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Belgium will on Wednesday become the first EU country to ban sales of disposable vapes, kick-starting efforts across the continent to reverse growing e-cigarette use among younger people.
England, France and Germany are planning tighter regulations, but experts warn such moves are likely to have only limited impact on the rapidly growing industry.
The looming controls highlight the difficulties policymakers face as they try to manage the health risks of vapes while supporting their positive impact in helping adults wean themselves off tobacco cigarettes. The moves reflect concern over how the pricing and marketing of disposable products have fuelled underage use and attracted young people who may never have smoked cigarettes.
Yet disposable vape curbs were unlikely to have much effect as consumers could easily shift to reusable products such as pod vapes and vape pens, said Caitlin Notley, professor of addiction sciences at the UK’s University of East Anglia.
“Policies like this [Belgian ban] are important for politicians because they make a clear statement,” Notley said. “But there’s probably going to be a limited impact.”
E-cigarette use has grown sharply over the past decade. The products are less harmful than tobacco cigarettes because they do not produce tar or carbon monoxide, but most still contain the addictive ingredient nicotine. Studies have suggested vape use can damage blood vessels and lung function.
Authorities are also worried about the social and environmental effects of disposable vapes. They are generally made of hard-to-recycle mixed materials, including a lithium-ion battery.
In the past few years, single-use vapes have rapidly attracted a new generation of users who have never previously smoked.
More than half of British vapers aged 11-17 said they used disposable products more frequently than reusables, according to a survey this year by campaign group Action on Smoking and Health. Current vaping rates among the underaged cohort, which includes using the products less than once a month, is 7.2 per cent, Ash added.
Young people drove a rise in the prevalence of vaping by adults in England who had never regularly smoked from 0.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent between 2021 and 2024, according to a study published this year.
“For those who would have taken up smoking, [vaping] is a good thing,” said Sarah Jackson, co-author of the paper and principal research fellow in the tobacco and alcohol research group of UK university UCL. “For people would not have otherwise taken up smoking, starting to vape regularly will expose them to more harm than if they had neither smoked nor vaped.”
Some vaping products use designs that appeal to younger people. Disposable brands such as ElfBar and Lost Mary, both made by China’s Shenzhen iMiracle Technology, deploy tropical fruit flavours and vibrantly coloured packaging.
Vaping industry representatives argue that authorities should respond with stronger enforcement rather than outright bans on disposables. This could include licensing of retailers, as well as steep fines without prosecution for selling illegally to under-aged buyers.
“Just banning the products really isn’t the answer,” said Dan Marchant, managing director of Vape Club, the UK’s largest online vape products retailer. “We need proactive enforcement of the current regulations.”
Banning single-use vapes would drive consumers towards illegal products, industry figures add. Illicit products account for as much as one-third of the vape items sold, the UK’s Chartered Trading Standards Institute has estimated, with infringements including inaccurate tank sizes, excessive nicotine concentration and harmful materials.
All vaping products sold in European countries should be pretested or preregistered to ensure regulatory compliance, said Asli Ertonguc, western Europe area director for British American Tobacco.
“The [disposables] prohibition will create illegal markets, which is our biggest concern,” Ertonguc said. “[It will also encourage] users who are accustomed to these products to go back to smoking.”
Other observers, including the World Health Organization, argue for tougher rules to restrict vaping products’ attractiveness. The UK parliament is considering restrictions on packaging, marketing, display and minimum pricing of vapes, said Nicholas Hopkinson, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London.
The disposables ban would not reduce usage if companies continued to market other “cheap, colourful and appealing devices that are notionally reusable but in practice treated as disposable”, Hopkinson said.
The disposables bans will be closely watched to gauge consumer behaviour.
Jasmine Khouja, a senior research associate in the tobacco and alcohol research group at the UK’s Bristol university, pointed to a range of potential outcomes in a survey of young UK adults on the upcoming ban, from switching to reusable or other nicotine products to quitting vapes altogether.
“Some even said they would switch to smoking because they thought it might help them quit nicotine, as it’s not as nice as vaping,” she added.
