Meeting of the Parliament 14 September 2023
I join others in thanking Gillian Mackay for her leadership on the issue inside and outside of Parliament. She has worked with tireless campaigners such as Laura Young and the many health and environmental groups and organisations that back the call for a ban on disposable vapes.
Whenever change is proposed in this Parliament, particularly on increased regulation, we often get calls of “Catastrophe!” from whatever vested interest is resistant to the change. However, what is really striking about the call to restrict vapes is that there is not much of a debate at all; there is a lot of unanimity on the issue. I am the 10th speaker in the debate, and every speech so far has backed the call for a ban on disposable vapes. I am sure that that point will not be lost on the minister in closing the debate.
That unanimity is all the more remarkable because there has been a huge lobbying effort from the vaping industry over the past five years in this Parliament. Brian Whittle talked about his experiences of how that has played out, and I, too, went through several years of seeing constant requests in my inbox from public relations firms fronting up vaping companies that wanted to meet me.
It is probably because vape products are so uniquely problematic that we have that unanimity of concern. That is why 29 out of the 32 local authorities across Scotland have passed motions calling for vapes to be banned or controlled. If you wanted to sit down and design a cheap disposable product that litters the countryside with plastics, electronics and batteries, causes a fire risk, cannot be recycled or reused and puts young people at risk of bronchitis, breathing problems and nicotine addiction, it would be the perfect target for a ban, but that is exactly what disposable vapes are. As lawmakers, we are still catching up with the reality of that.
It is clear that communities are seeing the impact everywhere—for example, Fife Street Champions picked up 664 disposable vapes in one month this spring. A Keep Scotland Beautiful survey shows that 44 per cent of people see disposable vapes littering their communities far more often. I am sure that many of the coastal communities that will be involved in the Marine Conservation Society beach cleans in the next week will see increasing numbers of vapes on their beaches.
All that builds up to the staggering national picture that we have heard about in the debate. Zero Waste Scotland estimate that 2.7 million vapes were littered in Scotland last year alone. That is hardly surprising, given that there has been an 18-fold increase in the use of disposable vapes from one year to the next.
The health impacts on young people are truly concerning, precisely because we do not know what kind of ticking time bomb exists here—a point that was made very well by Rona Mackay. This is yet another example of why following the precautionary principle is so important. Corporate interests should not be allowed to mess around with the unknown long-term health of our children, just because there is a big short-term market opportunity.
I again thank Gillian Mackay for leading this debate, and I certainly look forward to the minister’s response on what the next steps in banning vapes in Scotland and across the rest of the UK will be.
13:30