Why is the government making vapes harder to buy than cigarettes?
Vaping remains the most effective tool to help smokers quit, so why is Labour trying to restrict access to vape shops, asks Andrej Kuttruf
Ahead of this week’s Labour Party conference, the government announced that local councils may soon gain powers to limit the number of vaping retailers on local high streets via its “Pride in Place” initiative. Although this might sound like sensible public health policy, it is actually a glaring contradiction at the very heart of the government’s approach to smoking cessation.
On the one hand, NHS guidance is unequivocal: vaping remains the most effective tool to help smokers quit and is estimated to be 95 per cent less harmful than smoking. This has been the position of Public Health England for years, reinforced by numerous independent studies. On the other hand, restricting access to vape shops, which are often located in precisely those communities with the highest rates of smoking, would undermine that very strategy.
Even more puzzling is the thinking behind these proposals. Some 3m smokers in the UK have already quit through vaping, including 75 per cent of our own customers, helping to drive one of the fastest declines in smoking rates in Europe. Yet doctors are now being asked to promote two contradictory things: advocate for vaping as the best way to quit smoking, but support measures that would make it far, far harder to access for those who need it most.
The consequence is confusion for both adult smokers seeking to quit and for health professionals tasked with guiding them. A smoker in Stockwell or Sunderland is told that vaping is the surest way to stop but may soon find the local vaping retailer shuttered, while corner stores can continue to sell cigarettes unabated. Their GP will still advise them to switch but won’t be able to point them to a convenient provider. This is a case study of mixed messaging and unintended consequences.
Labour’s messaging on vaping is confusing the public
Why does this matter now? Because the UK’s ambition to become smoke-free by 2030 is at stake. Every year, around 76,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses in the UK. Helping them quit is not just a matter of personal health, it is consequential for our already stretched public finances. Smoking costs the NHS billions annually and drains productivity from the workforce. Vaping has been the one intervention demonstrably capable of accelerating progress and saving money. To undermine it now risks derailing the government’s own health and fiscal targets.
None of this is to argue that the sector should be unregulated. Quite the opposite. My company Evapo have long called for a robust licensing scheme, underpinned by industry-funded enforcement, as the sole way to drive out rogue traders that sell to minors and undermine standards in our sector. It is finally set to come online next year, but that scheme must be coherent. It should align with what the NHS already tells patients, not work against it. And it should be informed by those with expertise in consumer behaviour, retail economics and addiction science, not just by well-intentioned but misplaced assumptions about marketing practices.
The next few weeks and months will be decisive, as political headlines from Labour Party conference turn into government policy. If councils are empowered to curb vaping retailers without a parallel strategy to preserve access for smokers trying to quit, the government risks telling people that vaping is both essential to quitting and something they should have far less access to.
Policy should be evidence-based, not contradictory and the government must choose clarity over confusion. If we are serious about supporting the public finances, saving lives, and achieving a smoke-free United Kingdom by 2030, vaping should be made more accessible to adult smokers, not less.
Andrej Kuttruf is CEO of Evapo, a specialist vaping company and an approved supplier to the government Swap to Stop scheme