Two weeks ago, we talked about this, the government finally taking a move in the right direction.

But today I want to talk about this in a different way. A way that will actually benefit everyone more than what the government's proposal will do.

First, lets look at some data.

The Ash report for the Youth survey, 2025 shows a clear trend. Prior to 2021, the number of users were slowly increasing but with slows and dips we hoped were taking young people out of the equation. If you ask Google’s Gemini, convenience stores always stocked vape stuff, but I put it to you that only a handful of them actually did this, usually stocking the likes of a few bottles of 88Vapes liquid, a very cheap option for those on a budget that don’t mind the offset of quality for the price. Convenience stores engagement came with the disposable, and that rise to infamy came in? 2021. 

Taking that graph into consideration, I’d say it’s not to far of a stretch to assume that some stores were not being quite so diligent with the 16-17 year olds, but for those that were obviously underage and not just looking like you need to ID them were generally not being sold to, by the vape industry. 

As can be seen from the 2024 ASH survey of adult vapers, from 2021, when disposable came in though, after a dip in sales of 30% (9% down to 6%) to those in the 16-17 bracket, we see everything shoot up with disposable popularity. 

If youth vaping was on a decline for 2 years, which can be seen in the above graph, again ASH report 2024, looking at the 18-24 Y/o bracket declining up to 2021, with much of the industry backing the UKVIA and their push for a better world for the next generation, it would be very odd for the industry to then throw all that away. 

And that’s because we didn’t. Companies like us at VapeHQ and QLabs put in multiple measures to help prevent the sale to youths like we outline here, but that doesn’t account for people outside of the vape industry, we saw an explosion of financial opportunity in 2021 as disposables came through with improved technologies over their predecessors. This made the product exceptionally wide spread and with that, was available to bad actors and people with little to no morals when it comes to making money. We know we’re in a business that is based around addiction so don’t think we don’t know that moral dilemma, but our goal is to remove cigarettes from the world, reduce the burden on health services and your lives, not make a quick buck.

Don’t just take my word for it though. There is other information that backs this up. Prior to 2021, the most common place to buy vapes was at a vape store, and as time went on from the initial gold rush, sense was winning out over profiteering. 2020 *shudders* came round and everyone had to order their products online. 2021 came about and the vape industry did not return as it was. Supermarkets and convenience stores took up the largest portion of the market and we saw a rise in youth vaping. It needs to stop!

So what do I propose?

I suggest that rather than putting a massive duty tax onto Vapes to “price them out of the hands of underaged users” we instead use a vape sales license.

This license would only be available to those companies that have over 90% of their stock as vaping related products, aka eliquid, coils, devices, pods etc. This gives some stores wiggle room to offer hot and cold drinks in the middle of summer and winter. Then furthermore, the store must be selling over a percentage of their sales as vaping related products, which should prevent companies buying lots of stock to claim that they are a vape store.

These companies should register each shop that they have under this license and the license can then be database so that local councils can quickly and easily deploy agents to check for bad actors that are bringing society down. 

As for the vape industry, you would then have companies and stores that are specialising in the products, that are learning and understanding what the illegal products are and what should and shouldn’t be present in the products that are being sold managing the market. The government can then work closely with groups like the UKVIA to check companies compliance with challenge 25 and I think we can all agree that if they are not doing it, then they should be fined. We don’t want a bad reputation, we want to help people quit smoking, so I say, get rid of the ones that are dragging us all down.