(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to address the number of children using vaping products.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank all those organisations which sent me and Peers taking part in this short debate such excellent, detailed briefings. It is a short debate, and my contribution will be short, because the issues that we need to address are pretty obvious and clear.
Vaping entered the market around 2003, and the use of vapes or e-cigarettes has risen rapidly. In 2020, 68 million adults globally used e-cigarettes, and in 2021, the figure was 82 million. NHS guidance is clear that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking, and that it is one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking. But—a big but—vaping is not completely harmless and is recommended only for adult smokers quitting smoking or staying quit. Non-smokers and young people under the age of 18 should not take up vaping.
The UK Vaping Industry Association says that the rise in underage and illicit vape sales has become a key concern. It proposes a vape licensing scheme. The number of children and young people who are now vaping is increasing at an alarming rate. You only have to be near an inner-city secondary school at home time to see pupils vaping and, even more disturbing, passing the vapes on to younger children to try out.
When vaping first arrived on the scene, we were told that it would be an important support for adults to get off cigarettes, as I mentioned—that it would be an important aid to smoking cessation and was to be welcomed. But it has now grown into a billion pound-plus business, with vaping shops on every street corner. The industry went into overdrive to develop flavours and coloured packaging which would be attractive, particularly to young people. It is like some latter-day Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with children being lured to the product, with all the consequent health problems.
The most recent figures on youth vaping from ASH show that almost 1 million young people aged 11 to 17 tried vaping in 2024. That is about 18% of young people. Nearly three-quarters—72%—of 11 to 17 year-olds reported exposure to vape promotion, an increase from previous years. The most common exposure was shops, at 55%, and online, at 29%. Despite laws prohibiting the sale of vapes to under-18s, 48% of underage vapers reported purchasing vapes from shops. Older siblings or older people will get them from the shops for them, or the shops themselves will sell them, wantonly breaking the law. Police and the trading standards departments of local authorities just do not have the resources to take meaningful action.
So what needs to be done now to protect children and maintain the promised purpose of vaping in helping tobacco smokers cease smoking? Maybe in the forthcoming tobacco and vaping Bill we should, first, treat vapes in the same way as cigarettes, including introducing standardised or plain packaging as an effective intervention. Interestingly, a recent study by King’s College found that removing brand imagery reduced the appeal of vapes to teenagers without reducing the appeal to adults. Children are influenced by branding currently being used by manufacturers, and restrictions would be a simple method of reducing their appeal to children.
Secondly, we should ban and prohibit the commercial sale of all disposable vapes. By the way, this would also have a very positive effect on the environment. I take part in the Childwall litter pick once a month, and I can tell your Lordships that on my patch—the back alley of Childwall Triangle—the number of disposed vapes that we have to clear away is quite shocking.
Thirdly, we should support the call from the BMA for the Government to have education campaigns on the dangers of vapes to help reduce their appeal, especially among children and young people.
Fourthly, we need to tackle shops which sell vaping products to underage children and young people. It would be worth the Government giving serious consideration to the Local Government Association’s proposals for giving local authorities the power to issue fixed-term penalty notices for breaches in the underage sale of tobacco products and vapes.
Finally, I want to make this important point. Some vapes which are declared as nicotine-free—that is, 0% nicotine—have, when tested, been found to contain levels of nicotine. Users of vapes, including underage children, may think they are avoiding nicotine by buying these products when in fact they are receiving a high dose of highly addictive nicotine. A 2023 study revealed that 51% of 11 to 17 year-olds who currently vape said that the e-cigarette they used most often contained nicotine, and 30% said it sometimes contained nicotine.
We want to do all we can to help adults give up smoking—of course we do—and vaping has a hugely important part to play in smoking cessation. The figures are impressive, but we do not want to see children and young people, through a combination of peer pressure, attractive, colourful packaging and enticing flavours, easily getting vapes and becoming the addicted smokers of tomorrow.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, the House should be really grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this debate. There are a few matters that I would perhaps want to wrestle with him about on this.
First, smoking vapes has been going on for a lot longer than the noble Lord said. In fact, the first vapes that I came across were invented by Herbert Gilbert, a scrap metal dealer in Pennsylvania who had nothing better to do but smoke cigarettes—he smoked two packets a day. Eventually he devised a very similar machine to the one that we have now, which was battery driven—it has been around a very long time. However, it did not take off—he took out a patent but it did not work—and since then there have been several attempts from various companies. It is only recently that there has been this sudden massive surge in interest in vapes. Of course, that includes what is really important and what I think the noble Lord forgot to mention: the need for research into what is happening.
There are many serious unknowns in the things which people say are proven about vapes. I do not want to argue the toss entirely, but certainly one problem we have straightaway is that most of the studies in the literature—by the way, hundreds of studies can be seen which are recorded; for example, in the National Institutes of Health database—show that in fact, many studies have been funded by the tobacco companies.
The effects of vaping are still unknown. The amount of nicotine in a vape is about 1/20th of what it is in a cigarette, and a whole pack contains perhaps up to 200 milligrams of nicotine, while a vape contains probably something like 1/10th of that. However, one of the problems is that none of the researchers have really measured the number of puffs a day, nor the number of vapes which are taken, so some basic quantification is needed.
