I dare say many of the kind, caring people who have supported this petition to ban single-use vapes will be thinking, WE HAVE WON?

But after forty years of campaigning about how drugs issues has blighted our society  and especially our children I am not closing this petition yet. The reasons for that I have sent to as many news papers as I can.  

Below is what I have said.

UK to ban single-use vapes, in bid to stem smoking and aid the environment. 

I am delighted that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is announcing today that England, Wales and Scotland, will be working jointly, to ban completely the single-use vapes. These child friendly, colourfully designed, pocket money affordable, vapes with sweet flavours, have successfully caused at least 51,000 under 16’s in Scotland alone,  to become addicted to nicotine.  

The national consultation on these vapes, which I contributed to, was mainly asking questions about how to modify the attraction of children to single-use vaping, by introducing plain packaging, reducing the number of flavours and restricting who could sell these highly addictive products. That does not sound to me like a serious intention, by our governments to completely ban, these dangerous products.  Disposable single-use vapes were deliberately marketed at children and young adults, in order to create a new generation of nicotine addicts, to replace the millions of people who have successfully quit smoking, without the use of vapes.  

It is despicable that the uk government allowed both Big-tobacco, who own most of the vaping industry, and the vaping industry itself, to contribute their views to that national consultation on vaping. In the two decades of successful work by all political parties, to address the 50% death rates of smokers, big-tobacco was not permitted to join in these deliberations, because that would undermine the successful outcome of that plan. We the public won that battle by reducing smoking dramatically, and saving may lives. 

It is well known that the tobacco and vaping industry, are one of the biggest group of lobbyists, working on a daily basis, to try to convince politicians that they are happy to assist smokers to quit smoking, using the new, supposed, well proven method, of vaping. They claim to have assisted 50,000 smokers to quit, but provide no evidence of that. In reality what the vaping industry is doing is cleverly conning smokers, into believing that vaping is safer than smoking, when in fact what they have very successfully done, is to switch nicotine addicts from using tobacco as their source of nicotine,  over to vaping products, which often contain higher levels of nicotine in them. I have been told by hundreds of adult, ex-smokers, they now regret ever starting vaping, because they are now more addicted to nicotine, than before. This very clearly reveals how successfully Big-tobacco has protected its business, and is able to continue profiting from the ill-health of young and old.

None of us, and particularly parents of young children, should rest contented until be are assured by all of our politicians, that they are serious about banning completely single-use vapes. They also need to come up with an urgent plan, to ensure that we have available the means to support the thousands of children already heavily addicted to nicotine.