Prime minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to look at ways of strengthening marketing rules of vapes, saying it is “ridiculous” that they are promoted to children and he didn’t want his daughters “seduced by these things”.
Speaking to ITV on Friday (26), Sunak expressed concern about children, who are aged 12 and 10, taking up vaping.
“How can we strengthen the rules on how they are marketed, promoted – what do they look like? It looks like they are targeted at kids, which is ridiculous – I don’t want my kids seduced by any of these things.”
“I have two young girls – that’s why I worry about it,” he said.
He pointed to £3 million of funding, announced last month, for a squad of trading standards officers to tackle shops illegally selling vapes to children.
Sunak’s statement comes a week after a BBC investigation found vapes confiscated from school pupils contained high levels of lead, which could affect brain development.
NHS figures released last year found that while there was a fall in the number of school children taking drugs and smoking cigarettes, vape usage had risen to 9 per cent among 11 to 15-year-olds in England – up from 6 per cent in 2018. Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health even suggest as many as 15 per cent of 11- to 15-year-olds use vapes.
While it is illegal to sell vapes to under-18s, a more recent study by Action on Smoking Health found that corner shops were “the main source of purchase and child awareness of instore promotion had grown significantly in the last year”.
A government call for evidence on vaping and young people in England is due to end on June 6, with action expected on measures to clamp down on illegal vape sales, as well as the marketing and placement of relatively cheap single-use vapes, the popularity of which has soared with younger people.
A spokesperson for the UK Vaping Industry Association said it wanted more government action to stop children buying vapes, but it opposed a ban on single-use devices.
“There are far more effective ways to deal with the challenges surrounding youth access which do not involve banning any vaping category, a move that would drive smoking rates back up and lead to more deaths and costs to society,” reports quoted the spokesperson as saying.
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