No clear health effects have been recorded in the literature. There are many suppositions about laryngitis and cancer—one of the very first things reported in the 1960s but which was probably from smoking cigarettes. There is no measure of dose, no numbers of puffs and so on, and such basic data are needed.
There is no question that there is possible serious damage from vapes, but it is not certain. For example, there is some evidence of possible cellular damage in the lungs and trachea, but nobody has found what one hoped to find—or, rather, did not want to find—which is carcinogenic effects. There have been no cancers in any research that I can find. There is no DNA damage, which is interesting, because cigarettes definitely cause DNA damage. There are psychotoxic effects. Cytokines such as interleukins and inflammatory products are occasionally produced, but this will happen, for example, during a heavy cold, and they do not lead to long-term effects. There is a problem with that.
Heat may be an issue with hot vapour. One problem now is that heat-not-burn cigarettes are available; they are used for marijuana, because it needs a much higher temperature to vaporise than does tobacco. You can heat tobacco just sufficient to get the nicotine but with marijuana you have to heat it much more. That may be much more dangerous, and certainly must be looked into.
Overall, it is clear from spectroscopy that has been done that there are at least 80 different compounds in the vapour of different vapes and they are not standardised. I argue that this is something that we need to think about. Clearly, there is no regulation of vapes and no regulation of what they contain. That is what we should argue for initially, until we understand it better. It is true that this has attracted American attention. President Trump was the president responsible for banning vapes for kids, which is interesting. We need to do that.
I end on a nice bit of good news. Vapes do not seem to harm fertility. I am pleased to tell you that studies by doctors in Germany have shown that neither fertilisation nor embryo growth are affected by this. This is important too, because women worry deeply about smoking in pregnancy. I am not going to say whether it is a good or bad thing in pregnancy; that is not the point. I want to emphasise that the research is not adequate at the moment to make very clear judgments about vaping.
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord, Lord Winston, may be right that vaping has been around for longer than we think, but the current boom came out of a deliberate exercise by two academics at Stanford University, Adam Bowen and James Monsees, in 2005, to find a medical technology that would give people a route out of smoking which would give them the same social interaction—the smoking, the fiddling and the what have you. They deliberately sought to find a device that would help people give up smoking. In this endeavour they succeeded fantastically well. The business that span out of their work in Stanford became Juul, the big success story in the American vape industry, sold in 2017 for billions. In that respect, it is a wonderful success story of how medical technology can be used to crack one of the big, difficult knots in our medical challenges.
We should be honest with ourselves. In the UK, smoking cessation has completely stalled. There are still 50 million cigarettes smoked every day by around 15% of the country. There is no way that we will hit the 2030 smoke-free objective that we have set for ourselves on the current trajectory. In some demographics—the poorer demographics—we will not get there until 2050, if at all.
Vapes are a really promising opportunity—a way out. This is innovation at its best. However, vapes also present us with a classic but horrible public health dilemma: in seeking to forestall one deadly epidemic, we might accidentally be creating another one. Clearly, the vape companies, now largely owned by the tobacco companies, are targeting children. My noble friend Lord Storey put it really well. The statistics are plain. They have created a £1.5 billion nicotine addiction industry here in the UK, which is mostly made up of young people who have never smoked and never intended to smoke. I find that extremely uncomfortable.
As noble Lords have pointed out, current regulation is completely failing to prevent young people taking up vaping. I say this with due consideration of and respect for the efforts of those concerned, but the truth is that trading standards officers, HMRC inspectors, MHRA officials and local authorities are tripping over each other to try to find a way to control this. But the business moves more quickly than regulators can adapt, and, frankly, it is a bit of a mess. I have little hope that the various piecemeal ideas that are being proffered will be an effective answer.
This state of confusion is compounded, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, quite rightly pointed out, by the ambiguity around the long-term health implications of vaping. I am a lay person, not a clinician, but I think I would be right to summarise by saying that although there is not conclusive evidence today that vaping is bad for you, there is enough on the books to make us worry that there is a fair chance of significant consequences sometime in the future.
What we end up with is a debate around whether we should have flavours, but we should be honest: the debate around flavours is a bit of a legislative displacement exercise. Flavours are intrinsic to the attraction of vapes, both to adults and to children, but the real dilemma facing us as legislators is how comfortable we feel about this industry growing in size. Are we comfortable with the number of vapers in the UK rising from 5% of the country to 15% or 25%? Are we comfortable with the industry being worth £3 billion or £5 billion, or maybe more? Are we comfortable with it attracting largely a poorer consumer group, for vapes to be used largely by young people and children, and for it to store up a potentially massive healthcare liability for the future? Those are the key questions. Or are we so worried that our smoking cessation tool may become a backdoor for another nicotine addiction sector that has dangerous health effects that cost our society another fortune, just like the tobacco industry did, that we should close the whole thing down, as many other countries have done or are trying to do? Is there a way of using regulation to walk the line between these two vivid and quite different choices?
