Hundreds of 'highly addictive and unsafe' vapes seized by officials from shop in Milton Keynes town

Milton Keynes City Council has seized 400 incorrectly labelled disposable vapes from a shop in Bletchley after they were deemed to be unsafe.

The estimated retail value of the products seized by the Council’s Trading Standards team is more than £4,000.

Legally, disposable vapes can only have a capacity of 2ml or 600 puffs. The goods seized held 12ml - equivalent to 2,400 puffs.

Some of the vapes did not have the legally required labelling such as ‘this product contains nicotine which is a highly addictive substance’.

Other products did not have any instructions for use, which could lead to misuse of the product, putting users at risk.

Disposable vapes have become increasingly popular and are often brightly coloured with flavours such as ‘cotton candy’ or ‘pink lemonade’.

As part of its work on age restricted products, the City Council’s Trading Standards team has also carried out visits to vape retailers to remind them that the legal age limit for these products is 18.

During these visits retailers were warned that an undercover operation will be carried out to test how robust their systems are in preventing the sale of vapes to children and young people.

The council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for Trading Standards, Cllr Paul Trendall, said: “Disposable vapes can be highly addictive and dangerous if they don’t meet the necessary regulations. Some are advertised to be attractive and unharmful, but the products we’ve seized should not be being sold at all.”

He added: "I’d like to thank council colleagues for their work on this and we’ll continue to make progress in this area.”

Research has shown that e-cigarette use by young people is increasing nationally.

A recent study by University College London found that, in January 2022, 15% of 18-year-old survey respondents in the UK used e-cigarettes.

This was up from 11% in January 2021 and compares to 8% among all adults.

It is believe that many of the young people using nicotine vapes are not even smokers – but they are still getting addicted to nicotine,