Kids as young as EIGHT are hooked on vaping, shock council data shows
Kids as young as EIGHT are hooked on vaping, shock council data shows
- Proportion of teens using vapes has tripled in 3 years in some parts of England
- READ MORE: Single-use vapes should be BANNED, local councils declare
Kids as young as eight are vaping, council bosses have warned amid the UK’s ever-growing e-cig epidemic.
The shock data, collated by a Trading Standards branch, was shared at a Lancashire County Council meeting last week.
It also revealed that one in six teens there are now regular vapers — almost triple the proportion in 2020.
Members of the Tory-led council slammed ‘unscrupulous businesses’ selling brightly coloured and fruity vapes to children for ‘pocket money prices’.
One labelled them as ‘modern-day alcopops’.
Children as young as eight are reportedly using vapes in some parts of England (stock image)
Shock data earlier this year revealed a record 11.6 per cent of 11 to 17-year-olds in Britain have now tried vaping. This is up on 7.7 per cent last year and twice as high as rates seen a decade ago, before the UK’s kid vaping epidemic blew up
One councillor even reported how children as young as eight had been seen using the vapes in Morecambe.
The Lancashire Trading Standards figures echo a national trend.
Usage rates among teens have almost doubled in a decade.
Experts blame the colourful marketing tactics for kickstarting Britain’s child vaping epidemic, which has prompted dire warnings that we are ‘sleepwalking into an existential crisis’.
Doctors fear there could be a wave of lung disease, dental issues and even cancer in the coming decades in people who took up the habit at a young age.
E-cigs produce many dangerous chemicals linked to fatal lung and heart conditions.
Conservative Cllr Sue Whittam, who brought the issue for debate at the meeting, said ‘unscrupulous businesses’ were targeting young people with vapes.
‘Children seem to be able to get hold of them and, more worryingly, manufacturers of the vapes are deliberately targeting young people,’ she said.
READ MORE: Single-use vapes should be BANNED, councils declare: Authorities warn the brightly-coloured gadgets are getting kids hooked on nicotine and are bad for the environment
‘Just ask Google and you can buy – online – brightly-coloured vapes in a variety of attractive flavours, such as strawberry ice cream, watermelon and gummy bears – in fact, every flavour you can think of and they are not expensive to buy.
‘It is a worrying trend that something that was designed to help smokers quit has now become something that our young people are using,’
Morecambe Central member Margaret Pattison added that she was aware of ‘scary’ instances in her town, where children as young as eight had been seen with the devices and she feared they would take up traditional smoking in the future.
‘The colours and flavours are attractive, which could lead to future smokers,’ she said.
Lancashire County Council cabinet member for health and wellbeing Michael Green said recent data from the trading standards survey had also found a fifth of young people tried vaping before also trying traditional smoking.
He added that disposable vapes, available at ‘pocket money prices’, were the most popular type of device amongst youngsters.
‘Disposable vapes have thus far been the most problematic – and these are the most common types of vape which are smoked by our young people, with seven in 10 in Lancashire preferring this type,’ he said.
Cllr Green said that so far this year trading standards had removed 11,000 illegal vapes from the market for not displaying adequate warning or containing too much e-liquid.
Tests on e-cigarettes confiscated from youngsters found they contained dangerous levels of lead, nickel and chromium. Some were almost 10 times above safe limits. Exposure to lead can impair brain development, while the other two metals can trigger blood clotting
He echoed evidence that while vaping is a better alternative for adult smokers looking to quit traditional smoking it as critical that more be done to stop young people from picking up the habit.
The debate comes after the Local Government Association, which represents councils in England and Wales, called for the Government to ban the sale and manufacture of single use vapes by 2024.
The brightly coloured devices are sold under brand names including Elf Bar and Lost Mary and feature fruity and bubblegum flavours appealing to children.
Colourful displays of the gadgets, sold for as little as £5, litter high streets across the UK. Some shops even sell the devices next to sweets.
Data released earlier this year showed 11.6 per cent of 11-to-17-year-olds in Britain have now tried vaping.
The figure is up on 7.7 per cent last year and twice as high as rates seen a decade ago.
Vaping-related hospitalisations among young people have also increased with 40 admissions for ‘vaping-related disorders’ among patients aged under-20 last year, up from 11 two years earlier.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to crackdown on the youth vaping crisis.
