Puff, Ban, Fizzle – How Britain Just Vaped Its Way Into Another Glorious Policy Disaster
In a stunning display of logic last seen in a Carry On film, the government bans the very thing keeping people off cigarettes… because it comes in colours.
Well this is a good idea, isn’t it? Let’s take the one product that actually got millions of people to stop setting fire to small sticks of tar and dried leaves, and ban it. Genius. It’s like deciding the best way to reduce speeding is to ban speedometers.
Because here we are, in another thrilling episode of “Government Solves a Problem That Didn’t Quite Exist in the Way They Thought It Did; and Accidentally Sets Everything on Fire in the Process.” This week’s starring role? Disposable vapes. Or as the government now calls them… Public Enemy Number One.
The logic apparently, goes something like this. Bright packaging plus fruity flavours equals children getting addicted and turning into walking strawberry-scented fog machines. So rather than say, I don’t know… enforcing existing age restrictions, we’ve gone full Cold War and decided to outlaw the entire category. It’s like banning Mars bars because toddlers keep eating them with their noses.
Let’s pause to admire the genius of this. The government, in its infinite wisdom, thinks young people will stop vaping just because it’s now technically illegal to buy disposable ones. Have these people ever met a teenager? These are the same creatures who can find a house party 17 postcodes away using only Snapchat, intuition and the faint smell of Stella Artois.
One teacher bless her, said she caught a student vaping in class and she only realised when a puff of watermelon mist emerged from behind a GCSE textbook. I mean, that’s less of a classroom incident and more of a David Copperfield magic trick.
And the festivalgoers? Still puffing away like steam trains in Tutti Frutti livery. You could almost hear the law being broken in surround sound. One chap said the refillable vapes are now just as cheap and look exactly the same. Which is a bit like banning fireworks, only to discover that now everyone’s just strapping sparklers to drones.
But wait, it gets better. These new refillable devices come with USB-C charging cables… sold separately of course. Sounds like an Apple device… Because nothing says “health initiative” like creating a black market in tiny chargers. And if you don’t know where to get the right pods for your new government-approved vape, that’s okay; just throw it in the recycling bin and buy another one. Which ironically, is exactly what they were trying to stop in the first place.
Naturally, the numbers are now flying in faster than nicotine pouches in a sixth form common room. Up to 200,000 people may switch back to cigarettes thanks to this ban. So to summarise… in order to stop kids using vapes, we’ve made it more likely that everyone, including said kids, will just go back to smoking actual cigarettes. It’s like banning ice cream to stop tooth decay and then wondering why everyone’s gone back to mainlining Haribo wine gums.
Meanwhile, health charities are frantically waving their arms and saying “Please don’t forget that vaping, while not perfect, is still vastly less likely to kill you than a cigarette.” But by then it’s too late. The government has its headline. Mission accomplished. Another problem solved. Everyone go home.
How about enforcement? Well, if a corner shop dares to sell one of these colourful contraptions now, they could face a £200 fine or up to two years in prison. TWO YEARS. That’s the same as knocking off a phone shop with a sausage roll. It’s utterly bonkers. You could set fire to an entire recycling plant and probably get community service and a lecture on eco-responsibility.
The disposable vape market wasn’t even hard to regulate. We could’ve licensed sales, taxed them, ensured environmentally friendly returns and cracked down on illegal youth sales. But no. We chose the elegant solution of banning them altogether, while leaving the door open for refillables, bootlegs and… oh yes… actual cigarettes.
So in the great hall of fame of dumb policy decisions, right up there with the Millennium Dome, the EdStone, and HS2 to Nowhere; we now have the Vape Ban. Designed presumably, on the back of a napkin by someone who thinks USB-C is a new Star Wars droid.
Bravo.
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
Bsky: @chrisgeiger.com
Bsky: @thecancersurvivorsclub.com
Bsky: @dailydoseofdisbelief.com
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