The LGA strongly believes that vapes should only be used as an aid to quit smoking. A number of councils have effectively used vapes as a means of encouraging people to quit smoking.
- Essex County Council has worked closely with local partners to provide free access to nicotine replacement therapy and vape starter kits for residents. The Council was one of the first to work with vape retailers and has seen significant increases in the local quit rate through these partnerships. The Wellbeing Service currently works with two vape shops that have gained a strong standing in their community, particularly during COVID-19 lockdowns, and a new community-based project supports smokers who are homeless or suffering severe multiple disadvantages to switch to vaping.
- Sheffield City Council’s Tobacco Dependence Treatment Service provides smokers with stop smoking medications and offers vapes as a harm reduction measure to smokers who want either to switch or to quit tobacco with vapes. The Council has also developed a suite of resources with Action on Smoking and Health to support schools and parents in dealing with vaping among young people.
While research has shown vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, it is deeply worrying that more and more children – who have never smoked – are starting vaping.
Many local areas have noted an increase in shops selling vapes to young people, and subsequently have stepped up enforcement activity to deal with the issue. Councils are especially concerned by the marketing of vapes with designs and flavours that could appeal to children, in particular those with fruity and bubble gum flavours, and colourful child-friendly packaging. Strict new measures to regulate the display and marketing of vaping products in the same way as tobacco are needed.
To help stop children from being able to access vapes, the LGA believes that vapes should be in plain packaging and kept out-of-sight behind the counter. Research from King's College London found that 40 per cent of teenagers expressed a preference for certain vaping products while only 32 per cent had a preference when they had generic packaging. This suggests that removing or reducing the imagery and branding from vaping products may help discourage teen use, and we believe this is something the Government should carefully consider.
It is also important that legal loopholes which mean it is not illegal to hand out free e-cigarettes to children are closed. Additionally, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) should liaise with other government departments dealing with other age-restricted products and align their policies/messages to stop confusion amongst consumers and businesses. Introducing a mandatory Challenge 25 policy would be helpful for all age restricted products.
The LGA also believes that sanctions need to be reviewed and more robust measures should be introduced to tackle the significant number of retailers who persistently sell vapes to under-age children. Councils should be able to issue fixed penalty notices as prosecutions can be resource intensive, and consideration should be given to being able to issue fines on a scale in accordance with the issues identified, for example number of under-age sales, age of recipient, and the number of times the retailer broke the rules. Where required, there should be the possibility of using the higher fines and stronger sentences which are available to the courts to act as a clear deterrent to retailers who flout the rules. It is also important action is taken to tackle the online supply of vaping products. It would assist councils if there was a body that could take the appropriate enforcement action.
In a survey by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, 60 per cent of local trading standards services said high street shops selling illicit vapes or vaping products to children was the enforcement issue that most concerned them. Councils take their enforcement responsibilities extremely seriously and have worked hard to tackle the sale of vapes to children. Examples of recent action taken to tackle sales of vapes to children include:
It is welcome that the Government is providing £3 million in new funding to trading standards, which will help share knowledge and intelligence around the country. However, this still falls a long way short of the funding needed. Trading standards teams have seen a significant reduction to core budgets over recent years, and continue to face acute staff shortages, whilst also seeing the number of enforcement responsibilities increase through new legislation on a range of different Government priorities. Similarly, council public health teams have seen a £770 million real terms reduction in funding between 2015/16 and 2022/23 – a fall of £17.06 (22.3 per cent) per person. This has had an adverse effect on councils’ ability to invest in services and functions that prevent ill health, reduce health inequalities and support a sustainable health and social care system.
To help trading standards teams in the long term, the LGA continues to call on the Government to boost the future pipeline of qualified trading standards officers through a dedicated apprenticeship fund, investing in regional support networks, and enabling councils to recover more of the costs of running regulatory services. It is also essential that councils receive multi-year public health grant settlements and more long-term certainty around public health funding for all councils. These steps will support the Government’s wider ambitions around smoking cessation and tobacco control.