit goods for approval to be prescribed. however this could be a fantastic step in the right direction for utilising vaping as a method for stopping smoking for good.