Defra said businesses would have until 1 June next year “to sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force”…reports Asian Lite News
Disposable vapes will be banned from sale in England next summer, the government has confirmed. From June 2025 it will be illegal to sell single-use vapes, in a move designed to combat environmental damage and their widespread use by children.
The legislation had been laid out in parliament, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed on Wednesday. The department said it had worked closely with devolved governments on the ban and would “align coming into force dates”.
Defra said businesses would have until 1 June next year “to sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force”.
The circular economy minister, Mary Creagh, said throwaway vapes were “extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities”. She added: “That is why we are banning single-use vapes as we end this nation’s throwaway culture. This is the first step on the road to a circular economy, where we use resources for longer, reduce waste, accelerate the path to net zero and create thousands of jobs across the country.”
The vaping lobby has argued that the bill will fuel parallel market sales of disposable vapes.
John Dunne, the director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “One of the major concerns, at least with the last version of the bill that I saw prior to the new government coming in, [it] didn’t include, for instance, a ban on the importation of the products that they’re going to ban for sale. So in my view, that’s just going to fuel a black market.”
Dunne said vapers would buy products online from overseas and that the parallel market in vapes was already one “that the authorities can’t really keep up with”. Rishi Sunak’s government tabled the legislation on the issue but it ran out of time in the previous parliament.
The tobacco and vapes bill would prevent anyone born from 2009 from legally smoking by gradually raising the age at which tobacco can be bought. It also aimed to impose restrictions on the sale and marketing of vapes to children. Last year, it was estimated that almost 5m single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste every week in the UK – almost four times as much as the previous year.
Defra said vape usage in England had grown by more than 400% between 2012 and 2023, with 9.1% of the British public now buying and using the products. The health minister Andrew Gwynne said: “It’s deeply worrying that a quarter of 11- to 15-year-olds used a vape last year and we know disposables are the product of choice for the majority of kids vaping today. Banning disposable vapes will not only protect the environment, but importantly reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people.
“The government will also introduce the tobacco and vapes bill – the biggest public health intervention in a generation – which will protect young people from becoming hooked on nicotine and pave the way for a smoke-free UK.”
No 10 blocking outdoor smoking ban
Downing Street is blocking moves to include a ban on smoking outdoors in the upcoming Tobacco and Vapes bill amid fierce opposition by the hospitality trade. No 10 officials privately believe that banning people from lighting up in pub gardens is “an unserious” policy and is not backed by good evidence showing that it harms non-smokers.
Differences of opinion in government about an outdoor ban, and uncertainty about the potential risks of pressing ahead with it, lie behind the delayed publication of its long-promised landmark bill. It will make the UK the world’s first country to progressively raise the age at which people can buy tobacco until no one can do so legally.
Keir Starmer has insisted that he is ready to face down critics of his drive to eradicate smoking because action is needed to reduce the 80,000 annual death toll from Britain’s biggest killer.
But No 10 was said to be “spooked” by strongly worded warnings that job losses and pub closures will result if smoking in some outdoor settings is outlawed, despite the prime minister’s repeated insistence that “nanny state” jibes will not stop him taking robust action to improve public health.
“It is an unserious policy. Nobody really believes smoking outdoors is a major health problem,” one Downing Street official said. The trade body UKHospitality said the ban threatens “serious economic harm to hospitality venues” and would hit nightclubs, hotels, cafes and restaurants as well as pubs.
The British Beer and Pub Association said the plan was “deeply concerning and difficult to understand” and “yet another blow to the viability of our nation’s vital community assets”. Ending smokers’ ability to go outside a pub to have a cigarette, for example in a beer garden, “would have a devastating impact on pubs already struggling” with rising costs, it claimed.
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