Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty has said vape advertising aimed at children is “completely unacceptable”.
Whitty spoke about the subject during a discussion on Radio 4’s Today programme, about the upcoming Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which would ensure anyone turning 15 from this year would be banned from ever buying cigarettes. It also aims to make vapes less appealing to children.
Asked by presenter Mishal Husain about vaping after expressing his view that the addictive nature of smoking takes people’s “choice away from them”, Whitty said the messaging he and his predecessors had put forward was that, while vaping was safer than cigarettes, that is a “low bar”.
He went on to express his support for measures like plain packaging.
“If you go into many vape shops you look at them and you think is this aimed at helping a middled aged smoker stop smoking, or is this aimed at children? And it’s clearly in many cases aimed at children.
“The marketing to children is completely unacceptable.”
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He argued that a way of making vapes available to smokers to help them quit is needed but it should be done in a way that is not attractive to children.
“In this bill, there are powers to restrict the colours, the flavours. The government has announced that it is going to ban disposable vapes. There will be plain packaging and positioning in shops,” he said.
Asked about the measures on junk food advertising which were proposed by previous food tsar Henry Dimbleby, Chris Whitty said he would like to see a “ban on advertising at times when children can watch TV, which is in force but the start date has been pushed back.”
“I hope that never gets pushed back again,” Whitty said, adding that he believes there is a lot of detail in Dimbleby’s report that needs to be looked at again.
“I think all of us would like to see advertising of the most harmful foods that cause obesity extremely quickly curbed in some ways,” he said, although he admitted that it was less of a clear cut issue than smoking.
“Smoking is a product which is designed to addict as early as possible and keep people addicted for life.”
