The Oxford City Council is holding discussions on whether it should support a ban on disposable vapes. A recent motion was proposed by Green Party councillors Lucy Pegg and Rosie Rawle at a council meeting on 2 October.
Disposable vapes are known to be one of the more popular forms of e-cigarettes with 1 in 9 people between 11-18 experimenting with e-cigarettes with 69% choosing disposable vapes according to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Oftentimes containing up to 2% nicotine they are known to cause both respiratory health problems and nicotine addiction to teenagers they market them to. Moreover, single-use vapes have a detrimental environmental impact with 5 million vapes being thrown away every week, an astonishing fourfold increase from last year.
This move to ban disposable vapes comes from increased calls from ministers in Westminster to ban single-use in the UK due to public health and environmental reasons. The Scottish Government has already agreed to carry out a consultation on banning disposable vapes.
In July, MPs pressured the government to introduce restrictions on the packaging and marketing of vapes that seemingly are targeted at children. Germany, New Zealand, Australia and France have all instituted bans or restrictions on both or either flavoured e-cigarettes and disposable vapes.
The Oxford City Council in a recent press release also called attention to the fact that vapes contain critical raw materials such as lithium and copper which are critical for green technologies. The Council stated that “the disposable vapes thrown away over the past year contain enough lithium to create 5,000 batteries for electric cars”.
Green Party councillor Rosie Rawle meanwhile stated in the press release: “Vaping can be an effective public health intervention to reduce tobacco smoking, however, this could be achieved without the excessive reliance on environmentally damaging disposable vapes.”
Between 2020 and 2022, there has been a seven-fold increase in disposable vapes as well as an astonishing 50% year-on-year increase in the proportion of children using vapes of all kinds.
