The sale of disposable vapes will be banned in the UK by next summer, the government has said.
Legislation to ban the sale of single-use vapes from June 1, 2025 has been laid out in Parliament, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) confirmed on Wednesday.
Reusable vapes and refills will remain available, along with regular cigarettes and other tobacco products.
The government added that retailers will have until the deadline “to sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force.”
‘The Path to Net Zero’
Single-use vapes are very difficult to recycle, and the vast majority are thrown away with regular household rubbish or discarded outdoors.Circular economy minister Mary Creagh said disposable vapes were “extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities.”
Creagh added: “That is why we are banning single use vapes as we end this nation’s throwaway culture.
“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.”
Last year, Materials Focus estimated that almost 5 million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste every week in the UK, which is almost four times as much as the previous year.
DEFRA said vape usage in England had surged by more than 400 percent between 2012 and 2023, with 9.1 percent of Brits now buying and using the products.
A ‘Smoke-Free Future’
Health minister Andrew Gwynne said in a statement: “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.
“The government will also introduce the Tobacco and Vapes Bill – the biggest public health intervention in a generation – which will protect young people from becoming hooked on nicotine and pave the way for a smoke-free UK.”
On Monday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting vowed to toughen up smoking laws with a “more ambitious” bill than the one drawn up by the previous government.
The bill introduced by the Conservatives sought to prevent anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009 from legally smoking by gradually raising the age at which cigarettes and all vaping products can be bought.
It also aimed to impose restrictions on the sale and marketing of vapes to children because of concerns about the use of flavours and colours which appeal to young people.
The legislation, which passed its first vote in the the House of Commons just before the general election was called, faced criticism from a number of mainly Tory backbench MPs on civil liberties grounds, with concerns also raised about how it would be policed and enforced in practice.
The bill does not seek to criminalise the act of smoking, but to prohibit the sale of tobacco and vaping products, with the stated aim of creating a “smoke-free generation.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in August that the government was considering banning smoking in outdoor areas, including in beer gardens and outside stadiums, sparking a backlash from those concerned it would kill off the pub trade.
Streeting has said that Labour intends to reintroduce the Tobacco and Vapes bill to Parliament before Christmas, but it is not yet known whether the proposal to restrict outdoor smoking will form part of the revamped legislation.
