The Government recently announced a call for evidence led by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) to help identify opportunities to reduce the access that under age people have to vaping products while still ensuring they are easily available to adult smokers as a stop smoking tool.
What does the call for evidence mean?
Vaping products are strictly regulated in the UK, and for a decade the use of vapes by young people in the UK remained consistently low and there are a range of restrictions in place to prevent the uptake and use of e-cigarettes by those under the age of 18.
However recent data collected by an NHS Digital survey shows that regular vape use among 11 – 15 year olds has doubled from 2% in 2018 to 4% in 2021. Furthermore, a report from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) indicated an increase in vaping among 11 – 17 year olds from 4% in 2020 to 7% in 2022.
The call for evidence aims to collect information from contributors about ways in which we can tackle the uptake of underage vaping, without having a negative impact on the availability of vaping products to adult smokers.
The government have identified the following themes as key points of interest for those contributing evidence:
- Building regulatory compliance: ensuring only adult smokers can access legally compliant vape products.
- The appeal of vape products: how the appearance and product characteristics of vapes may attract children.
- Marketing and promotion of vape products: how the marketing and promotion of vapes may attract children.
- The role of social media: the impact of social media on the uptake and use of vaping by children.
- Effective educational approaches to prevent the uptake of vaping by children.
- The impact of vapes on the environment, particularly disposable products.
- Understanding the vape market.
Respondents can contribute to the call for evidence by completing an online survey, and the government are aiming to publish a response outlining the opportunities to tackle youth vaping identified through the evidence 12 weeks after the closing date of June 6th 2023.
Government recognise vaping as a ‘vital’ tool for adult smokers
In their Nicotine vaping in England: 2022 evidence update OHID confirmed vaping to be at least 95% less harmful than smoking and research like the recent Cochrane review have found vaping to be one of the most effective stop smoking aids, and twice as effective as other nicotine replacement therapies.
As part of the call for evidence the government have made it clear that their stance on vaping as a vital tool for smoking reduction has not changed, and they will continue to actively encourage adult smokers to switch to vaping as a substantially less harmful alternative to smoking.
Vaping is regarded as being a crucial tool in the aim to reach the government’s goal for England to be smokefree by 2030. Ensuring that the measures used to tackle youth vaping does not restrict the availability of vaping products to adult smokers is an important part of that, as their use currently contributes between 50,000 and 70,000 fewer smokers per year.
How are Evapo contributing to the call for evidence?
As a vaping retailer Evapo have nearly ten years of experience within the industry which we will be using to inform our contributing evidence to the call for evidence.
Tackling underage vaping is something we have always felt strongly about, and we take age verification extremely seriously. All of our retail stores utilise the ‘think 25’ initiative, meaning that any of our customers who look to be 25 or under are asked for proof of age, and if it cannot be provided the sales will be refused. We are also carrying out regular mystery shoppers in all of our 46 stores to ensure we are fully complying with age verification measures.
Andrej Kuttruf, Evapo’s Founder and CEO, shared his views on youth vaping in a recent interview with SkyNews, saying:
“We are very passionate about helping smokers to quit and we are very concerned about underage vaping… we welcome any measures from the government to prevent underage vaping.
“The problem we have is that the kids come to us, we send them away, and they go around the corner and they buy vapes from the mobile phone shop next to us. We then report these shops to trading standards and at best they might get a £26 fine, which is ridiculous.
“This is what really needs to change, we need a licensing scheme to ensure that these vaping products are only being sold by specialist retailers, and we need drastic fines to really hurt the people who sell to kids.”
You can view the whole interview in the video below:
The recommendations we have offered can be split into five main categories, as outlined below, which we think will help restrict the access that underage people have to vaping products, without affecting their availability to adult smokers and current vapers.
The introduction of a vaping licensing scheme
We believe that one of the best ways to combat underage vape sales is to target the source; the rogue retailers who are willingly selling to underage people. The rise in underage vaping can be linked to the proliferation of sales from locations that really have no place to be selling vaping products, such as mobile phone shops, pizza shops, launderettes, barbers, and even car boot sales.
These locations were highlighted in a recent programme of test purchasing by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. It used under 18s to conduct age verification and product compliance testing on locations selling vaping products. This was not only conducted to identify locations that will sell vaping products to underage people, but also locations selling products that do not comply with UK regulations and are not legal to sell in the UK at all. The following locations permitted the highest amount of illegal sales:
- Market or car boot sales (100% non-compliant, or 3 sales from 3 attempts)
- Discount shops (52% non-compliant, or 11 sales from 21 attempts)
- Mobile phone shops (50% non-compliant, or 10 sales from 20 attempts)
The Health Minister did recently announce a substantial step that the government is taking to tackle these sales with the new ‘illicit vapes enforcement squad’ which will be led by Trading Standards. This squad will help to crack down on both the sale of vaping products to those underage and also the sale of illicit and unregulated vaping products. We covered all of the announcements made in our blog post 'Government supports vaping with 'swap to stop' scheme'.
