The evidence
Britain inspects its sandwich shops more than three times as often as it checks whether shops are selling vapes to children.
Selling a vape to anyone under 18 has been illegal for years. The Government's answer to children vaping was a consultation on the colour of the packet. So in July we asked Trading Standards a simpler question: how often do you actually check?
11 yrs
A shop could go this long between checks: 1,549 test purchases over 3 years, 12 councils, 5,625 shops
113 yrs
To check every shop in Kent once: 23 test purchases over 3 years, 865 outlets
3 yrs
Legal minimum between inspections of even the lowest-risk food premises. For vape age checks: none
9
Councils holding 2,750 reports of underage or illegal vape selling who could not say how many led to action
Out of every 100 shops, how many get tested in a year?
9
shops tested in a year. The other 91 are not.
Base: 1,549 test purchases over 3 years against 5,625 retail outlets in 12 councils is 9.2% of outlets a year, shown here as 9 of 100. Test purchasing is often led by intelligence, so these are not 9 random shops. Source: Riot Labs FOI requests.
How long a shop waits to be checked
Years it would take to test every shop once, at each council's current pace.
3 years: the legal minimum for the lowest-risk food premises
View as a table
| Council | Years (years to test every shop once) |
|---|---|
| Newham | 3 yrs |
| Lancashire | 5 yrs |
| Sunderland | 7 yrs |
| Liverpool | 8 yrs |
| Croydon | 10 yrs |
| Sandwell | 12 yrs |
| Manchester | 17 yrs |
| Tower Hamlets | 18 yrs |
| Birmingham | 26 yrs |
| Durham | 32 yrs |
| Newcastle | 58 yrs |
| Kent | 113 yrs |
| All twelve combined | 11 yrs |
Base: underage test purchases in the 3 years to 2025/26, against Office for National Statistics retail outlet counts, for the 12 councils where both could be counted (1,549 test purchases, 5,625 outlets). Source: Riot Labs FOI requests, dataset frozen 7 September 2026.
Only the councils that gave us usable answers are listed. Not yours? That means it did not supply figures we could compare, not that it did badly.
Most people think vaping is as bad as smoking. It is not.
Share who believe vaping is as harmful or more harmful than smoking.
View as a table
| Group | Share (% of group) |
|---|---|
| All adults | 54% |
| Adults who smoke | 52% |
| Smokers who have never vaped | 61% |
Source: ASH, Use of vapes among adults in Great Britain, 2026 (Smokefree GB survey, 13,259 adults). The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities says vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking in the short and medium term. Vaping is not risk-free.
What the experts say
Every quote is word for word from the source linked. These bodies speak for themselves; they have not endorsed Riot or this campaign. Vaping is not risk-free, and is for adults who smoke.
What this means
The law that protects children already exists. Hardly anyone is checking it.
Plain packs do nothing about a shop that never gets visited. What they do is tell a smoker thinking of switching that the alternative is as bad as the cigarette.
Enforce first. Then talk about packaging.
Put this in front of your MP.
The Government is still writing its response. Your MP can ask the Minister who is checking the shops. It takes two minutes, in your own words.
Write to your MPEditors and researchers: the full dataset, the method and every caveat are on the FOI data page, with CSVs to download. Press enquiries: press@bemoreriot.com.