MPs: License vape shops to tackle epidemic of child nicotine addicts

SHOPS selling vapes must be licensed like alcohol outlets to stem the epidemic of child nicotine addiction, MPs will demand this week.

It comes as research shows that more than three quarters of the public support toughening the law so the devices can’t be sold at toy shops, sweet stores and other places aimed at youngsters.

Even the tobacco industry, which makes much of its profit from vapes, supports stricter regulation to reframe them as legitimate stop-smoking aids rather than public nuisances.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will be debated in the Commons tomorrow, when a group of MPs will call for tighter restrictions on the brightly coloured, candy-flavoured nicotine gadgets. They are sold in many sweet shops and, in one extraordinary example, a shop in Lincolnshire called Grimsby Toys & Vape where they are sold alongside teddy bears. Tory MP Caroline Johnson, a paediatric consultant, said: ‘People are very worried about the number of children getting addicted to vapes. It currently far exceeds the number that would have started smoking.

‘The market for selling vapes and other nicotine products needs to be tightened. If people needed a licence to sell vapes, it would make it easier to enforce the law, because they could immediately lose their licence if they sold them to children.’

She said alcohol and tobacco licences should be ‘tied together’, so if a shop lost its licence for selling one type of product to children, it would lose its licence to sell both. ‘I would also like to see a restriction on vaping in public places, to match smoking,’ she added.

In a nationwide poll, the Britain in Focus think-tank found seven in ten believe the Government has not done enough to tackle under-age vaping, and 79 per cent believe the new smoking legislation should introduce licences for selling vapes.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill seeks to ban anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes and stop candy-flavoured vapes from being marketed to children.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the legislation was about ‘looking after future generations’.