This is the dilemma facing many areas of consumer medical advance. There is a wonderful revolution in the world of medicinal innovation. We must work much harder on the edge cases to make this bountiful for our taxpayers and our patients. This is true in nutrition, medtech, social media and many other fields. Let me give three quick examples.
There is mounting evidence that hallucinogenics might offer treatment for the horrible effects of PTSD. We should probably be encouraging more investment and research, but we will need a regulatory regime that prevents misuse of these potent drugs. After 10 years at the Ministry of Sound, I can testify that they can have both wonderful and devastating effects on one’s psyche.
Ketamine technology is being offered as a new treatment for unlocking psychological challenges, and I know many people who swear by it. However, I read with anger, as other noble Lords might have, about the death of Matthew Perry, the “Friends” star who died when his cynical doctor overprescribed the drug in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
Cannabinoid medicines are another case. They offer treatment for those with epilepsy. Campaigners have argued very persuasively for more investment and research, and that they have been held back by arcane attitudes and laws about drug control. Recreational users of cannabinoids argue that edible highs are a healthy alternative to booze. I have grave concerns about the legalisation of cannabis, but, with global attitudes changing quickly, it is surely a possibility that this could happen here in the UK. Too many countries have already legalised marijuana without enough thought; they have not done the boring but important regulatory work around taxation, packaging, sanctions and transparency that encourages responsible behaviours.
We used to live in a binary world where medicines were for doctors, narcotics were for the police and there was a duty for the taxman to collect. But now we are in a more complex world of vapes, hallucinogenic treatments and cannabinoid edibles, where there is a leisure industry, a cosmetics industry and a nutrition industry all with one foot squarely in the medical world and aggressively trying to bend the rules to their advantage. Quite rightly, these industries are making claims that their products can help promote healthiness and fight disease. They have a point: we cannot rely on hospital treatment of disease alone to make Britain healthy. But this shambles around vaping flavours demonstrates what happens if the regulators are fragmented and decision-making does not keep up with innovation. That is why I encourage the Minister to really get stuck into the detail; to bring the various regulators together; to assign responsibility; to insist on much clearer data and reporting from the industry; to set deadlines for changes; to timetable reviews; to move quickly to close gaps; and to identify ingredients—as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, rightly pointed out.
We have a huge opportunity to apply exciting innovations to help the health of the nation and to build valuable businesses, but that is not going to work if our regulators are heavy-handed and move so slowly. Thesequasi-medical industries depend on an unremittingly activist approach to regulation and I ask the Minister to commit to more agile supervision than we have shown around vapes to date; to be prepared to close down bad behaviours when they are explicit; to put in place strict descriptions of what vapes can contain; to look very seriously at the licensing regime, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, recommended; to look closely at advertising restrictions that get round many of the restrictions that we have on tobacco; and, if necessary, to act firmly in order to protect the vulnerable.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, a YouGov poll this year showed that almost 1 million young people under 18 have tried vaping, almost half of whom have only tried it once or twice. That leaves half a million who regularly use a product that is illegal for people to sell to them, and which is probably harmful to their physical, mental and social health. This indicates that half of those who try vaping once or twice go on to become regular vapers. Most children who try their first vape obtain it from a friend, although some obtain it from companies that give them away free, which unfortunately is still legal. You have to ask why companies do that. The answer is obvious: to encourage a child to like the vape and buy more, and for many to become addicted to the nicotine in them and carry on vaping for years. Will the Minister confirm that this loophole will be closed?
Children are being manipulated by the manufacturers, some of which are tobacco companies trying to remain profitable for as long as possible by using attractive packaging, colours and flavours; it is a bit like some unhealthy foods. More research, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, needs to be done on the toxicology of these colours and flavours—perhaps the Minister could say whether the Government are funding any.
Research has shown that children are more attracted to colourful branded packaging than to vapes in a plain package, such as is now mandatory for cigarettes. For adult smokers who wish to carry on—probably for good reasons—branded or unbranded packaging does not make much difference at all, and this indicates that, at the very least, removing brand imagery from single-use vapes, which are the product of choice for children, could have an impact in reducing the appeal of e-cigarettes for young people without compromising their legitimate appeal to adult smokers who are using them to quit smoking tobacco. Colours, images and flavours attractive to children must go: will the Government legislate for this?
Far too many young people find it easy to obtain vapes from shops, street markets and online. There seems to be very little enforcement of these illegal practices, but I think this is because of a lack of resources among local authorities to do it. Will the Government consider the impact of this lack of enforcement and introduce a licensing system with substantial fines for those who sell vapes without a licence and for all outlets who sell to children, as well as any unlicensed vaping products? Research shows that a third of vapes reaching UK retailers do not comply with regulations, and there should be fines for selling these, too.
