Fresh North East continuing to back plans to reduce vape appeal for young people
A consultation ends todaywoman in black shirt standing in front of store shelf
An anti-smoking campaign group in the North East and Teesside say they're continuing to back plans to reduce the appeal of vapes for young people.
A consultation on proposals to introduce plain packaging, changing the appearance of devices, and putting restrictions on shop displays closes today.
Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh North East, said: "We back all policies that will help us achieve our vision of a smoke-free future, free of the death and disease from lethal tobacco smoking which is still our biggest killer here in the North East.
"It's vital that all tobacco products are regulated and that they're in standardised plain packaging with health warnings on them and this does need to include things like cigars and cigarillos.
"We also want to have a clear message that the worst thing that you can do is to keep smoking. We must ensure that people know what causes the harms and we know vaping isn't as harmful but it's not risk-free and that's why we support measures to reduce the appeal of these to children and young people.
"Youth vaping does seem to have plateaued and we welcome the plans here to address some of the totally unacceptable packaging and the appearance of vapes and how the products have looked. Suggestions to make sure that they're white and that they can't have child-friendly names and look like toys, of course we back.
"What we need to do though is to strike the balance and make sure that there's no continued confusion out there and that people know that vapes are much less harmful than smoking but not risk-free. We're flagging to the Government as well that there are other vital areas of concern to address too, especially around the scale of harms around alcohol."
The Government says the measures could prevent thousands of children from taking up vaping.
A series of impact assessments on the proposed measures have been published by the Government.
One impact assessment document considers the Government’s plan to introduce restrictions on displaying vaping products and other tobacco products in shops in England.
While larger stores have voluntarily moved display units behind sales counters, vape and nicotine products “remain prominently on display across the UK”, particularly in small shops, the authors said.
Experts examined how the policy could impact children’s exposure to such products and the subsequent impact on experimentation.
More than half a million fewer children aged 11 to 17 would be exposed to vapes if the Government’s proposed display restrictions were put in place, estimates suggest.
Hundreds of thousands of children in this age bracket would also not be exposed to heated tobacco products or nicotine pouches while in shops, estimates suggest.
There have been growing concerns about the number of children using nicotine pouches – a 2025 report by the teachers’ union NASUWT found 13% of 4,000 teachers reported their pupils using nicotine pouches during school time.
On experimentation, the authors of the Government impact assessment document estimate that restrictions on displays could lead to 38,000 fewer children will try vaping as a result.
The Government has also set out plans for vapes to be sold in plain white packaging along with the restriction of flavour names.
The impact assessment states there there is a lack of data specifically on plain packaging for vapes so analysists drew on information from standardised packaging for cigarettes.
“The impact assessment on standardised packaging of tobacco estimated an 11% reduction in the prevalence of ever smoking as a result of restrictions on tobacco packaging,” they wrote.
“If this effect were applied to vaping, and using the 25% prevalence of ever vaping among 11-to-15-year-olds… the prevalence could potentially decrease to 22%.”
Researchers acknowledge that vaping restrictions could also reduce the number of smokers willing to use vapes to quit smoking, but they add: “However, using packaging as an example, preliminary evidence from recent studies, suggests that changes to packaging are unlikely to impact adults’ appeal.”
Leading children’s doctors from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have called on the Government to go further than the current proposals and limit the types of flavours available, not just their descriptions.
Another measure proposed by the Government includes for the vape devices themselves to be black, white or grey. Heated tobacco products should be mandated to be made in a “dissuasive colour, likely pantone 448C”, it has been suggested.
The authors of a separate impact assessment highlight previous research which “supports a potential reduction in the number of people being interested in trying a standardised (white) vape, compared to a branded (coloured) vape”.
England’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, has said in the past that marketing vapes to children is “utterly unacceptable”.