Disposable Vapes To Be Completely Banned In The UK

The government has revealed that the sale of disposable vapes is to be banned in the UK - with the exact date being set for 2025.

The ban will see all all disposable and single-use vapes disappear from shelves across the country after it was estimated that last year alone almost 5m single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste every week in the UK - almost four times as many as the previous year.

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Legislation (Defra) legislation has been laid out in parliament, with the department saying it had worked closely with devolved governments on the ban and would ‘align coming into force dates’.

Defra said businesses would have until June 1st 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.”

Other measures in the bill are reported to include a restriction on smoking in public areas and changes to how tobacco-based products are marketed in order to deter children and young people from taking up the habit.

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.”

Single-use vapes are the primary choice amongst younger generations - with former PM Rishi Sunak calling disposable vapes a 'key driver behind the alarming rise in youth vaping'. This is backed up by figures which reveal there has been a sharp increase in 18-24-year-olds who have never smoked cigarettes but are choosing to vape.

However, opponents of the bill have argued that it will simply fuel black market activity.

John Dunne, the director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “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’.