The sale and supply of single-use vapes in Scotland will be banned effective April 1, 2025, under new proposed legislation.
The recommendation to ban single-use vapes follows a consultation on “Creating a Smoke-Free Generation and Tackling Youth Vaping” that ran across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland last year.
The legislation uses the powers of the Environmental Protection Act of 1990. Each nation would need to pass separate legislation banning the sale and supply of single-use vapes, but the governments have agreed on an effective date for the ban.
“Legislating to ban the sale and supply of single-use vapes fulfills a program for government commitment to reduce vaping among nonsmokers and young people and take action to tackle their environmental impact,” said Lorna Slater, circular economy minister. “The public consultation demonstrated that there is strong support for tougher action on vaping. From causing fires in waste facilities to more than 26 million disposable vapes being consumed and thrown away in Scotland in the past year, single-use vapes are a threat to our environment as well as to our public health.
“These proposed changes to the law demonstrate our absolute commitment to further improve the well-being of communities and protecting our beautiful natural environment.”
Proponents of single-use vapes have expressed disappointment with the legislation.
“The banning of the very devices that have proved to be so successful in helping record numbers of adult smokers quit will result in serious unintended consequences,” the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) wrote in a press release. “The direct consequences of this ill-thought-out ban will see smoking deaths rise as smokers who have successfully transitioned to vaping reluctantly return to cigarettes with all the health harms, losses to the economy and burden on the NHS [National Health System] this will bring in its wake.”
“Neither will this ban deal with the problem of youth uptake of vaping, which is one of the core aims of this legislation,” the UKVIA went on. “In fact, all the signs point to it actually having exactly the opposite effect as criminal gangs will move in to fill the huge gap in the regulated market with potentially dangerous black market single-use vapes.”
Instead of the proposed ban, the UKVIA stated that the solution is “enforcing the existing laws, which make it a criminal offense to sell vapes to under-18s.”
The draft legislation is open for consultation until March 8.