Disposable vapes are a headrush. Of course they should be banned!

The first time I tried a cigarette, I was disgusted. The first time I tried an e-cigarette, I was underwhelmed – like sucking on a chemical-tasting USB stick. But the first time I tried a disposable vape, I was blown away.

It was as though I’d just inhaled an entire Tango Ice Blast. The headrush was instantaneous, my body felt beautifully buzzed – and I was just 16 years old.

Unlike many of my classmates, I never bought my own vapes, mainly due to fears of parental disownment if I ever got caught with one. I also stayed away from the school’s permanently foggy disabled toilets, commonly known as the ‘vape room’.

But as soon as I got to university, disposable vapes became as much a fixture of a night out as picking up a bottle of wine. My local corner shop had such a dazzling array, a brightly coloured Pic-n-Mix of pocket-sized devices with names such as Blue Raspberry and Peach Ice, which cost around a fiver each, delivered a satisfying nicotine hit, and could be thrown away when they run out of puff.

The branding makes them sound more like lollies than highly addictive plastic teats. To my generation, buying these small, disposable devices is far less shameful than asking the shopkeeper to reach into the “cancer cupboard” for a packet of cigarettes that is triple the price and comes with a complimentary picture of rotten teeth.

No wonder that an estimated five million single-use vapes are thrown away in the UK every week – which is a four-fold increase on last year’s sales.

Disposable vapes have doubtless encouraged millions of adult smokers to switch. But, as a teenage vaper, I know how easily they can fall into the hands of the underaged, and how habit-forming they can be.

With disposables, you don’t even has the “hassle” of recharging an expensive device or fiddling about with refills. Just take off the packet and start ripping clouds that taste as sweet as Chupa-Chups.

Before I knew it, disposable vapes had stopped being a treat on a night out, and became a crutch during moments of stress at university, something to reach for instead of sweets. By the time Covid locked down the country, at the end of my first term at university, they were part of my student life.

Whereas cigarettes require stepping outside into the cold and rain, I could reach for an Elf Bar as soon as I woke up, while still wrapped up in the comfort of my duvet. I would reflexively reach for my vape throughout the day as an alternative to checking Instagram. I would mow through Lost Marys like packets of gum.

Bored in an online seminar? I’d turn off my camera and rip a cloud that disappeared before my tutor could ask where I’d gone.

Faced with a fifth evening in a row of student-budget beans on toast, I vaped to suppress my hunger. To break the ice at a house party, I would share and compare vape flavours in the kitchen.

But before long, I went from a being full-time vaper to a social smoker. The irony is not lost on me that I took up smoking to quit vaping.

According to a stark report by The Tab, more than a quarter of London’s university students are addicted to Elf Bars, the joint-strongest disposable vape available in the UK. Each ‘bar’ contains the nicotine equivalent of 48 cigarettes.

Yesterday, the French parliament unanimously voted to ban single-use e-cigarettes – for which I applaud them. The Australian government decided years ago that the health “benefits” of vaping, compared to smoking, were far from conclusive. Since 2021, it has been illegal to purchase or import e-cigarettes or nicotine vapes without a doctor’s prescription.

Finally, we’re coming round to that way of thinking over here. Yesterday, the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting suggested that a Labour government could making vapes available on prescription only. I find it hard to disagree with his suggestion that vapes can be a “gateway” for children to become smokers. Why else has the tobacco industry sunk billions into developing them?

Of course, with the prohibition of any product comes the risk of creating forbidden fruit – with the fruits in this instance being blueberry sour raspberry. I’m sure that for some this will add an additional incentive to seek them out, much like the current illicit market for the already banned 50mg vapes.

But whereas blowing clouds with my teenage friends was once oddly satisfying, now they only block the sun. And, to paraphrase further the Joni Mitchell song, so many things I would have done, had I never discovered disposable vapes. But fruit-flavoured clouds got in my way.