Sunak has to do more to prevent recreational vaping

Vapes positioning as a lifestyle product was the key their success - Sunak has more to do to prevent them becoming, as planned by companies, a popular recreational addiction like alcohol or gambling.

The chart above shows the success of cynical vape company product and marketing strategies to young people, and their failure to attract smokers. This is not a coincidence, they haven’t been promoted to smokers at all, despite the rhetoric on cigarette and vape company websites.

(FYI, cig companies and Juul love the disposable ban, as at a stroke it takes away the UK market dominator, China's iMiracle (Elfbar & Lost Mary) and leaves addicted consumers who will move to their own pods and refillables which are now as small, funky and nearly as cheap.)

These priorities remain for the government to prevent recreational vaping with young people:

1. Implement plain standardised packaging & restricting colours, flavours and descriptions to a small number popular with smokers. Prevent all promotional displays.

2. Vaping in social settings has been the key to the uptake of vapes among young people (products are designed specifically for this purpose). He must restrict vape purchase and usage in pubs, bars and clubs, cafes etc similar to cigarettes.

3. All lifestyle marketing must be prevented. Vapes are so popular with young adults because they bore the brunt of the lifestyle marketing through product styling, social media, sponsorship of events, sports and promotional marketing on company websites as offering psychological benefits - calming, reducing stress, increasing concentration. 

4. Non-smokers, particularly children and young adults need help to quit their vaping habit and bespoke engagement must be created to support prevention asap.  Because of concerns about putting off smokers, we understand there are currently no plans for this, except possibly in schools for children.

5. Vapes should be phased out with cigarettes. The rationale for allowing vapes to be widely available is to help smokers quit.  So there will be no need for them to be purchased by anyone for whom smoking is illegal, therefore vapes should also not be legally available for anyone born after 2009.  In order to help smokers quit a lag of 1-2 years could be considered.

6. Tax vapes to make them cheaper than cigarettes, but expensive for non-smokers. Vapes are such a new product, and young people the biggest users. A tax will help put them off starting to vape and help stop vaping becoming a socially engrained habit and act as a motivation for smokers.

7. Enforcement of all this lot and prevention of illegals! Not easy.

Happy to chat to any media interested in this perspective on recreational vaping!

More detail on our recommendations and these conclusions is in the White Paper:

Recommendation 1

Vapes should be to cigarettes how methadone is to heroin, and non-pharma approaches should be promoted more clearly.

Recommendation 2

Vapes should be sold like cigarettes with plain packaging, limited flavours & restrict availability

Recommendation 3

Vapes should be phased out with cigarettes with a short lag timeRecommendation 4

Lifestyle marketing of vapes should be prohibited to all adults as well as children.

Recommendation 5

The focus on helping smokers quit ignores the issues for young adult and child non-smokers - bespoke prevention and cessation help should be created urgently.

Here again are the recommendations in detail:

Vapes should be to cigarettes as methadone is to heroin, a new nicotine economy should be strenuously prevented.

Please contact Hilary Sutcliffe on hilary@societyinside.com or telephone 07799 625064