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It's tricky to manage for pureplay vape stores and other shops that stock vapes. Under-18s can easily, and frequently do, look older. Yet the fines for selling to minors can be up to £2,500, something anyone would want to avoid.
It is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to purchase vapes in the UK. Of course, that doesn’t mean that many under-18s try to do so, and some of those do so successfully.
How big is the problem of underage vape sales in the UK, and how can store owners and managers address the issue?
Underage vaping in the UK – the numbers
According to a recent study, around 18% of children (11–17-year-olds) in the UK have tried vaping. This amounts to slightly less than one million children, a hugely significant figure.
However, this number seems to have levelled out after six or seven years of increasing rates, with the 2024 level very similar to 2023. Furthermore, the volume of children currently vaping is 7.2%, and again, it has stayed broadly the same since 2022.
But there remain hundreds of thousands of underage children that vape. Another recent study by Vape Club, the UK’s largest online vape retailer, gathered data from 138 local authorities to look at the extent of the problem.
In 2023, an underage vape sale took place every two hours, an increase of nearly one-third from the previous year. Yet 83% of those reported sales resulted in no store being identified, and England had the lowest success rate across the UK for converting reports of underage vape sales to the sellers being caught.
A renewed industry focus
Despite the low figure of stores prosecuted currently, that is unlikely to remain the case for much. There is a growing feeling that more needs to be done to combat underage vape sales and ensure, where possible, that children are unable to purchase age-inappropriate products.
As an industry, there needs to be a concerted effort to a) deter less responsible vape stores from selling vapes and b) for the consequences of doing so to be much greater. The Vape Club report revealed that the average fine for underage vape sales was just £400, more than six times lower than the maximum amount permitted.
Some vape stores might feel that selling vapes to children is worth the risk if the fines are so small. So, there's an urgent need for a renewed industry focus to lobby for more vigorous enforcement to address the issue more directly.
But what of the responsible vape stores? What are the options available to them when it comes to protecting themselves against making an underage sale?
How to address underage vape sales
The traditional way for a store to assess a customer's age is to request an ID. However, there are two principal problems with this approach. Firstly, physical ID can be easily faked, and store workers are unlikely to be fully trained on how best to identify a forgery. Secondly, asking for ID can cause conflict. Working in a store can be tiring and demanding, and the last thing any employee needs is a confrontation with a customer.
This essentially leaves two methods. Facial recognition technologies identify specific individuals from their facial features as part of an identity validation process. They can be effective, but there are privacy concerns. These solutions capture, manage and distribute a customer’s personally identifiable information (PII), and stores, therefore, need to be extra vigilant around user data privacy legislation. It is little use avoiding a fine for underage vape sales if a shop is then hit with a hefty GDPR fine.
The other method is age estimation, which never identifies an individual, and during the process, features on someone's face are validated for signs of age. It also differs from facial recognition in that it does not require the retention of a facial image and compare it to others on a database. It is fully anonymous and much less risky in terms of GDPR.
Privately’s AgeAI
Our AgeAI app is an age estimation solution. Its suitability for vape stores is demonstrated by the recent partnership with action group Our Vape Advocacy (OVA), in which AgeAI will be deployed in hundreds of OVA members’ stores all over the UK.
It is 100% anonymous and GDPR (UK) certified. It is super-fast at the checkout, incredibly easy to set up, and greatly reduces the potential for conflict between staff and customers.
For any UK vape store that's serious about its responsibility not to sell to children, AgeAI is the ideal solution.
Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how it could help you.