For many young people, it is hard to avoid the promotion of vaping. Nearly three-quarters of 11 to 17 year-olds reported that they were exposed to vape promotion, which is an increase from previous years. Only one in five said they did not see promotion of e-cigarettes at all. The most common source of exposure, as my noble friend Lord Storey said, is in shops and online. Why do companies spend the money on the promotion? The answer is clear: because it works. Vapes should always be behind the counter in plain displays, and that should apply to petrol station shops and convenience stores, too. I was at a petrol station the other day and there were multicoloured vapes right next to the till—far too attractive. We have to make vaping boring, because research by the NUT found that about 30% of young people vape by the time they leave school, and some of its research found that some of the vapes had been adulterated with other drugs—including heroin, which is unbelievable.
Vaping was introduced and made legal in this country to help smokers stop killing themselves with tobacco and to protect the NHS. That is what vapes were meant for—all well and good. The Government are rightly proposing to gradually phase out the legal selling of cigarettes by raising the age of a customer to whom it is legal to sell them. If vapes are harmful—and of course they are, because they contain the addictive element nicotine—why not also phase out their sale except in medical circumstances? Children’s lungs and brains are more sensitive to nicotine and all the other additives than those of adults. That is why the current age restriction was introduced in the first place. But the horse has already bolted. Although four out of five children aged 11 to 17 have never tried vaping, which is good, over a third of those who have tried it have never smoked; that is significant. Yet this is a product that is promoted as a device to help people stop smoking.
There is already evidence that young people below the legal age are addicted to vapes because of the nicotine in them. I heard a young man on television the other day saying that—and by the way, he said “unfortunately”. That was clear from the YouGov poll. In 2020, only 26% of young vapers reported strong, very strong or extremely strong urges to vape, but this year it is up to 44%. Only one in 20 young vapers say they usually use a so-called nicotine-free version. Presumably they are the clever ones who understand the dangers of nicotine addiction, but some are choosing products with levels of nicotine even higher than the legal level for adults, and that is very dangerous. Local authorities report children approaching them for help to stop vaping, but they do not have any resources to provide that service and that must change, alongside the new legislation which we are expecting soon. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan to provide those public health resources alongside that legislation?
It may be helpful to look at why children use vapes. Most say they just try it to see what it is like, not realising that it could become addictive; some say it is because their friends do it and it is cool to vape. Some say they think it is helping with their mental health; that is very worrying, and nobody seems to be telling them that becoming dependent on vaping could do entirely the opposite.
That brings me to education and information. Many teachers are concerned about the disruptive effect of vaping on children’s education. Some children crave nicotine so much that they vape in class, or in the cloakroom, and it has even been reported that they miss lessons in order to vape. Teachers are crying out for resources to help them educate children about the many harms of vaping, which half of them know is better than smoking, but half of them think is just as harmful and do it anyway. Are the Government planning to ensure that appropriate resources are provided for teachers to help children discuss the issue of vaping in a way that is respectful of the pressures on young people and therefore likely to be more effective? This is a complex issue with strong public health, economic and educational consequences, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for securing this very important debate and reminding me that I should declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Seeing this on the Order Paper took me back to a moment when I really saw how much of an issue vaping is becoming. I was on a local train in the West Midlands when a young woman, maybe 18, was chatting on her phone to her friend. I remember the vehemence of the sentence that she stated then, talking about vaping: “You just need it so desperately; it’s much worse than cigarettes”. That point of addiction in the way that vaping is experienced by young people was driven home to me by that individual circumstance. This is a significant health issue.
It is worth looking at the fact that behind this is a semi-success story. The indoor smoking ban that came in in 2007, fairly strong labelling laws, education, and provision of cessation help have had a big impact. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, says, we seem to have hit a brick wall in making progress.
What has happened, as happens so often when regulating big business, is that an escape clause was levered out: vaping. It has become a new method of keeping big tobacco in business. All bar one of the giant tobacco companies have made substantial investments, as outlined by the Tobacco Tactics project of the University of Bath. I must ask the Minister a question here: are the Government concerned about the potential lobbying impacts of big tobacco on the operations of Government and Parliament? Do they intend to act on that level of influence, which is a threat to future action?
The noble Lord, Lord Winston, accurately said that there is a huge amount of uncertainty and that future research is needed. I was looking at a 2022 state-of-the-art review from the British Medical Journal, by Andrea Jonas, titled the “Impact of Vaping on Respiratory Health”. A sentence in it really struck me:
“The public health consequences of widespread vaping remain to be seen”.
We need to apply a precautionary principle, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Young people, who still have underdeveloped lungs, are taking who knows what substances into their lungs—certainly the Government do not know; no one really knows. Basic common sense says that this will certainly not be good.
It is worth looking at the figures. I am relying on the extensive briefing from the British Medical Association, which I am sure most noble Lords have received: 7.6% of 11 to 17 year-olds are vaping regularly or occasionally. That compares to 1.3% 10 years ago, so this really deserves the term “epidemic”. The YouGov survey quoted in the very useful Library briefing shows that 18% of 11 to 17 year-olds have tried vaping. That is nearly 1 million children. This is not a fringe concern.
As other noble Lords have said, many children are buying these products from shops illegally. This is very clear. It is also clear that many products are sold that do not meet health regulations. It is worth looking at the context in which this operates. I note a recent interview with the chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, in which he pointed out that trading standards are not protected in local government budgets in the way that adult social care and children’s services are. Those two elements make up 80% of the budgets of many local councils. Trading standards are just one of the many essentials that have been squeezed and squeezed again.
