YOUR VAPE FLAVOURS ARE IN REAL DANGER ACT NOW

What Is The Tobacco And Vapes Bill?

The bill was first presented by Rishi Sunak back in October 2023 during the dying throws of the previous Conservative government. Sceptics may well believe it was a last ditch effort to appear like he was getting things done as Prime Minister, and was simply scraping the bottom of the barrel to find policies that may be populist enough to win him a few votes.

Well that didn’t work and Rishi and the blue team lost the 2024 general election to Labour. However, rather than letting the bill die in the long grass where it belonged, Kier Starmer made an unusual move and decided it would be a great idea to forge ahead with this piece of the Tory manifesto and adopted it into his own.

Now don’t get us wrong, some of the aims for the bill are actually quite noble and morally correct - we ALL agree that children should not be vaping or smoking, and that vapes should not be marketed towards children or non-smokers. We have also been campaigning for a robust Vape Retail Licensing Scheme for years, as we believe this is a vital step to preventing both youth access and the scourge of illicit, untested, potentially dangerous vape products entering the market.

The Aims Of The Bill

Much of the bill is not terrible, and on face value it is primarily aimed at reducing youth access to vapes and achieving a smokefree generation - which nobody will disagree with. But, as always, the devil is in the details. There are one or two areas where the reasoning is monumentally flawed, and would potentially cause a real problem for the millions of ex-smokers who have used the life changing harm reduction of vaping to move away from deadly tobacco for good.

Let me briefly go through the main points of the bill:

1. SmokeFree Generation (the headline policy). The bill aims to introduce a generational smoking ban which will make it illegal for anyone born on or after Jan 1st 2009 to buy any form of tobacco product. This effectively phases out smoking overtime rather than banning it outright.
2. Stricter rules on vaping, particularly around youth access. This includes the banning of vending machines (as they cannot verify the persons age), banning of ‘free’ distribution e.g. people giving out free samples at sporting events, concerts or in the street. And finally introducing an 18+ age limit for non-nicotine containing vape products - something which should have been done years ago, and something Vape Club have always done anyway (we have never differentiated products based on the presence of nicotine - we have always applied the 18+ restriction to every product we sell).
3. Retail Licensing and Enforcement. The introduction of a vape and tobacco retail licensing scheme, and the increased enforcement this brings in terms of penalties for retailers who break the law and/or removal of licenses to repeat offenders. We have been campaigning for a robust Vape Retail Licensing Scheme for years so we are very pleased to see that the message has landed in some way with the current government.
4. Expanding Smoke-Free and Vape-Free policies. This includes powers to extend smoke free policies to some outdoor areas such as near playgrounds, schools and hospitals. It also proposes to create some vape free policies such as banning vaping in hospitality venues (much as smoking is currently)
5. Controls on Marketing, Flavours and Packaging for Vape Products. This includes a ban on advertising and sponsorship by vape brands (much like tobacco currently). But also gives the government powers to restrict vape flavours, packaging and product display in shops.

So What Is The Problem?

It is the last point above where we find the major concerns. The government will have the power to make any restriction to Vape Flavours they want to. And unfortunately if you have seen any of the debates in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, the concept of flavours is widely misunderstood. It seems that the MP’s have been reading far too many tabloids and firmly believe that vape flavours only exist to entice children and get them hooked for life - despite it having been illegal to sell a vape product to anyone under 18 since 2015, and despite the fact that even ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) will tell you how important flavours are to quitting smoking.

There are several proposals as to how these flavour restrictions could look, and we will not know what the government decides until after the bill has been passed. Fortunately the questions will be put to a public consultation after the bill receives Royal Ascent (expected in May) and becomes law.

There are three main proposals around these restrictions

1. Ban ALL vape flavours except plain Tobacco and plain Menthol.
2. Restrict vape flavours to only a handful of single note flavours, including Tobacco, Menthol and a small number of fruits.
3. Restrict the product descriptors. This is the ‘ronseal approach’ as such (it does what it says on the tin!) and would limit the flavour names to factual descriptions only. So you couldn’t have abstract names like Snow Tobacco, Heisenberg or Blue Razz, and you definitely couldn’t have names like Gummy Bear, bubblegum or cotton candy as these would be deemed as being too child appealing. But you can have factual names like Strawberry and Banana or Blueberry Ice.

I have been a vaper for over 13 years and personally I have never enjoyed tobacco flavours. And I know that a huge majority of our customers don’t either - with over 88% of you never buying any products with tobacco flavour, and for those that do a very large proportion buy products which combine tobacco with other flavours such as caramel, vanilla or nuts - all of which will would also be banned under those first two proposals.

There are countless studies which prove just how important flavours are to adult smokers looking to make the switch, and it would be a public health tragedy if they were removed. But unfortunately a worryingly high number of MP’s truly believe that vape flavours only exist to entice children and that adults simply do not need them to successfully stay away from smoking - which is absurd.

As I say, we 100% support preventing youth access, but the way to do so is not by restricting products for adults. It is not achieved by decimating what is possibly the biggest public health achievement in decades and potentially sending vapers back to smoking because they can no longer buy the products that have kept them smokefree for years.

It should be done by actually enforcing the law, and ensuring that anyone caught selling to minors is dealt with strictly & harshly. It should be done by introducing a robust licensing scheme that makes the likelihood of being caught genuine. And it should be done by making the financial penalties for breaking the law high enough to be a true deterrent, with repeat offenders having their licence removed completely.

What Can We Do About It?

We try our best to always give our customers the best service possible, and it is extremely rare that we ask you to do anything. But on this occasion we feel the right thing to do is ask you to please get involved and make your voice heard - the government cannot ignore 5.6million UK Adults - people they want to vote for them in the future.

Below is a link to a survey being carried out by the UK Vaping Industry Association. They want to use the results to inform MP’s on how many adults really do rely on flavours to stay smokefree, and how going too heavy handed could result in real unintended negatives such as turning to the black market, or worse still returning to smoking. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and we would be extremely grateful if you can find the time to do so. It will be incredibly useful to be able to show the results to the government before the consultations happen so that we can educate the ministers on the reality of being a vaper and the importance of flavours.

The other thing you can do is to contact your MP directly. MP’s are supposed to represent their constituents and they can’t do that if you do not tell them your genuine concerns. The Find Your MP page on the parliament website makes it easy to find your local MP, and will also provide you with an email address and telephone number for their office. Sending them an email setting out your worries only takes a few minutes, but be sure to state that you are a constituent in their area to get a response. Always remain polite and understand that they may be misinformed about vaping, but you can help educate them if you engage in sensible dialogue. Many MP’s will also hold weekly ‘surgeries’ where you can pop in and speak to them in person about concerns or issues in your local community - you should be able to find information about surgeries on their website or by contacting their office.

It is time to stand up and make your voice heard before they make the decisions for us. Please, please, get involved.