'Law is failing to protect children as shops are illegally selling vapes'

16 April 2023 , 21:16

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A 13-year-old girl was able to buy vapes containing nicotine (Image: Reach Commissioned)

Shops illegally selling vapes to under-18s with unlawful, dangerously high levels of nicotine is a health time bomb.

The law is failing to protect the young when a 13-year-old was able to buy vapes with five times the permitted level of addictive nicotine in one in four shops she visited undercover.

With doctors and medical experts increasingly concerned about the potentially harmful health damage caused by vaping, the apparently widespread flouting of the law demands a tough response from the Government.

Individual retailers have a moral as well as legal duty to comply with the rules and the apparent culture of impunity is a frightening result of cuts to enforcement after local authority Trading Standards departments were subjected to years of Tory austerity.

Using vaping to help smokers give up ­cigarettes has benefits but hooking the young on vaping is a backward step.

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Let us hope the disturbing evidence of the Daily Mirror’s investigation is a catalyst to efforts to protect the health of our children.

Wasted youth

Baroness Doreen Lawrence says abandoning the young will leave them with nowhere to go and nothing to do (David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock)

Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993 in the capital (PA)

Slashing youth services when cuts are blamed for a rise in violence is cruel, callous and self-defeating Tory austerity.

Ministers would be wise to heed Doreen Lawrence, now a Labour peer, on the 30th anniversary of the murder of her son, Stephen.

Abandoning the young, leaving them with nowhere to go and nothing to do, will ­inevitably result in some who are otherwise good people getting into trouble.

Are you worried about underage vaping? Vote in our poll HERE to have your say.

Invest in the next generation and we as a society will reap the dividends. Neglect them and the real risk is that more lives will be ­needlessly marred, wasted and lost.

Hope springs

We can step out with a belated spring in our step as the wet and cold finally gives way to seasonal warmth and sunshine.

Life’s always better when the sun has got his hat on – so after a disappointing start to spring, let’s hope he’s coming out to stay.

Voice of the Mirror