Retailer briefing

Riot's response to the DHSC consultation, for specialist vape retailers.

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The Government is consulting on the future of how vapes look and how they are sold: plain packaging, plain devices, stripped-back flavour names and vapes hidden from display in every shop in the country. The consultation closes at 11:59pm on Friday 2 October 2026, and the rules that follow will be written whether or not our industry speaks.

This briefing explains the three arguments Riot is putting to the Government, the evidence behind each one, and what you and your customers can do about it in around ten minutes.

Where you stand in this

Let's be clear about the story this campaign tells, because it is yours. When Riot talks to the Government, MPs or the press, you are the hero of it: the specialist who checks ID at the door, trains their staff, keeps their paperwork straight and helps smokers quit for good. We are not defending vapes in the abstract. We are proving what a responsible specialist retailer looks like, and you are the proof.

And there is a line to be drawn. Everyone has walked past the other kind of shop: the pop-up stacked with illicit stock, where nobody asks for ID and the till, in the worst cases, exists to launder money. When the Government says "anti-social businesses, such as vape shops", it lumps you in with them. The whole point of our response is to make Government separate the two, formally and permanently: judge shops on conduct, licence it, and let the rogue operators, not the specialists, carry the consequences.

The executive summary

We support the goal. Nobody in this industry wants a single under-18 using a vape, and we openly back the measures that genuinely protect children: no cartoons, no sweet-shop names, no devices dressed up as toys. We say so in our submission, in plain terms.

But the proposals as drafted treat vapes like cigarettes, and vapes are not cigarettes. The Government's own consultation accepts that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking, and more than half of recent ex-smokers, 2.7 million people, used a vape in their last quit attempt. Rules that dress the cure like the disease will convince smokers there is no point switching, and push some vapers back to cigarettes.

Our response makes three arguments:

1. 1. Enforcement first. Youth vaping is a failure to enforce existing law, not a failure of the products. Fund Trading Standards and the problem shrinks. Add restrictions without enforcement and the trade moves to the black market, as Australia is proving right now.
2. 2. No blanket display ban. Nobody walks into a specialist vape shop by accident, and no under-18 can get in. We are proposing a licensed specialist vape retailer class with the right to controlled display: registered, inspectable and revocable. ASH has already called for exactly this kind of exemption.
3. 3. Don't dress the cure like the disease. No plain packs, no colour bans, and adult flavours stay. Child appeal should be blocked product by product at MHRA sign-off, not by making every vape look like the thing it replaces.

The full detail

Argument one: enforcement first

It is already illegal to sell a vape to anyone under 18. The problem is not the law, it is that the law is barely enforced. Trading Standards teams are underfunded and understaffed, and reports of underage and illegal sales routinely go un-actioned. Every new restriction layered on top of that failure punishes the compliant shops that check ID every day, while the rogue sellers who created the problem carry on regardless.

There is also a warning from abroad. Australia pushed vapes behind the strictest barriers in the world, and roughly 80% of its vape market is now illegal, supplied by criminals, untaxed and completely unregulated. Restriction without enforcement does not reduce harm.

What we are asking for: fund and direct enforcement of the laws that already exist, before adding new restrictions on compliant businesses.

Argument two: no blanket display ban

The consultation proposes taking vapes off open display everywhere, with no exemption for specialist vape shops.

We think that misunderstands how exposure actually happens. A convenience store runs on impulse: people walk in for milk and see vapes at the counter, and that visibility is exactly how a curious teenager gets drawn in. A specialist vape shop is the opposite. Nobody enters by accident. The premises are age-restricted, so a child cannot be in the room to see a display in the first place.

So we are proposing something concrete: a licensed specialist vape retailer class, created through the premises licence regime already written into the Tobacco and Vapes Act, carrying the right to controlled in-store display. Not a vague over-18s sign that any shop could put up, but a registered, inspectable, revocable licence with conditions we volunteer ourselves: displays not visible from outside, Challenge 25 at the door, age-restricted premises, and licence revocation for any breach. Any store selling anything other than vape would fall outside of this proposal and should display their products behind shutters.

This is not a novel idea. Specialist tobacconists have kept a display exemption for more than a decade, enforced by Trading Standards without drama. And the leading anti-smoking charity has been here before us: ASH called on the Government to "prohibit instore promotion of e-cigarettes with exemptions for age restricted specialist vape shops". Their Chief Executive, Hazel Cheeseman, said of this consultation that the task is "to thread the needle of making vaping less appealing to children without making it less effective for adults who want to quit". A licensed specialist class is how you thread that needle.

What we are asking for: controlled display rights for licensed, age-verified specialist premises, with guardrails written into the licence.

Argument three: don't dress the cure like the disease

Plain packaging exists to make cigarettes repellent, because there is no safe way to smoke. Applying the same treatment to vapes sends every smoker in the country one message: this thing is just as bad. That message is false, and the Government's own evidence says so. Its own impact assessment acknowledges the risk that tobacco-style packaging could make people believe vaping is as harmful as smoking and put smokers off switching.

The same logic covers devices and flavours. Restricting every vape to white, black or grey does nothing to a teenager but strips adult products of their identity. On names, the line we draw is child appeal, not description: a name may describe the product, it may not perform for children. Sweet-shop branding and names that market to children should go, and we say so without reservation. But the categories in the consultation are drawn wide enough to catch cola, lemonade, iced tea, custard and apple pie, which describe what an adult product tastes like and recruit nobody. Ban the names aimed at children, and keep honest description for adults. ASH puts the scale of what is at stake plainly: 2.5 million people have quit smoking with a vape in the last five years, while also highlighting that 54% of adults already wrongly believe vaping is as harmful as, or more harmful than, smoking.

There is a better mechanism, and it already exists. Every vaping product on the UK market goes through a mandatory MHRA notification before sale. Extend that sign-off to cover packaging and device design against a child-appeal standard, and the regulator can block anything aimed at children while responsible adult branding survives. Target the mimicry and the marketing, not the category.

What we are asking for: no plain packs and no colour bans. Block child appeal product by product at MHRA sign-off, keep vapes looking clearly different from cigarettes, and keep adult flavours on the shelf.

What you can do

Ten minutes, three actions: email your MP, answer the consultation and sign the Relapse Register. The portal guides you question by question and everything is in your own words. Every Relapse Register signature shows the Government how many vapers are at risk of going back to cigarettes.

One thing worth knowing, because it changes whether your ten minutes counts: identical copy-paste responses get treated by Government analysts as a single submission. An answer in your own words has to be counted on its own. That is why there are no scripts anywhere on this site.

Then get your customers on it

This is the bit that decides the outcome. Put the poster up, keep the QR code by the till, and mention it to the switchers who trust your advice. Your customers are exactly the people these rules affect, and they trust you more than they will ever trust a manufacturer.

One shop pushing this properly is worth more than anything we can buy. Print the counter poster, which carries the QR code straight to this site.

Our promise on your data

Anything you or your customers submit through the portal is used for this campaign only. No marketing, no remarketing, never shared, and deleted within 30 days of the campaign ending. They stay your customers. We keep nothing. Read the full privacy notice.

Questions

Get the Riot team on sales@bemoreriot.com. If you want more posters or counter cards, ask and we will get them out to you.