Hundreds of vapes taken off pupils at Scotland’s high schools – Call for advertising and sales crackdown as increasing number of under 18s caught with vapes
Hundreds of vapes taken off pupils at Scotland’s high schools – Call for advertising and sales crackdown as increasing number of under 18s caught with vapes
26 comments
I was at a music festival at the weekend about 6 of the stalls were different Vape vendors just handing out those cheap shitty vape sticks to people who spun a wheel or some shit without checking ID. Theres a huge push for these things to get into the hands of kids.
They offered me and I said I don’t smoke and their tag line was “Oh this isn’t smoking it’s much better for you than that”
But is anyone really surprised that kids are getting these…you can buy them from vending machines without ID and order them online and the flavours are mostly advertised to kids with flavours such as Cookie Dough, bubblegum, strawberry milkshake.
The reason we banned menthol cigarettes and other flavoured tobacco was because shit like Grape and strawberry cigarettes were appealing to kids…and now we are just doing it again.[https://i.imgur.com/0dxaY7j.png](https://i.imgur.com/0dxaY7j.png)
Tiktok is full of adverts for Vapes…like every third advert is a vape advert. My sister in law(15) showed me her tiktok and thats pretty much all she gets and it’s always talking about health benefits vs cigarettes and how easy it is to buy them online and it’s always some sickly sweet flavour like candy floss or strawberry laces.
Its quite difficult to stop kids buying these online. But there are so many shops near me selling these to kids without any checks at all. Not your dedicated vape shops, but usually independent off licenses and phone shops. The level of enforcement is shocking.
Oh FFS when did they become “cool” again, there were big pushes with ads everywhere a few years ago and it was so completely lame then.
They’ll be all over on tiktok or something I’d guess. It won’t last, anything 16yr olds do they’re embarrassed about later. But it’s concerning kids getting addicted to them. I feel for their parents!
Theres a lot of problems around vapes where I am too imo, it isnt even just teens getting hold of them, its kids 10-12 I have seen with 20mg vapes too. My shop sells vapes and it kind of disgusts me how bright, colourful with “fun names” some are (eg YOLO/ELF) directly at the tills where normally we would have things like chocolates etc prior to them. Towns all over have people forming proxy sale businesses and its pretty disgusting how it has not been cracked down on. Need to go hard on them like tobacco and be 1, ugly colour, no “fun names”, hell, ban the mix of flavours too even IDK.
Personally sick and tired that no matter how much I/my shop keeps to challenge 25 and even ban sales of certain products to some people known for proxying, others just dont seem to care.
The online side is also a shambles, from what I gather theres pretty much no real control on that either. Then vending machines lol… god damn.
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IDK, am I just becoming an “angry old man shouts at clouds” in my 30s?
I’m an ex smoker who tried a vape once – god damn they are delicious and addictive, I had to bin it as I’d be dragging on one every moment I got the opportunity, if I let myself keep it.
They are a horrendous development – 10 years ago I would have said the nicotine business was doomed, as vapes were these huge ugly things that looked like a perfume bottle.
the world smells of candyfloss…
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And then of course, there’s this reason: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-07-15/rise-of-single-use-vapes-sending-tonnes-of-lithium-to-landfill
Ban single use vapes (aka pocketmoney vapes).
At least smoking tastes like shit.
Vapes might be not as awful for you, but I’d argue that the advertising and flavours is far more insidious, as they are pretty much exclusively targeted at young people – not the ‘quit smoking’ aide they once were touted as.
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Remember when I eas in school 4/5 years ago so like year 9 everyone had them it’s not a new thing lol 😂just back then we had the reusable ones and now it’s all just disposable
It’s rife in my kids secondary school here in South Wales. I’m sickened as much by that as the whole single-use aspect of the new plastic craze!
Why aren’t vapes held to the same advertising restrictions as cigarettes? So many times I’ve been in a shopping mall like the Trafford centre and seen a vape thing in the centre aisle, it’s literally like they’re promoting it
As if the vape companies give a shit about getting kids hooked!
