April 2024 Firstly it should go without saying that children should not be vaping. It is illegal to sell vapes to children, but as we know, lack of government funding for Trading Standards has made policing the law difficult. The statistics reported in the media from this Freedom of Information request, refer to 11 under-four-year-olds being admitted to hospital. While there is no reference to what harm, if any, was caused and how such young children came to be in possession of a vape, such occurrences should not be happening. We would urge vapers to ensure they keep their devices away from ch ..read more

April 2024 The UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) has welcomed a vaping report by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). It has applauded the medical body’s evidence-based balanced view on the need to deal with key challenges such as youth vaping and the environmental impact of the category, without undermining the role that e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit their habits and ensuring former smokers turned vapers don’t relapse. On the back of the report, E-cigarettes and Harm Reduction: An Evidence Review, the trade body urged government to take note of the RCP’s recommendatio ..read more

April 2024 The Government, by its own admission, have not quantified the health impacts of fewer people using vapes to quit smoking, making their approach to vape restrictions highly irresponsible.  For every adult vaper who returns to smoking because of Government restrictions, there is a chance of another death from smoking, reversing the trend away from smoking for which significant credit goes to vaping. It is currently illegal to sell vapes to children. Rather than introducing restrictions that will undermine the public health benefits of vaping, we need to focus on (and properly enf ..read more

April 4, 2024 Yesterday Government Minister, Andrea Leadsom was asked by Adam Afriyie MP whether she had done a risk assessment of vapers returning to smoking in the event of a disposable vape ban. Given that smoking represents a death sentence to around half who are unable to quit, it is clearly imperative that restricting access to the most effective quitting tool is not taken lightly. However, despite the fact that nearly a third of adult vapers use disposables (ASH, 2023), the Government’s impact assessment concluded that the number who might return to vaping was ‘difficult to quantify’ an ..read more

April 2024 Evapo, a leading smoking cessation and specialist vaping company, has conducted a survey involving 1,134 participants and found that nearly two thirds of ex-smokers will return to tobacco if the Government restrict vape flavours. The restrictions, proposed earlier this year, are designed to deter children from vaping, but as the research shows, any restrictions on vape flavours could have major unintended consequences and would likely add to the 250 deaths from smoking recorded every day in the UK. The Government’s view is that fruit and dessert flavours may inadvertently attract ch ..read more

UKVIA says: • Millions of lives are at risk because the politically-motivated Bill ignores potential negative public health outcomes of proposed new vape restriction areas • Bill must not progress until urgent risk assessment is carried out to prevent a looming public health catastrophe. • It’s irresponsible in the extreme for the Government to propose legislation that gives unprecedented powers to the Secretary of State to make life-or-death decisions for millions of British smokers and vapers without even a cursory nod to the health impacts this may have The UK Vaping Industry Association (U ..read more

21st March 2024 “All retailers and producers of vaping products need to take their environmental responsibility seriously and we would certainly expect those who are UKVIA members to be compliant with the existing regulations. These figures are very concerning and more needs to be done, not just by retailers who must shoulder their responsibility, but also Government and regulators, who need to police compliance effectively. We briefed our members on the updated regulations at the start of this year and we will continue to stress that all retailers, whether UKVIA members or not, make any neces ..read more

The UK Vaping Industry Association welcomes research into the health impact of vaping so that the relative risks of vaping and smoking can be better understood. While the study data – which one leading academic has described as ‘crude’ – implies a link to changes in cheek cells which could potentially cause cancer, the study authors said their findings did not prove that e-cigarettes caused cancer. What we do know is that smoking causes at least 15 different types of cancer, is the biggest cause of cancer in the world and is responsible for 250 deaths in the UK every day. The study authors sai ..read more

Newly-released UKVIA research on the level of investment into vape recycling facilities by local authorities has triggered a response of ‘disappointment’ online and in the media. The full findings of the research can be viewed here.  Following this, the UKVIA has issued this statement:  The UK Vaping Industry Association recognises the strong response to our new FOI investigation and wanted to clarify the intention of this research, as well as highlight our continued efforts to help address the sector’s environmental impact: 1. We are under no illusions; the industry needs to demonst ..read more

At the beginning of March, the WEEE consultation period came to an end with implications for the vaping sector, leading potentially to: policy makers introducing a dedicated category under the WEEE directive, responsibility for collection and treatment of vape waste moving completely to producers, and a new kerbside household collection service for electronics, potentially including vape devices. Ironically, the WEEE consultation section that relates to vaping was designed to review current regulations due to the environmental challenges associated with single use vapes. However, disposables ..read more