Nicotine pouches and nicotine-free vapes became illegal to sell to under-18s across the UK on Thursday 29 October, with shops facing £200 fixed penalties.
Selling nicotine vapes to children was already illegal. The Department of Health and Social Care said the age limit now also covers nicotine-free vapes and nicotine pouches, strips and pearls.
For the first time, an adult aged 18 or over commits an offence by buying, or trying to buy, a vaping or nicotine product for someone under 18.
Promotional giveaways and substantial promotional discounts are banned in shops and online, and so are vending machines that sell or dispense vapes or nicotine products.
The guidance for retailers says the free-distribution offence applies where the purpose or effect is to promote a product, including a vape charger carrying vaping branding. Selling at a nominal sum such as 10p would likely be an offence.
The fixed penalty for selling to an underage customer is £200 in England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland it is £250, subject to approval by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In England and Wales, retailers who commit relevant offences on at least three occasions within two years can be given a restricted sale order or a restricted premises order. These bar a person or premises from selling certain products for up to 12 months.
Customers who are asked to prove their age should expect to show ID. Regulations setting out the age-verification steps that give retailers a defence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be debated in Parliament, and the guidance will be updated afterwards.
In Scotland, both nicotine and non-nicotine vapes were already age-restricted, so the change there is the extension to nicotine products. Retailers selling them must now run an age verification policy, as vape sellers already had to.
Trading Standards leads retail enforcement in England. Enforcement agencies are receiving up to £30 million a year until 2028/29, including up to £10 million a year for Trading Standards and 120 specialist apprentices.
Local authority stop smoking services can keep providing products to adult smokers who want to quit.
The government estimates that more than a million children have tried vaping and that more than 370,000 vape regularly.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty said that addicting children to nicotine of any kind, or encouraging them to vape, is “completely unacceptable”. He said companies and individuals had used loopholes to hand out products free at festivals and events, which is no longer legal.
Whitty added that vaping is safer than smoking but that this is a low bar, and that children and non-smokers should never vape.
Public health minister Dame Diana Johnson said that, six months to the day since the Tobacco and Vapes Act became law, the government was “stopping businesses from cashing in on our children’s health”.
Scotland’s Public Health Minister Maree Todd said nicotine products, particularly pouches, are starting to gain popularity among young people. Wales’s Deputy Minister for Public and Preventative Health, Nerys Evans, and Northern Ireland’s Health Minister, Robbie Butler, also backed the changes.
Further measures are due in stages. An advertising and sponsorship ban is intended to be in force from 1 June 2027, and consultations on packaging, flavours and displays are being considered.
The next step comes on 1 January 2027, when it becomes illegal to sell tobacco products, herbal smoking products or cigarette papers to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.