Anti-tobacco campaigners Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) have already criticised Burnham’s vape shop crackdown announced overnight. Chief Executive Hazel Cheeseman dismissed the plans as “a knee-jerk announcement”, saying “it’s hard to see how it will make a meaningful difference on vape shops”. Even Burnham deserves more credit than that…
Despite acknowledging vape shops “play an important role in helping adults to quit smoking”, ASH argues that “the vaping market needs much tougher regulation”, particularly to remove “the promotion of vapes from sight”. Seems to defeat the point…
Putting vapes in standardised packaging and removing them from retail displays does not help smokers trying to quit. Hilariously, ASH’s own 2026 Smokefree GB YouGov survey found that 54% of Brits wrongly believe vaping is as harmful as smoking…
Meanwhile, the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland says there are fewer than 250 full-time equivalent Trading Standards officers in that part of the UK, 60% of whom are over 50, while headcount fell by 30%. Retail licensing schemes – that could give enforcement bodies more tools – won’t even go to consultation until early 2027. What a mess…
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”