‘Ban vape shops from offering sweetie flavours in youth drive’
VAPE shops and manufacturers should be banned from offering vapes in appealing flavours like bubblegum, a task force has recommended.
It’s one of four recommendations put forward in a report aimed at addressing the “rapid rise” in vaping in those under 18.
Vapes are available in a huge range of flavours designed to sound like children’s sweets, with names like gummy bear, cotton candy, butterscotch, slushie and bubblegum.
Stores advertise them with bright, colourful signs sometimes on routes to and from secondary schools.
A task force set up by Public Health Wales is now recommending tackling this head on in a bid to reduce the numbers of children vaping. The task force advises that as well as these four formal recommendations, vaping should be treated as a dependency issue, rather than “misconduct”.
In the report released today, the four major policy control measures that the experts recommend are:
Denormalise vaping – Stop vaping in spaces that are intended primarily for children and young people. Settings working with children should have vape-free policies;
■ Packaging and display – Restrictions should be placed on the advertising, packaging and display of vapes in Wales. This, they say, is likely to be “one of the most effective measures to address vaping amongst children and young people in Wales”;
■ Disposables – Ban the sale of single-use disposable vapes; and
■ Flavours – Flavour names should be legally restricted as basic descriptions such as tobacco, mint, menthol and fruit.
The task force, set up by Public Health Wales, recommends that children should be supported to give up vaping in the same way that children over the age of 12 are supported to give up smoking; with the use of nicotine replacement therapies (gum, skin patches or inhalers) being prescribed.
Consultant in Public Health for Public Health Wales, Chris Emmerson, said: “These best practices provide a comprehensive framework for supporting young vapers in Wales.
“By implementing these practices, we can better address the complex needs of children and young people struggling with vaping dependency. Nicotine replacement therapies, which are already offered to people aged over 12 who are smoking, is one tool that could help children and young people out of their dependency on vaping in tandem with other support mechanisms.
“The Incident Response Group has delivered vital insight into the problem of youth vaping in Wales. A clear consensus view that the rise in youth vaping must be addressed with urgency has emerged, and it is by continuing to work together that we stand the best chance of tackling the issue quickly and effectively.”