However, we believe that the introduction of a vaping licensing scheme limiting the sale of vaping products to specialist retailers, supermarkets, and other responsible retailers, would substantially limit the availability of illicit products and the sale to minors.
The fees raised by such a scheme should then fund nationwide test purchasing to ensure compliance, with repeat offenders losing their vaping license.
Drastic fines for non-compliance
Ourselves, along with the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), have been calling for more substantial fines for those who are caught selling vapes to underage people.
Information gathered by UKVIA along with Buckinghamshire and Surrey Trading Standards, shows that the highest total amount of fines given out across this jurisdiction was £1,878. This is less than the £2,500 maximum fine which can currently be issued to just one offender, and we do not believe it is enough of a deterrent.
One of the recommendations we have put forth is the introduction of £10,000 on-the-spot fines which we believe would act as a much stronger deterrent towards illegally selling vaping product to young people.
E-liquid packaging, labelling, and flavour guidelines
As a founding member of UKVIA we strictly abide by their e-liquid packaging, labelling, and flavour name guidelines, and it is our belief that these guidelines should be implemented across the entire vaping industry.
These guidelines aim to ensure that all e-liquids, both nicotine containing and nicotine free, not only have the appropriate health warnings, nicotine strength indicators, ingredients, etc. that allow users to be fully informed, but also rejects names, flavours, and imagery which could be appealing to those under 18.
Examples of these guidelines are:
- Not using brand or product names which replicate or imitate popular non-vaping brands
- Not using imagery or designs that mimic attributes that could be appealing to those under 18, such as cartoon characters
- Not using names or flavour descriptions that are misleading or have unfounded health claims, are linked to illegal or dangerous substances, or are sexually inappropriate
- Not using flavour names or descriptors that are associated with youth culture, including popular language or expressions which are particularly appealing to those under 18
Increase the tank size of disposable vapes
We have proposed an increase in disposable vape tank sizes from 2ml to 10ml, which will not only reduce the affordability for young people due to a higher retail price, but could also cut the environmental impact by reducing the amount of electronic waste generated by disposable vapes.
This would be an alternative to imposing additional taxes on disposable vaping products which some have called for. Other countries in the Middle East and Asia have unfortunately seen that the introduction of additional taxes on these products have driven the market underground, leading to a huge increase in illicit trading which would likely then make these products more accessible to underage people.
Tackling irresponsible promotion of vaping on social media
In a 2022 ASH survey 45.4% of people reported the most common place they saw vaping promotion was on TikTok, which correlates with an increase in user generated content (not vape industry generated) portraying vapes as an attractive product. These videos include content created by under 18s and content which appears to be aimed at those under the age of 18.
TikTok is a relatively new platform and it is unfortunately much too easy to come across vaping content that is not subject to any kind of age restrictions. TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app in 2020, which coincides with the time that underage vaping in the UK began to accelerate, and it is not hard to see that there is a connection.
TikTok’s current guidelines around age restricted content are much too easily violated, and it is clear that an age-gating feature similar to those used on other social media platforms is needed to prevent this content from being seen by underage viewers and influencing their decisions around vaping.
How are Evapo addressing the environmental impact of vaping?
It is important to recognise that disposables are primarily used by adult smokers as an introductory product, and they will usually transition to a closed pod system or starter vape kit after around 11 weeks. They have played a role in helping hundreds of thousands of smokers make the switch to vaping over the last two years.
However, this increased popularity has brought to light the importance of reducing the environmental impact that vaping products, and particularly disposables vapes, can have.
Recyclable products are now entering the market, which make it easy for major components of the device to be disassembled and recycled when it is empty. We are excited to be adding these products to our range and offering our customers a more environmentally friendly alternative.
We have also introduced recycling points in all of our retail stores, so customers have a place to responsibly dispose of their used disposable vapes which is easily accessible to them.
Additionally, we have invested in other ways to offset our impact such as donating to charities which help to withdraw plastic from the ocean, and by planting a tree for every four BrewBox disposable vapes that are sold. We have planted over 27,000 trees to date!
We hope that the contributions to the call for evidence, along with our own contributions, will result in a comprehensive plan to crack down on youth vaping and drastic action taken against those who are willingly selling to children. We look forward to the government's rapid response and have been grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a cause we feel so strongly about as a company.
At a glance
- The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) have announced a call for evidence to identify opportunities to reduce the access that under age people have to vaping products
- They have expressed the importance of tackling youth vaping without impacting the accessibility of vaping products as a stop smoking tool for adult smokers
- The government still consider vaping a vital tool for smoking reduction will continue to encourage adult smokers to switch to vaping as a substantially less harmful alternative to smoking
Sources
gov.uk 16/05/2023
digital.nhs.uk 06/09/2022
ash.org.uk 07/2022
gov.uk 29/09/2022
cochrane.org 17/11/2022
tradingstandards.uk 04/2022
gov.uk 11/04/2023
