The government has launched a public consultation on children smoking and vaping.
I have spent days writing my views on the limited questions they have posed, most of which will do nothing to address Nicotine addiction of children from Disposable Single-use Vaping.
The proposal to increase the age at which children can smoke from 18 to nineteen, and upwards, year on year, is cumbersome, and would take ten years to make a difference.
The question on should flavours of Disposable vapes be limited, is irrelevant. We know from the history of children experimenting with smoking, that even if they hated the taste or smells of tobacco, those determined smoke just put up with it and become smokers. Many young people have said to me that their motivation for learning to smoke was so they can smoke cannabis. In the USA many kids are vaping cannabis.
The question about limiting the colourful child friendly marketing material, perhaps to plain packaging, is irrelevant, because Disposable Single-use Vaping is already a well established, new drug use trend for 11.6% of our children and young teens. That group will still buy vapes, however they are marketed, to sustain their nicotine addiction.
The question about serious environmental damage from 5 million dumped vapes by having a deposit return scheme is totally impractical as it would cost the vaping industry to lose their profits.
What will work is accepting that the vaping industry has deliberately created a novel way of creating a new generation of young nicotine addicts, who they hope will stick with them for decades to come, just as nicotine addicted smoker of the past did. The polluter should pay should apply to dumped vapes.
Only a complete ban of Disposable Single-use Vapes will protect our children and young people from being commercially exploited by Big-tobacco, the main owners of the vaping industry, and stop the pollution.
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