Nicotine salts are the game changer here. In my experience most of the disposable vapes used by kids contain salts.
By mixing freebase nicotine with an acid (usually benzoic acid) you create a nicotine salt. These are far, far smoother to vape, and massively increase the availablility of nicotine within your bloodstream.
[Here is a press release from Imperial Tobacco](https://imperialbrandsscience.com/press-office/press-release-vaping-nicotine-salts-more-closely-replicates-cigarette-like-pulmonary-delivery-of-nicotine-compared-to-traditional-freebase-nicotine-according-to-new-research/) explaining the science, and why (to them) it is a good thing. Two take aways:
> It took 4 minutes for nicotine salts to reach the brain, as opposed to 10 minutes for freebase nicotine. The image below illustrates how increased activity is observable across a subject’s brain when nicotine salts were vaped.
and
> Nicotine salt activity in the brain also peaked more rapidly and declined more steeply than the freebase comparator, again closely mimicking a combustible cigarette.
Essentially nicotine salts are a _more addictive_ form of nicotine. They peak harder and faster and decline more quickly, intensifying both the positive feedback and withdrawal mechanisms that underly addiction. Couple that with the fact disposables are very attractive to minors due to the flavours they come in, and I think we’re on the precipice of a major health crisis.
As an aside, this rather puts to bed the notion tobacco companies are developing vapes as smoking cessation devices. Clearly they are developing them to help maintain addiction (and if irresponsible new users become addicted, that’s just an added plus).
Given their government doesn’t care about their world beating levels of drug death they shouldn’t expect much.
Not to mention the waste these disposable vapes are creating. Plastic, batteries and shite just chucked on the floor everywhere.
And they moan about plastic waste in the ocean!
It’s hardly a big deal. Children have always done things underage and at least with vapes there’s no lung cancer and emphysema. You might as well crack down on caffeine.
I see a tonne of kids with those cheap disposable vapes that look like they’re sucking on a coloured whiteboard marker.
Seems like it’s be even harder to quit given that you can suck on em constantly, no need for a smoke break. Just have a puff every 30 seconds
When I was last at school, which admittedly is a long while ago, the number of 15 year olds that smoked far outnumbered those that didn’t, so this sounds like a win to me.
I hardly knew anyone at school who smoked in the 2010’s . Maybe 5 out of 130 in my year? (Odd cigarette at parties not included) , but overall it really wasn’t something seen as desirable.
With regards to teenagers, we’ve gone backwards. There are now far more who vape- who never would’ve smoked. I get the use of vapes in stopping smoking, but there are so many kids now who just have an eluf bar in their mouth like a bubblegum flavoured dummy 24/7. I think the work and message around smoking was going really well, and it was becoming rarer, and it’s a shame what has happened with vapes. Which are clearly marketed towards kids!
Might be an unpopular opinion but it should be illegal to add artificial flavours to nicotine products. 🤷♂️
There needs to be a strict crackdown on the market stalls, corner shops and online vendors who are selling them to the kids – as most dedicated vape shops know the law and do not (there are *some* dodgy ones).
I run a Vape Shop, and dread the school holidays as I seem to spend the majority of the time telling teenagers to leave my shop.. earlier today I had a group of foul mouthed scrotes telling me “You can’t make us leave, we know our rights, if you touch us we’ll call the police”
Thankfully I know my rights as a shopkeeper, and CAN legally manhandle them off the premises if they refuse an initial request.
Back to the devices themselves – they are a nightmare, they are everything we do NOT want in the industry, yet we have to stock the damn things or risk going out of business, as so many adults have also bought into their strong flavours and their convenience…. despite the fact that refillable/rechargeable pods devices are much cheaper in the long term, sadly a high percentage of customers are lazy and can’t be arsed messing about with juice and coils.
I’d like to see the disposables gone.. full stop.
I work in a vape shop and have done since before tpd, I wish they would just find a way to bad disposables full stop
We made so much progress against smoking and now kids who aren’t even old enough to remember life before the indoor ban are getting hooked on vapes which are available everywhere.