The UK Government wants to enact legislation to ban the sale of single-use vapes from 1 June 2025, for the two good reasons stated on the gov.uk website:

Making the sale of single-use vapes illegal, delivers on the Government’s commitment to act on this important issue, and kick-starts the push towards a circular economy and helps to curb the rise of young people taking up vaping, while also protecting our natural environment and town streets from a tide of litter.  

I don’t want to sound like nitpicking, but this verbose writing rather invites satire:

For a start, ‘delivers on the Government’s commitment to act on this important issue’ could be simplified to: ‘The Government is committed to making the sale of single-use vapes illegal.’ They don’t have to talk about ‘delivering on its commitment’ as well. As for ‘kick-starts the push,’ they really should make up their minds whether they want to kick-start, as with a motor bike, or push; they don’t need to do both. Further, ‘circular economy’ apparently refers to recycling, and not to the 1935 Tommy Dorsey jazz song: ‘The Music Goes Round and Round and it Comes Out Here.’

Obviously, it’s important to protect the environment, but it seems the Government only wants to ‘curb the rise of young people taking up vaping.’ Curb in this sense means restrict or limit, not abolish. But how much curbing would satisfy the Government? Is there an extent of young people taking up vaping which the Government regards as acceptable? If so, how much, and why?

Furthermore:

Disposable vapes are the last thing our children and the planet need, and for too long the market for them has been allowed to grow unchecked.

Too true about the growth of disposable vapes needing to be checked for the health of poor old planet Earth. It’s also unarguable that the last thing our children need is disposable vapes, but what about adults – don’t they count? Why should only children be protected from these drug (nicotine) delivery devices? When you reach the present legal age 18 and are allowed to buy vapes, does some magical transformation occur making it perfectly all right for those of this age and above to buy them?

Tobacco and Vapes Bill
This instrument is due to be further debated in the House of Commons and, if passed, to become law on 1 June 2025. Let’s take a closer look. It starts with a wordy repetitive statement:

A Bill to make provision about the supply of tobacco, vapes and other products, including provision prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after 1 January 2009; and to enable product requirements to be imposed in connection with tobacco, vapes and other products.

What do they mean, ‘enable product requirement to be imposed’? Perhaps they’re trying to say, ‘impose restrictions on the sale of tobacco and vape products.’

Stylistic infelicities apart, if you were born before the cut-off date of 1 January 2009, for example, on 31 December 2008, by 1 June 2025 you will be aged 16 years, and if this Bill is passed, will legally be able to buy tobacco and vapes. But the present legal age in the UK for buying tobacco and vapes is 18 years, and for this reason it seems the Bill will not become law until 2027.

I have discussed previously the impracticability of this proposal, but to recapitulate and update the main objections:

If we assume no one would start smoking or vaping after age 40, it will take 24 years until there would be no one to whom tobacco or products could legally be sold. And in the meantime, would tobacco products continue to be on sale, as at present, in every corner shop and supermarket? Would potential purchasers of tobacco products have to prove their age to the shop staff? If so, why should the burden of deciding who is eligible to buy tobacco products be put on them? And what would be acceptable as proof of age? Would smokers have to produce their passports or birth certificates? Or would smokers have to obtain a special document with a recent photo to show to the purveyors of tobacco products before being allowed to buy them? The question then arises whether these merchants would find it too burdensome to act as tobacco police, and decide to stop selling tobacco products altogether – or is that the aim of this cock-eyed proposal?

More whataboutery
What about those currently, and who will remain, of legal age for buying cancer sticks (cigarettes) or e-cigarette nicotine addictive delivery devices (vapes)? The proposed new law will only benefit potential new smokers or vapers born on or after the cut-off date. Current smokers or vapers, if above the legal age threshold, will continue to be able to smoke or vape, or do both, until they quit these abnormal activities, or die. What about them?

Text © Gabriel Symonds

Photo credit: Andrea de Santis on Unsplash