It also comes after MailOnline revealed that e-cigarettes have been linked to five deaths in Britain.
Latest figures show the proportion of adults using e-cigs in the UK increased last year to the highest rate on record, at 8.3 per cent, according to the charity Action on Smoking and Health. This accounts for the roughly 4.3million people across the country
NHS Digital data, based on the smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England survey for the year 2021, showed 30 per cent of children in Yorkshire and the Humber have used a vape
None of the fatalities, which have all occurred since 2010, are proven to have been caused directly by vaping. No ages were mentioned for any of the deaths.
But health chiefs tasked with policing the safety of e-cigs admit there is ‘a suspicion’ the gadgets may have been to blame.
Almost 1,000 serious adverse reactions to e-cigs have also been logged by Britain’s health watchdog, including blood, nervous system and respiratory disorders, as well as cancer and injuries such as burns.
These incidents are based on reports, meaning it does not necessarily prove the product in question was to blame for the health problem.
E-cigs allow people to inhale nicotine in a vapour — which is produced by heating a liquid, which typically contains propylene glycol, glycerine, flavourings, and other chemicals.
Unlike traditional cigarettes, they do not contain tobacco, nor do they produce tar or carbon — two of the most dangerous elements.
Health chiefs say e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of smoking and believe they can play a key role in weaning the remaining 5million smokers in Britain off tobacco and putting an end to the killer habit.
Although widely viewed as safer than smoking, the long-term effects of vaping still remain a mystery.
Doctors fear there could be a wave of lung disease, dental issues and even cancer in the coming decades in people who took up the habit at a young age.
A damning MailOnline expose in April laid bare the true scale of the problem and the marketing tactics of vape retailers trying to target children.
Tom Padley, now 19, from Putney, London, told MailOnline at the time that he had been using vapes since the age of just 13.
Tom, who picked up the habit in boarding school, said ‘it’s not like cigarettes, where you would have to find a place to go outside and do it — you can just do it non-stop indoors’.
But six years into vaping, he has begun to suffer health issues.
‘I get ill a lot more. I get ulcers occasionally in my mouth. I have a lot of coughs. I guarantee it’s massively increased due to vaping,’ he told MailOnline.
Everything you need to know about e-cigarettes
How much nicotine is in an e-cigarette?
There are many different brands of e-cigarettes, containing various different nicotine levels.
The legal amount of nicotine in an e-liquid capacity in the UK is 20mg/ml equating to between 600 and 800 puffs.
The Elf Bar 600, one of Britain’s most popular vapes, is advertised as coming in nicotine strengths of 0mg, 10mg and 20mg.
How many cigarettes are ‘in’ an e-cigarette?
The Elf Bar 600 contains the equivalent to 48 cigarettes, analysts say.
It delivers 600 puffs before it needs to be thrown away, meaning, in theory, every 12.5 puffs equate to one cigarette.
Experts say for many e-cigarettes, 100 puffs equate to ten normal cigarettes.
Elf Bars are a brand of e-cigarettes often sold in snazzy colours and with child-friendly names and flavours, like blue razz lemonade and green gummy bear
Is vaping better for your health than cigarettes?
Vaping products are considered to be better than cigarettes as users are exposed to fewer toxins and at lower levels, according to the NHS.
The health service adds that vaping instead of smoking cigarettes reduces your exposure to toxins that can cause cancer, lung disease and diseases of the heart and circulation, such as strokes and heart attacks.
Public Health England, which is now defunct, published an expert independent review in 2015 concluding that e-cigarettes are around 95 per cent less harmful than cigarettes.
However vaping is not risk-free, as while levels in tobacco-products are much higher, e-cigarettes still contain harmful toxins, according to a study by researchers from the Medical University of Silesia in Poland.
And Dr Onkar Mudhar, a London dentist who posts videos on TikTok, said Elf bars can cause gum inflammation, swelling and bleeding.
He said this is because nicotine dries out your mouth and reduces saliva, causing irritation from a build-up of bacteria and food that can’t get washed away.
Nearly 350 hospitalisations due to vaping were logged in England in 2022, which are thought to be mainly down to respiratory problems, such as shortness of breath, chest pain, lung inflammation and, in severe cases, respiratory failure.
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