This is a really useful case study in taking on the rhetoric that we hear all too often about how terrible red tape is. Protecting our children from dangerous substances and making sure that the law is enforced in shops is what some would call red tape, but I say that they need to be properly funded and supported. Among the many briefings that we have received is one from the Association of Convenience Stores stressing the cost of fully enforcing vape legislation. I was not entirely clear about where it was coming from, but it makes the point that, if we are going to do anything about this, we cannot just pass laws; we also need to fund their enforcement.
I noted in the King’s Speech in July that a tobacco and vapes Bill would be reintroduced. Can the Minister indicate whether that will include the promise of enforcement for whatever that Bill contains?
I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, about the need to future-proof that Bill. We are already seeing, in expectation of restrictions and controls coming in particularly on single-use vapes, that companies are adapting. We are seeing reusable replacements for these disposable single-use vapes already on the market, carrying the same brand name and looking very similar in product design. It is very hard to tell the difference between the single-use and the reusable. This is one of the ways in which people are attempting to intervene before the restrictions come in.
Another area that we need to look at very closely is nicotine pouches. Usage in the UK is relatively low compared to some other countries, but people in the social media world tell me that this area is exploding. We need to look at what restrictions might be placed on those products and how we stop creating an open door to be driven through.
As a Green, I feel that I must finally pick up a point made in the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about environmental impacts, particularly of single-use vapes. We are talking about children’s health, but plastic in the environment is significant to the health of all of us, particularly children. I point to a recent study; I urge noble Lords to look it up if they have not seen it. A study of a sample of human brains found that they consisted of 0.5% plastic. Microplastics are everywhere: they are in testes, placentas, breast milk and brains.
Think about the world in which our young people live. In the UK, 1.3 million of these battery-powered devices, usually plastic, are discarded every week. Some 10 tonnes of lithium are thrown into the environment, which is sufficient to manufacture 1,200 electric car batteries a year. As with so many issues, this is a public health issue, an individual health issue and an environmental health issue. We need to look holistically at many of these issues from that one-health frame.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I have no direct involvement in this industry but it is fair to say that, back in the early 1960s, I was a director of an advertising agency responsible for Gallaher products. In my 50 years of work, both here and in the other place, I have taken a continual interest in the industry and the challenges it has faced. At this time, those challenges are quite clear. Sadly, the situation in that industry is one of good, responsible manufacturers and illicit marketing by others—mainly from abroad, but not entirely.
The industrialists who are marketing here responsibly have recently called for more regulation—not less—to tackle the worrying rise in youth vaping. As I understand it, they have called for a ban on packaging with youth appeal, reform of the flavour names to get products such as “gummy bear” and “unicorn” off the shelves, and the creation of a retailer licensing scheme. The latter would not only prevent irresponsible retailers selling to underage customers but help to stop the sale of illicit vapes by shopkeepers.
That is on the one hand. On the other, we have to recognise that vaping has helped reduce consumption of cigarettes. That is a tribute to our Governments over the years and the work between, usually, the Department of Health and the relevant manufacturers. It is a success. We are now down to 12.9% of the nation smoking. Not so long ago, 50% of the nation smoked. That advance is a tribute to our Governments; indeed, my noble friend Lord Bethell was one of the Ministers who helped to achieve that. We are getting between 50,000 and 70,000 people to quit thanks to the availability of vaping, because those smokers try vaping, the majority of them find it helps and they stop smoking. A very significant sum of money is saved, certainly in terms of the cost to the National Health Service.
Yes, the statistics among the young are going up—or they have been, to be more accurate; it appears from the latest ASH report that they have stabilised. Yes, nearly 20% of 11 to 17 year-olds have tried vaping, but that leaves 80% who have not. Of those who have tried, a third are now vaping, but that means two-thirds have rejected it. It should not be terribly difficult to get a handle on that. That is the challenge that we face.
For me, this is the key point as far as the smoking side is concerned: whoever is involved must remember very carefully that if anybody was to ban single-use vapes, alongside other restrictions such as on flavours, display and packaging, 58% of current smokers who vape said they would either continue to purchase single-use vapes from illegal sources or switch back to tobacco. We do not want that to happen. That seems fundamental to the way forward.
The last Government had the Swap to Stop scheme, which had some success. It delivered many tens of thousands of refillable vapes to adult smokers, as evidenced by a recent survey by the IBVTA, where more than 57% of e-liquid supplies were fruit flavoured. That is good news. Also, a code of conduct is now in place with the leading manufacturers, which was not there until relatively recently. They have embraced ensuring that product flavours are responsibly marketed and state that the use of emotional flavour names has no place in a legitimate market. The regulation of flavours must be carefully considered, given their clear importance to adults quitting smoking and preventing adult vapers switching back.
For me, the key to all this is that, as a nation, we have a compliant sector that—as far as I can see, as someone who tracks it a bit—has invested significant resources to meet environmental compliance targets through producer compliance schemes and retail take-back. If we were tempted to go down the route of prohibiting a whole class of products, we would undermine the points I made about the effect on existing people who want to quit.
