The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which aims to make policy provisions around the supply of tobacco, vapes, and other products, has been steadily making its way through Parliament, going through the House of Commons to now the House of Lords. Both the first and second readings of the Bill have passed, and it now sits awaiting an announcement for the Committee stage, where will be certainly interested in helping to influence this piece of legislation. The headline objective of the Bill is to ‘create the first smoke-free generation so children turning 15 this year or younger can never legally be sold tobacco’. The Bill would also:

• introduce a generational ban on the sale of tobacco across the UK:
  • The bill would make it an offence to sell tobacco products, herbal smoking products and cigarette papers to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. This would replace the current age of sale restriction of 18 years for these products.
• strengthen and expand smoke-free legislation across the UK:
• introduce new restrictions on oral tobacco products across the UK:
• provide the Secretary of State with powers to make regulations about tobacco products that would apply across the UK:

• extend the existing age of sale restriction, so that it covered non-nicotine vapes and a wider range of vaping products:
• prohibit the sale of vaping and nicotine products from vending machines in the UK.
• prohibit the free distribution, advertising, sponsorship and brand sharing of vaping and nicotine products to people of all ages.

• the provision of regulation-making powers to create a retailer licensing scheme for the sale of tobacco products, herbal smoking products, cigarette papers, vaping, and nicotine products.
• in Scotland, a strengthening of the existing retail register by expanding its scope to herbal smoking products and nicotine products.
• in England and Wales, the provision of enforcement authorities with the power to issue fixed penalty notices for offences related to the underage sale, proxy sale and free distribution of tobacco and vaping products (£200) and offences in connection with licensing (£2,500).^[1]

We have already responded to a call for evidence for this Bill, which can be found here. We welcome a large amount of the policy provisions within this Bill, we ultimately champion education, prevention and partnership working, particularly around the renewals in trading standards.

We will review the debate from the second reading form the Tobacco, Vapes Bill for you, and present some headlines.

Concerns over the community

Of course, with a debate around a revenue generator like tobacco and vapes, there are conversations around the loss in revenue from tobacco and vapes would represent. It was present by some that that without these sales, and ‘with them being conducted on shady street corners on the black market instead, a lot of these shops will go bust’ therefore, they point to a concern in community cohesion. Of course, we believe community cohesion is disproportionally affected by the use of these products, particularly by children, and particularly in certain communities. It, however, is found that research commissioned by Action on Smoking Health finds that most retailers in fact support the government proposals. ^[2]

Trading Standards

It was positive to hear that overall, the trading standards community, strongly supports the Bill. They identified four main reasons:

• It strikes the right balance between the need to protect consumers and the need to achieve the public health benefit of vaping as an alternative.
• Regulating advertising and packaging, in regard to vapes
• Introduction of licensing schemes for businesses selling these products was seen as long overdue.
• The introduction of fixed penalty notices to enable action to be taken more swiftly, and to take some of the pressure off our court system.

Of course, it was noted resources as a main issue for the trading standards community, like many agencies, successful enforcement depends on resource, and it was noted that over the last decade spending on trading standards has been cut by 50%.^[3]

Children and young people

The issue of children and young people featured heavily in our submission document to the call for evidence, and in order for prevention to fully succeed, it needs to consider the young people who are often on the forefront of these issues. Of course, young people therefore feature extensively within the debate, with MPs highlighting the negative effects associated with vaping and co-dependency, nearly half report being unable to get through a school day without vaping, impacting on their focus and education. Indeed, this effects the wider community, if children do not attain and stay within education as a result of addictive substances.

It is encouraging to hear the wide range of debate as the Bill heads steadily through it is second reading, we of course, welcome an open dialogue on these issues. This bill represents an opportunity for intervention, prevention – namely though education and raising awareness, we hope it continues to strive to be so.

For any questions or further information, please contact:

Harrison Box, Policy Officer

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

^[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10150/

^[2] https://ash.org.uk/uploads/Support-for-Stopping-the-Start-Report.pdf

^[3] https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2025-04-23/lords/lords-chamber/tobacco-and-vapes-bill 20:42