Action on Smoking and Health has produced a set of resources to help schools, colleges, parents, and carers deal with youth vaping in response to growing concerns. The move, in conjunction with Smokefree Sheffield, comes at a time when vaping has never been under such scrutiny in the United Kingdom with vapes removed from supermarket shelves, calls on the Government for tougher legislation, and negative stories in the national media.
The resources produced by Smokefree Sheffield and Action on Smoking and Health includes:
·Posters for school toilets, classrooms, canteens, and noticeboards: 1, 2
·A short, animated film for PSHE lessons, form times and assemblies.
·Classroom presentation to use alongside the animated film, with notes here.
·Teachers Toolkit in greater detail to back up activities.
·Electronic leaflet for parents and carers.
The anti-smoking charity has released this set of resources at the same time it is making demands on the Government to increase the strength of electronic cigarette regulations.
With the support of the Local Government Association and Trading Standards, it wants to see the appeal of vaping reduced by increasing the cost of disposable ecig products by raising the level of tax. ASH believes young people will be less likely to vape if disposable ecigs are more expensive.
They want this tax rise to be combined with action to remove vapes from the sight of young people in shops and supermarkets, as well as severely restricting in-store advertising and point of sale displays.
Furthermore, ASH are calling on the Government to ban bright colours, cartoon characters and names associated with sweets from all vape packaging.
The charity believes money raised through the tax rise and a paid-for registration program should be put back into the system to fund more raids by Trading Standards officers. This, along with a compulsory ID system for Under-25s will reduce teen use, ASH s
Twelve months ago, such calls would have been dismissed as extreme and unlikely to receive a hearing in Government, but times have changed.
Over the last three months there has been a concerted push by environmental and pressure groups to highlight the two main issues with disposable vapes: the loss of lithium from spent device batteries and disposables being dumped on the ground or in rubbish bins when used up rather than being recycled.
Last week, a Ten-Minute Bill received its first reading and is progressing to the next stage. If it reaches the statute book, then all disposable vapes will be banned in the UK. Parliament heard some major exaggerations and emotion over science during the brief debate.
This was compounded by the news that supermarkets had removed all the stock from their shelves produced by a major disposables manufacturer.
In light of these events, we could well see the end of disposable ecigs before the end of the year and, if not, ASH’s call for tougher regulation could easily make it through Parliament.