I hope that before His Majesty’s Government take any further action they look at what has happened in Australia and the US recently. There are some reports out from both those countries, where there were unintended consequences. Those are well worth looking at.
At the end of the day, a third of the market comprises illicit vapes. That is a huge percentage, and those illicit vapes are unregulated, untested and a material threat to consumer safety. We have to deal with that situation. We need a comprehensive and collaborative enforcement strategy, with resources for trading standards and related enforcement. It may well be that we need a retail licensing scheme on top of that as a key to that policy. If we went down that route we would, in my judgment, make good continuing progress on helping smokers to get off smoking and put a cap on what has been happening among an element of our young people.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Storey on securing and so effectively introducing this wide-ranging debate. Like him, I am enormously grateful to the many organisations, including the Library, that have provided such useful briefings for us. They made quite worrying reading. For instance, I learned from Society Inside that
“almost 1 million young people have tried vaping”
and, crucially, that
“by the time they leave school over 30% regularly vape”.
It is very clear from the debate so far that there is widespread support in your Lordships’ Chamber for action to stop children using vaping products. I suspect that there is widescale support for the view of the Chief Medical Officer that
“marketing vapes to children is utterly unacceptable”.
I certainly share those views, so I am particularly pleased that the current Government are picking up where the last one left off with what they claim will be measures to further combat smoking and youth vaping. I very much hope that we will hear more about those plans when the Minister winds up.
But I strongly agree with those who have pointed out that new legislation alone is not enough. After all, the vast majority of those 1 million children who have tried vaping bought vapes either from shops or online, so it is quite clear that current legislation, which bans their sale to under-18s, is not being effectively enforced. Improved enforcement will be a vital component of any new measures that are introduced. It is worth recalling what an important role local authority trading standards departments have to play in this. Yet, as we know, they are very badly underresourced. Any new measures must include additional resources to enable the training of additional trading standards officers.
While bearing in mind that we also need to have tougher deterrents, such as higher fines, for retailers that break the law, we must recognise that we have a huge backlog in our courts. I hope consideration will also be given to allowing the use of fixed penalty notices against those who flout the rules.
I want to make just two points to help strengthen the case for action, one relating to health and one to safety issues around lithium-ion batteries. To echo the concerns of the noble Lords, Lord Winston and Lord Bethell, and others, I acknowledge that we have the benefit of more than 60 years of research into the links between smoking and health—research that has led to many of the measures that have been taken to reduce smoking so effectively, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, reminded us—but research into the health risks associated with vaping is in its infancy. The medical department of Johns Hopkins University in the States recently wrote:
“With tobacco, we have six decades of rigorous studies to show which of the 7,000 chemicals inhaled during smoking impact the lungs. But with vaping, we simply don’t know the short- or long-term effects yet and which e-cigarette components are to blame”.
But the emerging findings are worrying. The World Health Organization has said that vapes are harmful and that the dangers of vaping, especially by children, are of concern. Prior to becoming Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting MP pointed out that although vaping helps smoking cessation,
“we should not send the message to the country that vaping is good for our health or that it is without harmful consequences”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/4/24; col. 196.]
We already know of the presence of cytotoxic metals and silicate particles and of a range of chemicals in e-cigarette vapour that can lead to lung tissue inflammation and damage. I know a little of this from personal experience. I used to be a heavy smoker, but several years ago I was able to quit by becoming equally addicted to my vape. Then one night, during the election campaign, I coughed up a great deal of blood. A range of tests led to the discovery of three lumps in my lungs, with the suspicion that I had lung cancer. Fortunately, further tests revealed that the lumps are not cancerous—at least, not yet. No one was entirely sure what had caused the lumps to develop, but I felt pretty certain that the vaping had been a major contributory factor.
Of course, I am well aware of the dangers of amateurs doing Google searches about their own health. However, I did the reading about vaping harm. As a result, I am pretty certain that I have vaping-related lipoid pneumonia resulting from inhaling oily substances found in e-liquid. Of course, I do not really know, but I do know that while vaping may be safer than smoking, it is not without its dangers. This is especially so for children, which is why there is an urgent need—even in the absence of the additional research that is desperately needed—to adopt, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out, the precautionary principle and to take all necessary steps to stop children vaping.
My second point relates to the safety of lithium-ion batteries which power vapes. I have frequently raised my concerns about the safety of lithium-ion batteries in your Lordships’ House. They are increasingly important. They store more energy than any other type of battery, allowing for longer use, but if overheated through misuse, damage or using substandard charging, they can create fierce fires with very high temperatures that are difficult to extinguish and which release toxic gases.
