Electronic Cigarettes

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see the MP for the second-best Rolls-Royce site in the UK in the Chair, Mrs Latham. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson)—if I can read my own writing, which is a first—on securing the debate. She set out the issues rather well and debunked many of the various questions—sorry, various assertions; I said I could not read my own writing—that the vaping industry likes to promulgate in the media.

The hon. Member spoke about the incidents at St George’s Academy, with eight reported cases of children collapsing after vaping. I will not try to repeat the rather horrific menu of ingredients that our children are being exposed to, but that was clearly deeply concerning. The hon. Member cited, among other things, marketing techniques. I could not agree with her more, and I will elaborate on that later. She said her 12-year-old would probably say she is too old for unicorns, but I would say you are never too old for Scotland’s national animal.

The right hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) took a different tack, and I am genuinely pleased for him about his tobacco harm reduction journey. As somebody who grew up with a parent who smoked—I will not say, “in a smoke-filled house”; that would be doing my mother a disservice—I have always hated tobacco, to be perfectly honest, and the thought of heated tobacco is not something that sounds particularly nice. While largely based on the right hon. Member’s experience, his speech was a bit of an advert for heated tobacco. It may well have a place in reducing tobacco harm, but I am not sure whether it reduces the harm enough. I also disagree with his final point about the World Health Organisation recommendations to make vapes and other tobacco products as difficult to acquire as cigarettes, but I am more than happy to learn more about that.

As the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said, the number of people using e-cigarettes in the UK has risen astronomically. It has now reached around 5 million people, which is over 8% of the population. That unprecedented increase in such a short time raises serious questions about the safety of e-cigarettes from both a public health and environmental point of view. Current evidence shows that the use of e-cigarettes is less harmful and risky than smoking tobacco, but that does not mean that e-cigarettes are not harmful; they are only the lesser of two evils.

According to a 2022 YouGov survey, the occasional and regular use of e-cigarettes among 11 to 17-year-olds has doubled since the previous year. As a father of a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old, I find that deeply concerning. The adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable to the effects of nicotine. Vaping can impact young people’s brain development, impacting their cognitive functions such as attention, memory and learning.

The same study found that 40% of those using e-cigarettes have never smoked tobacco. The WHO has also stated there is evidence to suggest that “never-smoker”—a new phrase to me—minors who use e-cigarettes are twice as likely to take up smoking later in life. That raises serious concerns, as the consumption of nicotine in children and adolescents can lead to long-term developmental consequences and potential learning and anxiety disorders.

We have said many times in this place that the scale of mental health problems, particularly among young people, was increasing significantly before the pandemic, but that increase became exponential during it. Frontline staff working with children and young people at Catch22 are concerned that vaping is a habit used to cope with those negative feelings. Running away from negative feelings and problems by using substances is a dangerous path which has led many adults to addiction and mental issues later in life. In short, vaping is a gateway to risker behaviour, problematic or dependent substance use, and mental health issues.

As we have touched on already, serious concerns have rightly been raised about the marketing of e-cigarettes. Specifically, the colourful branding and variety of flavours has been likened to that of sweets and other confectionary. Combined with content that glamorises e-cigarettes on popular social media platforms such as TikTok, those tactics can lead to misinformation about the dangers of vaping among the younger generations.

In July, an investigation by The Observer found that ElfBar, a company with no moral or social compass, was flouting rules to promote its products to young people in Britain. Items were advertised in TikTok videos by influencers, who in some cases claimed to be paid for the promotions and to benefit from free products. The videos, many of which showed influencers vaping on camera, were not age-restricted and were not always clearly marked as ads. Some attracted hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, which is used by half of eight to 11-year-olds and three quarters of 16 to 17-year-olds. ElfBar is no longer able to sell its products domestically, with China having banned them, but it is free to export them to our young people.

E-cigarette emissions contain nicotine and other toxic substances that are harmful to users and to non-users, who are exposed to aerosols at second hand. Some products claiming to be nicotine-free have been found to contain nicotine. In addition, while cigarette smokers tend to be more discreet about blowing their smoke away from other people, in my experience many vapers have no qualms about blowing large plumes of emissions, which at times resemble small clouds, anywhere and everywhere. The result is that many of us cannot avoid walking through or breathing in their vapours.

Cheap and easy-to-use disposable vapes are booming in popularity, creating a mass waste issue. Shockingly, an estimated 13.5 million disposable vapes are bought in Scotland annually—two and a half disposable vapes per man, woman and child. Discarded vapes result in 10 tonnes of lithium being sent to landfill each year, which is equivalent to the lithium content of 1,200 electric vehicle batteries. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has stated that when single-use batteries are disposed of incorrectly, which in most cases they are, heavy metals may leak into the ground when the battery casing corrodes. That can cause soil and water pollution, and endanger wildlife and human health. Scotland is trying to move towards a circular economy and a waste-free society, and working to support the recycling of electronic cigarettes, but any regulation to ban them must come from Westminster.

Of course the waste is a huge factor, but it pales into insignificance compared with the risk to our children and young adults that vaping poses. Despite what anyone from the industry says, the flavours, styling and advertising are quite clearly aimed at the young. My view is not only that advertising should be banned, but that disposable vapes should be banned as soon as possible. What are the Government doing to address the wide availability of disposable vapes to young people—vapes that, as we have heard, are often illegal and substantially more dangerous? More widely, what are the Government doing to tackle vaping among young people and children?

Although e-cigarettes are intended to be a healthier alternative to tobacco, recent research shows a completely different and, to be frank, fairly frightening picture. Too little is known about the long-term impact of e-cigs, and the demographic using vapes is far from what I am sure many envisaged. With statistics showing the escalation in younger generations using e-cigarettes, it is crystal clear that, beyond the point I just made about banning disposables, stricter regulations on marketing and sales are essential if we are to protect future generations. A study by Action on Smoking and Health found that corner shops were the “main source of purchase” for children and young people, so we must do more to crack down on shopkeepers who sell disposable vapes to those who are under-age.

Finally, it is critical that more research is carried out to ensure that we understand the long-term impact that vaping and exposure to high levels of nicotine has on health. We must never forget that nicotine is a highly addictive drug and can have a catastrophic impact on people’s health.