Happy 2024 everyone, bit late to the party but better than never!
Yesterday (29th January) we got our first sneak peak at Sunaks proposed ideas to curtail Vaping in the UK.
If you haven’t had chance to read the results of the Public Consultation yet, you can read it here, just make sure you have a spare couple of days.
If you don’t, he is a summary, we are in trouble.
As suspected, the handwringing, Mumsnet, let’s ban everything, won’t somebody please think of the children brigade jumped on this consultation from far and wide to spew the usual lies we have seen for years that Vaping is the work of Satan himself and we are all going to grow a second head if we even look at a vape device. Pardon my French here but what a load of bollocks!
I was slightly disappointed that more Vapers didn’t complete the Consultation. According to the figures 27,921 people or organisations responded to the Consultation but when we look at a Vape related question about limiting flavour choice, 47% said flavours should be restricted by the Government, with 2% responding “don’t know”.
That’s very poor. If we look at restricting packaging, the common sense option of banning the use of cartoons, characters and other imagery that may appeal to children received 35.8%. However 46.1% wanted a complete ban of colour, branding and imagery… basically plain bottles and plain labels the same as cigarette packets are currently treated. The rest of the consultation has a theme running along the same lines.
We are being shouted over at the moment, a vocal minority who want to limit our choices as adults with overreaching laws are winning. The laws to curb the problems of youth Vaping already exist, Trading Standards say as much but they are underfunded, the Government just aren’t enforcing the laws and aren’t funding the organisations that can. As we all know though, funding and enforcement won’t win votes, they need pretty, shouty headlines to do that and that’s exactly what we are seeing. We are being used as a political tool as Sunak desperately tries to cling to power, we need to shout back.
Now, the elephant in the room so to speak, Disposables and the ban. I’m going to sound like a hypocrite here but I don’t care, I’m happy to see this ban coming in. Disposables are the cause of the current mess we find ourselves in. Before Disposables existed, youth Vaping was around 2%, it’s now at 7.6%, what changed? Disposables were introduced. Prior to Disposables, if you wanted to quit smoking by Vaping, you went to a specialist Vape shop with advisors who knew what they were doing and you’d get your device and e-liquid. Now you can walk into any corner shop, petrol station, kiosk, anywhere really and have a huge choice of disposable vapes. The staff there aren’t specialist, they don’t have the knowledge that a vape shop employee does, they sell more pints of milk than vapes in a day! This is where children are picking up Disposables and this is where the legislation and fines should be pointed towards.
I’ve written a piece before on disposables with all the pitfalls and problems here. To quote a famous Australian Reviewer who is soon to move to the UK, fuck disposables.
I’m feeling a tad ranty and annoyed today after reading the results of this consultation properly for the first time, can you tell?
Please check out this petition on change.org and consider adding your signature. Another public consultation is coming soon, please fill it out and get your voices heard otherwise Tarquin in his Range Rover, sipping his flavoured Starbucks coffee going home to drink his flavoured gin (See what I did there?) is going to be rubbing his hands in glee as we are all forced to hide our e-liquid in plain brown bags with its plain brown label and its plain brown flavour.
Get angry and get shouty.