China is expected to flood Britain with cheap vapes as manufacturers seek to capitalise on the world’s second biggest market after Donald Trump’s tariffs, researchers have warned.
According to former chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, Deborah Arnott, who is also an honorary associate professor at University College London, China’s natural response would be to target the UK.
“With reduced access to the US, there will be growing competition to sell to the UK market, as it’s the main alternative,” The Guardian quoted Arnott as saying.
In Britain, more than 90 per cent of e-cigarettes are imports from China. Due to the impact of the Sino-US trade friction, Chinese e-cigarette manufacturers are shifting their focus to the UK market.
The prices of e-cigarettes in the UK is also expected to drop in the future due to an influx of supply from China.
Meanwhile, with the aim of curbing youth vaping and reducing plastic waste, UK is about to ban disposable vapes from June 1.
in light of the ban, Chinese manufacturers have been rapidly developing new models that comply with the ban, with variations of popular brands now widely available.
These vapes are rechargeable, and have a replaceable pod and a changeable coil, which means they qualify as a “vape kit” and not a disposable. But experts say these often look “very similar” to disposable versions, raising fears they will be treated as such.
Arnott said, “All the main manufacturers produce these products now and they look the same and are very similar prices to the disposables they are replacing.
“My concern is that because they don’t look any different and are still very cheap, people may carry on treating them like disposables and throwing them away rather than buying refills.”
Waste campaigners are also seemingly not very satisfied with the upcoming ban, fearing the refillable vapes too will not be disposed properly.
Scott Butler, the executive director of Material Focus, a not-for-profit organisation that runs the Recycle Your Electricals campaign, said the ban did not break the “throwaway vaping” habit.
He said, “This ban takes the most environmentally wasteful and damaging types of vapes off the market, so that is a good thing.
“But millions and millions of vapes are going to continue to be sold, and unless there’s real action to make it easier for the public to recycle them, they’ll keep ending up in bins, on streets and in landfill.”
