What’s the point of banning Elf bars?

Part of me wishes that disposable vapes had never been invented. Until they arrived, it seemed like the battle for tobacco harm reduction in Britain had been won. The kind of people who want to ban everything wanted to ban e-cigarettes, but most people could see that they were a relatively harmless substitute for cigarettes and were helping to drive down smoking rates.

Then along came the Elf bars and Geek bars and the mood began to sour. Whether it was because of the price or the colours or because it was simply a fad, they became somewhat popular with teenagers, just as Juul had become popular with high school students in the USA a few years earlier.

It was easy to exaggerate the scale of underage vaping. By last year, 80 per cent of 11 to 17 year olds had never tried an e-cigarette and only four per cent were regular users.