In the context of vaping, it is the disposable vapes that are the most concerning. It is estimated that well over 84 million disposable vapes are thrown away each year. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out, that is 10 tonnes of lithium thrown away every year. But the real worry is how disposable vapes are got rid of. Producers of vapes are not doing what they should to recycle electrical waste from vapes. Shops selling vapes often do not, as they should, have recycling points. So most disposable vapes simply end up in domestic rubbish. They get picked up by refuse vehicles, which then compact all the rubbish in a process that can damage some of the batteries and lead to thermal runaway fires in the vehicles. There has been a huge increase in the number of such fires in the last few years, and even if they are not damaged in the refuse vehicle, they can be during the compacting process at landfill sites where, again, the number of fires has increased significantly. On these and related environmental grounds alone, there is a strong case for banning all disposable vapes, and I hope that the Minister will assure us that this will be included in the Government’s plans.
Finally, I should point out that when I did vape, I never used disposable vapes, but now, given my own experience, I do not use any type of vape and have to rely on gum to help my addiction instead. I just hope that measures will soon be in place that prevent children needing to do the same.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for securing this important short debate on the issue of children using vape products. He is absolutely right about the detritus left by vape products in our communities across the United Kingdom. I also say well done to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for giving up smoking—he is an inspiration to all noble Lords who wish to do likewise.
We know that the NHS sees vaping as a pathway away from smoking cigarettes for adults, but vaping is not completely harmless and it is recommended only for adult smokers who are trying to give up smoking. According to a report from Action on Smoking and Health,
“vapes have been the most popular aid to quitting among those who have successfully stopped smoking in the last 5 years”.
While this is good news, another report from that organisation found that the proportion of children experimenting with vaping rose from 7.7% in 2022 to 11.6% in 2023. Furthermore, the World Health Organization has raised concerns about the long-term effects of nicotine on brain development in children.
As has been acknowledged by the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Naseby, and other speakers, the previous Conservative Government recognised the urgency of this issue and took important steps to tackle advertising of vapes targeted at children. But clearly there is a lot more to do.
A key finding from the previous Government’s call for evidence on vapes highlighted the appeal of flavoured vapes in attracting children to vape products. Such flavoured vapes are often displayed near sweets and other confectionery, making them easily accessible and appealing to children. Research has shown that:
“Packaging and design features of vapes … appeal to children”.
This finding led the previous Government to propose stricter regulations on packaging and display of vapes.
While it is already illegal to sell vaping products to young children, we need robust enforcement measures and trading standards need to be provided with the resources and power to seize illegal products, impose fines and ban retailers who break the law.
Beyond advertising and enforcement, schools have an important role to play in teaching students about the risks of nicotine addiction and the potential harms associated with e-cigarette use, so as we work to prevent children accessing vaping products, we must ensure that adults can continue to access vaping products as an effective pathway away from smoking.
On the Government’s wider policy, the Prime Minister recently suggested that the Government will go further, with a proposal to ban smoking by adults in outdoor spaces. This threatens the future of Britain’s pubs and clubs, and the Opposition do not support the proposal. Pubs are the lifeblood of communities across Britain but, according to reports, this measure could put the survival of one in eight pubs at risk. Pubs are a force for good, and this is the latest in Labour’s assault on small businesses. We will be holding the Government to account on their decisions. This will seriously affect the hospitality industry, which is already under strain. We must ensure that regulations are balanced and do not inadvertently harm other sectors in the economy.
Action on Smoking and Health gave oral evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, urging that the committee recommend that the Government toughen vape regulation, including: putting vapes out of the sight and reach of children; prohibiting the promotion of e-cigarettes in shops; limiting where they can be sold; putting vapes in plain packaging to make them less appealing to children; and prohibiting sweet names, bright colours and cartoon characters. While we should consider any unintended consequences, we think that these are serious proposals that should be considered.
In conclusion, while the Opposition remain firmly committed to working with His Majesty’s Government to tackle underage vaping, will the Minister clarify the Government’s position on a number of issues? Do His Majesty’s Government support the introduction of a licensing system for retailers selling vapes to help combat illicit sales? Which of Action on Smoking and Health’s proposals do the Government support? Are the Government committed to banning cigarette smoking outdoors and will the Minister commit to coming back to the House to make a Statement on those proposals? I look forward to the Government’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on securing a debate on this important and current issue. I, too, appreciated his introduction and the way in which he and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, described the explosion of vaping and put it in the context of a situation that has perhaps gone way beyond being an aid to quit smoking, something that I think that speakers in this debate, including the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, acknowledge.
I share many of the concerns raised about the growing problem of youth vaping. The rate of children who vape has tripled in the past three years, and nearly one in five children has tried vaping, which I find deeply disturbing. This cannot go on. I assure noble Lords—I hope this is one debate in which I can bring good news to most noble Lords—that we will take bold action to reduce the number of children using potentially harmful products because the health message is very clear: if you smoke, vaping is much safer, but if you do not smoke, do not vape. Marketing vapes to children is unacceptable.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to provide an update on what this Government are doing to tackle the issue through the upcoming tobacco and vapes Bill, as well as on the action that we are taking now by strengthening enforcement activity and education. It is shocking that vapes and other nicotine products are being deliberately promoted to children. This should never happen. That is why His Majesty’s Government will go further than the previous Government, as was set out in the Labour manifesto. We will ban vapes being branded and advertised in ways that appeal to children and will stop the next generation becoming hooked on nicotine. The tobacco and vapes Bill will make that manifesto commitment a reality, and I am sure that noble Lords will be interested to know that I can say that it will be introduced very soon.
