Illegal vapes with as much nicotine as 100 cigarettes sold to girl, 13, in Manchester, investigation reveals

A 13-year-old girl was able to purchase handfuls of illegal vapes containing as much nicotine as 100 cigarettes in the space of just one day.

It is illegal to sell vapes with nicotine to anybody under the age of 18. But when 13-year-old Rose tried to make the purchases from a host of shops in Manchester city centre, almost half sold her vapes containing the highly addictive drug.

Up to one in four vaping shops are selling super-sized vapes with illegal amounts of nicotine to kids, a Mirror investigation has found.

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The undercover shopper was sent to 16 retailers in Manchester and four of them sold her vapes with 3,500 or more puffs - which contain up to five times the legal amount of nicotine - for as little as £10.

Three more shops sold her regular legal disposable vapes, with some retailers offering her discounts and only one of the seven that sold her vapes even asking if she was over 18.

Within a few hours, nearly half of the shops tested had sold the teenager a clutch of vapes containing as much of the highly addictive drug nicotine as is found in 100 cigarettes.

And there are strict rules in the UK on how much nicotine disposable vapes can contain - no more than 2ml of liquid with no more than 2% nicotine.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of campaign group Action on Smoking and Health, told the Mirror, “it’s the wild west out there”.

There is evidence of a worrying rise in underage vaping, with rates doubling last year according to ASH, who found that 7% of 11- to 17-year-olds surveyed were “current users” in 2022, up from 3.3% the year before.

There is also concern about the rise of illegal sized black market vapes, with the Chartered Trading