Stoptober is for smokers. This is for the rest of us.

Every October the NHS runs Stoptober. Thousands of smokers put the fags down on the first of the month and try to make it to the 28th, because if you get to 28 days you are five times more likely to stay stopped for good. It is a brilliant campaign. It has been going since 2012 and it works.

It is also, very specifically, not for you.

Does Stoptober include vaping?

Not in the way you are hoping. Stoptober is a stop smoking challenge. Vaping shows up in it as one of the tools you are encouraged to use to get off cigarettes. Local stop smoking services hand out vape kits. The NHS quit smoking pages recommend them. The government has literally posted vapes to a million smokers through Swap to Stop.

So if you type "Stoptober vaping" into Google hoping for a plan, what you get is a campaign that thinks a vape is the answer, not the question. For smokers, fair enough. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking and we will not pretend otherwise.

But you are not a smoker. You are the person who did the sensible thing, swapped to a vape, and then found that the vape moved in, got a key cut and never left. There are more than five million of you in the UK now. Stoptober has no page for that.

Why there is no NHS challenge for vapers

Two reasons, and neither of them is a conspiracy.

First, the health maths. Public health people spend their money where the deaths are, and the deaths are in cigarettes. Vaping is a much smaller problem on that scale, so it gets a much smaller budget, which currently rounds to a leaflet.

Second, the awkward bit. The same people who want you to stop vaping told you to start. Running a national campaign against the thing you recommended last year is a hard press release to write.

None of this means you should keep vaping. It means nobody official is going to organise your October for you. Fine. We will.

Your October, if vaping is the thing

Steal the good part of Stoptober, which is the 28 days. A month is long enough to matter and short enough to believe in. Here is how the month actually goes, using the same timeline we wrote up in how long it takes to quit vaping.

Days 1 to 3. Nicotine leaves your body in about 72 hours. This is the loud bit. Cravings every twenty minutes, sleep that feels like it was designed by someone who hates you. It peaks around day two or three and then, honestly, it eases.

Week 1. The chemical part is mostly done. Taste and smell come back, which is a strange bonus nobody tells you about. Your chest feels different. You start noticing the reach, the hand going to the pocket for something that is not there any more.

Weeks 2 to 4. Withdrawal drops back to normal levels. Mood levels out. What is left is the habit, the pure hand to mouth reflex that fires at the bus stop, after food, at 2am when the scroll gets boring. This is the part Stoptober never had to solve for smokers, because it gave them a vape for it.

Day 28. You are not fixed. You are past the worst of it, which is the point. The full list of what improves and when is in what happens when you stop vaping.

The trap in the middle of the month

Around week two a lot of people go looking for a halfway house. A nicotine free vape, a zero nic disposable, something to hold. We have written about why a nicotine free vape is still a vape, but the short version is that you are still heating liquid, still inhaling it, still charging the thing every night, and still standing outside explaining that it is fine, actually. You have swapped the addiction for a slightly cheaper version of the habit.

If you want the honest ranking of everything people reach for instead, it is in every vape alternative, rated. Spoiler, most of them are either a vape in a trench coat or a snack.

Where the NOQA inhaler fits, and where it does not

The NOQA inhaler does nothing for nicotine. Zero. If you are on day one and shaking, patches, gum and the NHS are your friends and they are free. Use them.

What it is built for is the bit after. The reach. The mouth that wants a job. You draw on it like a vape and get subtle flavour and air, nothing heated, nothing in it, no battery. It is a fidget for your lungs. It is there so that on day 19, when your hand wanders off on its own, it finds something that is not a vape. We explain the difference properly in habit versus addiction.

The Starter Kit is £49.99, ships in October, and there are 30 day returns on unopened kits if you get to the end of the month and decide you were a one person Stoptober all along.

Frequently asked questions

Does Stoptober include vaping?

No. Stoptober is the NHS 28 day stop smoking challenge. It treats vaping as a quitting aid for smokers, not as something to stop. There is no official NHS challenge for people who want to stop vaping.

When is Stoptober 2026?

It starts on Thursday 1 October 2026 and the challenge runs for 28 days, to 28 October. Sign up and support are on the NHS Better Health site.

Is there a Stoptober for vapers?

Not an official one. You can borrow the format, 28 days, a start date and support, and apply it to vaping. The timeline for what happens week by week is in our how long it takes to quit vaping guide.

Can I use Stoptober support if I vape but do not smoke?

The NHS Quit Smoking app and the local stop smoking services are built around cigarettes, and some services will offer you a vape. Some local services do now support vapers, so it is worth asking. The NHS also has its own how to quit vaping page, which is worth a read.