We agree with the Royal College of Paediatrics that the issues of underage youth vaping and the impact on the environment must be tackled but banning single use vapes is not the answer to either issue.
Vaping products, whether designed to be single or multiple use devices, are age-gated products, such as alcohol or aerosol spray paints and should never be sold to children. This is an access issue not a product issue.
The answer is not to ban any category of vape device and deny adult vapers effective choices, especially those in high smoking, low income areas but to ensure that the regulations are robust enough and the penalties severe enough to ensure that rogue retailers are discouraged from selling to minors in the first place.
That is why the UKVIA has, for the last two years, been calling on the government to clamp down hard on this issue by introducing measures including:
- On-the-spot fines of at least £10,000 per instance for those caught selling to young people or selling illegal products (up from £2,500 maximum)
- A retail registration scheme that would ensure retailers meet strict standards before they are permitted to sell vapes including robust age verification processes
- A national test purchasing effort to ensure those selling vapes under the registration scheme aren’t supplying minors, a scheme similar to what the UKVIA does with its own members and we are pleased that this was recently announced by Health Minister Neil O’Brien as part of new measures to crackdown on underage sales.
UKVIA Director General John Dunne said: “There is no doubt that strong, targeted action directed at those illegally selling vape products to children is the way forward. Vitally, any youth prevention measures cannot be to the detriment of adult smokers looking to quit through vaping and vapers who want to avoid a return to smoking.”
On the environmental impact, the UKVIA is calling on the government to increase the maximum e-liquid volume of devices from 2ml to 10ml (while keeping nicotine concentration the same) as this would reduce the numbers of used single-use devices by 80%.
Many people don’t know that many components in single use devices are recyclable and we want the government to address the lack of current waste infrastructure to allow this to happen in conjunction with a public awareness campaign to discourage these devices from being thrown away.
ENDS