Noble Lords focused, rightly, on limiting the appeal of vapes to children. It is cynical to target vapes to children through not only direct marketing but colourful packaging, vibrant in-store displays and the large variety of apparently appealing flavours, such as gummy bear and cotton candy. This is abhorrent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out. To reduce the appeal of vapes, we will limit the range of flavours available and introduce limitations on packaging and shop displays. This will be done through secondary legislation as soon as possible after the tobacco and vapes Bill has passed. We will undertake consultation on these measures to inform our approach in order that we can get it right.
There has been much reference today and previously in your Lordships’ House to disposable vapes. They are also playing a significant role in driving youth vaping. They are cheap and easily accessible, with more than 50% of child vapers using them, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, highlighted. Single-use products are causing significant environmental harm, with 5 million disposable vapes being littered or thrown away in general waste every week. I am sure that noble Lords will welcome the fact that my ministerial colleagues in Defra are reviewing proposals to restrict the sale and supply of disposable vapes and will outline their plans shortly.
We are also considering introducing an excise duty on vaping products. We know that young people are price-sensitive; this could therefore be an effective way to reduce the appeal of vapes. However, as noble Lords have indicated, we do have to get the balance right. We need to prevent youth access on the one hand while utilising them as a proven quit aid for adult smokers on the other. So it will be important to maintain a price differential with tobacco to support adult smokers to quit.
Noble Lords were right to raise a number of points about enforcement measures. We are taking strong action against businesses which knowingly sell vapes to children, and which sell illicit and unregulated vapes, which we know can be very dangerous. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and other noble Lords will be pleased to know that the tobacco and vapes Bill will introduce new fixed-penalty notices in England and Wales, which can be issued by trading standards officers for breaches of certain offences, such as age of sale. This will allow trading standards to take quicker action against retailers who break the law instead of escalating to a court process.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked whether the Government will consider introducing a vape licensing scheme. As was rightly pointed out, licensing may well be beneficial for strengthening enforcement, supporting legitimate businesses, deterring rogue retailers and, ultimately, of course, supporting the mission of improved public health. It is an area that we are actively considering for inclusion in the Bill.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
I apologise for interrupting the Minister. Just before she leaves the issue of enforcement, can she confirm whether additional resources will be made available to the various enforcement agencies?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, must have predicted that this is the very next point I am coming to; I am grateful for the warm-up. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked about funding in respect of enforcement. I can share with your Lordships’ House that we are providing more than £20 million per year to HMRC and Border Force to support their illicit tobacco strategy.
We will continue to work with local authority trading standards to understand how new funding can support them to undertake local-level enforcement and help introduce new measures in the tobacco and vapes Bill. I know that this is of great concern to the LGA and the many vice-presidents that we have the pleasure of hearing from in your Lordships’ House. Any future funding decisions will, of course, be confirmed through the spending review process, but we are alive to the points that noble Lords have made on this.
To further comment on enforcement capability, we are providing £3 million of funding over two years to a programme being led by National Trading Standards called Operation Joseph, to reduce the sale of illegal vapes and nicotine-containing vapes to under-18s. This builds on existing work by trading standards officers across the country to tackle illicit vapes.
On educating children, this is a key issue, as noble Lords will be aware. We are also educating children on the dangers of vapes, to prevent their use in the first place. The school curriculum includes reference to the health risks of vaping and information is available on the Talk to FRANK website. Resources for teachers, including lesson plans, are also available on the DHSC’s School Zone.
I turn to the question of short- and long-term harms. While we know that vaping is less harmful than smoking and can be an effective way to quit, we do not know the long-term health harms that may emerge from vaping, and the potential risks to children. To fill that evidence gap, the department is exploring options to commission research on the long-term impact of vaping, so that we can fully understand the harms of vaping and the potential impact on our children. I listened closely to my noble friend Lord Winston’s contribution on the need to understand the harms in an evidence sense. Clearly, this is something to which we will need to apply ourselves.
I turn to further specific questions that noble Lords have raised. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, asked about the proper supervision of vapes and their contents. I can say to him that there will be new powers in the Bill to allow us to be agile, and to respond appropriately and quickly to the latest evidence on vaping and nicotine products. We will have powers to have better oversight and control of the market and respond more quickly to technological developments, ensuring that only safe vaping products are used by smokers.
The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about public health resources. It is absolutely right that we have to provide children and young people with evidence-based information, which is why we will continue to work with the Department for Education to update the curriculum and provide teachers with the latest resources.
My noble friend Lord Winston asked about regulation of the content of vapes. This is indeed an issue; to address it, we will extend non-vaping restrictions to non-nicotine vapes to reduce their appeal, and to align our regulatory approach and ensure that children are unable to access these products.
In conclusion, I hope that the strong measures that I have outlined today will demonstrate that we will bring about definitive change to stop future generations becoming hooked on nicotine. I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions today. I look forward to discussing this issue further once the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is introduced to this Chamber. I know that today’s debate will greatly inform the passage of that Bill and its content.