Cheshire and Merseyside’s Directors of Public Health are working collaboratively to ensure that vaping in the subregion does not get out of control.
The Directors, who work together as the Champs Public Health Collaborative, released a joint statement in June, calling for a ban on the sale of disposable plastic vapes, for the sake of both the subregion’s young people as well as the environment.
The statement gained significant media attention and influenced other areas to produce similar statements.
Since then, the Local Government Association (LGA) has also published a position statement on behalf of all councils in England and Wales calling for a ban of the sale of single-use vapes.
As well as this, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, the subregion’s Integrated Care Board, endorsed the statement at its July Board meeting, stating in the minutes: “Board members are asked to approve the recommendation that the ICB publicly supports this statement.”
Councils in Cheshire and Merseyside have also been taking action, working collaboratively with trading standards, public health teams and the police to conduct raids on shops that are selling harmful or illegal vapes.
One example is in Liverpool, where 1,800 illegal vapes, valued at £22,000, were seized due to harmful levels of nicotine found in them. In Halton, a Widnes-based shop owner was prosecuted for selling vapes to children. The child in question was in fact a volunteer who was working with Halton Borough Council’s trading standards team and Cheshire Police as part of a test-buy operation.
While this local crack-down continues, Directors of Public Health are continuing to advocate for the ban of disposable vapes and greater regulation on vaping in general. Further updates on this work will be available in Collaborate, our stakeholder newsletter.