The sale and supply of single-use vapes will be banned by next summer, the government has announced.
Ministers say the move is designed to protect children’s health and prevent environmental damage,with devolved governments in Scotland and N Ireland expected to announce similar bans in the coming weeks.
Businesses will be given a deadline to ‘sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force’, which is expected to be on June 1 2025.
A ban was previously announced by the Conservative government in January but was not enacted until after the general election.
Disposable vapes are considered extremely bad for the environment, being difficult to recycle and full of harmful waste such as lithium, battery acid and mercury.
Batteries thrown into bins cause hundreds of fires at waste processing centres and the back of refuse trucks every year, and it is estimated around 40 tonnes of lithium has been discarded in the past 12 months- enough to power 5,000 electric vehicles.
The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) estimates almost five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away every week last year.
Vape use in the UK is estimated to have grown by 400% between 2012 and 2023, and around 9.1% of the population is now believed to buy and use them.
Defra’s circular economy minister, Mary Creagh, said disposable vapes were ‘extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities.
‘That is why we are banning single use vapes as we end this nation’s throwaway culture,’ she added.
‘This is the first step on the road to a circular economy, where we use resources for longer, reduce waste, accelerate the path to net-zero and create thousands of jobs across the country.’
Health minister Andrew Gwynne said: ‘It’s deeply worrying that a quarter of 11-15-year-olds used a vape last year and we know disposables are the product of choice for the majority of kids vaping today
‘Banning disposable vapes will not only protect the environment, but importantly reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people.’
It is already illegal to sell disposable vapes to anyone under 18, but the smaller, more colourful packaging on many of them is seen as a ‘key driver behind the alarming rise in youth vaping’, the previous government said.
Although vaping is considerably less harmful than smoking cigarettes, it has not been around long enough for its long-term effects to be studied, according to the NHS.
Public Health Minister Andrew Gwynne said disposable vapes had become the ‘product of choice for the majority of kids vaping today’ and banning them would ‘reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people’.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the proposal would be put to parliament before the end of the year.
Libby Peake, head of resources at Green Alliance, said: ‘Disposable vapes are the last thing our children and the planet need, and for too long the market for them has been allowed to grow unchecked.’
In January, the UK Vaping Industry Association responded to the proposal by saying vapes had helped ‘millions of adults quit and stay off cigarettes’ and that the plan would put children at risk by ‘turbocharging the black market’.
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