Botox to be banned for under-18s next month

Law to tackle fears over ‘Love Island surge’

BOTOX treatments are to be banned for under-18s, amid growing concern about a ‘Love Island surge’ in teenagers seeking cosmetic enhancements.

Ministers have taken the action after learning that more than 41,000 procedures such as lip enhancement were carried out on people aged under 18 last year alone.

Health Minister Nadine Dorries announces today that ages will need to be verified before enhancements can be carried out, with practitioners facing prosecution if they fail to do so.

Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, below, Ms Dorries says that the aim is to protect young people from the pressure to achieve the ‘utterly unrealistic’ images of celebrity bodies.

She cites ‘a boom in inquiries from people wanting a so-called ‘Instagram Face’ – seeking eking cosmetic procedures such as s Botox and fillers to give them m the high cheekbones, cat-like ike eyes and full lips seen in the heavily airbrushed d photos that celebrities post on social media’.

Ms Dorries adds: ‘In the past, I have used Botox. I’ve never been aggressive with it, but I didn’t see any harm.

‘Holding back the years is fine once you get et to a certain age. But far ar too many people have been een left emotionally and physically scarred after botched hed cosmetic procedures.

‘So we are continuing to work closely with organisations to assess the need for stronger safeguards around potentially harmful cosmetic procedures.’

Television shows such as Keeping Up With The Kardashians and ITV2’s Love Island – many of whose contestants bear the telltale signs of cosmetic procedures – have also been blamed for the number of teenagers seeking ‘tweakments’.

This year’s season sea of Love Island included a screechy row between contestants after Sharon Gaffka and Faye Winter took offence when Hugo Hammond said that he found ‘fake looks and personality unattractive’.

Molly-Mae Hague, 22, a former contestant on the show, has documented reversing her lip fillers and other non-surgical procedures that she underwent as a teenager in order to pursue a more natural look. Last month, Mail on Sunday columnist Sarah Vine described how her 18-year-old daughter had asked if she should seek a ‘boob job’, after watching ‘the almost comedic attempts of their co-islanders to register emotion through the multiple layers of make-up, Botox and fillers’.

Some practitioners have even used social media to advertise offers for multiple treatments called ‘Kim Kardashian packages’ or ‘Kylie Jenner packages’, alongside pictures of the celebrities.

Complaints about non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as Botox and lip fillers have risen tenfold in five years: the campaign group Save Face received 2,083 complaints about botched procedures last year, up from 217 in 2016.

When administered incorrectly, these procedures can cause blindness, blood clots or necrosis – when the tissue dies. In the most extreme cases, patients have had parts of their faces removed to stop the necrosis spreading.

The move to ban the procedures on under-18s follows a campaign by Tory MP Laura Trott to ‘stop the dangerous and unnecessary nonmedical procedures that can ruin children’s lives’.

Ms Trott said that according to some estimates, more than 100,000 under-16s have had cosmetic treatments.