The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a series of vape brands advertising unlicensed e-cigarette adverts on TikTok through social campaigns and influencer activity.
Four companies, Disposable Vape Store, Vapes-Bars Ltd, Innofly HK Ltd and ZOVOO (Shenzhen) Technology Co Ltd, were ordered to remove their promotional adverts from TikTok – a social media platform that has a minimum age restriction of 13 years and no age verification for new users.
The offending campaigns included promotional activity from Tiktok influencers, such as one user named ‘@vanilla split’, who appeared to glamorise e-cigarettes by calling them ‘dainty and small’.
“Give it a try, it’ll be great. It’s dainty and small, it’ll fit in your pocket, so many different flavours, you shouldn’t knock it,” rapped the influencer in a promotional post for Innofly.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t vape but I’ll give it a shot. I’ll disappear in big clouds acting all hot.”
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Some posts featured unregulated consumer competitions – such as influencers offering free e-cigarette as prizes to passers-by who correctly answered their trivia questions – while others featured promotional discounts and glamorised calls to action.
One account featured influencer Nathan Byrne with text that stated, “Diamond, the new way to vape”, bragging that the “flavoured bombshell with up to 600 consistent puffs”.
Another influencer promoted that the e-cigarettes came in “So many different flavours”, “so smooth on the throat”, and “use my discount code: Vape Bars 4 for 15% off” before adding in capitalised text “GO GET ONE NOW”.
Responses from the different e-cigarette brands varied. The Disposable Vape Store defended itself by saying they had seen other e-cigarette shops advertising on TikTok and so “thought it was acceptable”.
Innofly however – which, along with ZOVOO, is owned by a Chinese firm, where the selling of fruity vapes is banned but international export is allowed – denied having a direct or active relationship with the influencer, despite evidence suggesting otherwise.
The ASA’s rulings come only 24 hours after the government announced its intention to ban single-use e-cigarette, in response to a series of calls by campaigners to make the disposable devices illegal on both health and environmental grounds.
It follows other attempts at a crackdown on the ‘epidemic of child vapers’ by ministers, such as Labour calling for the ban of e-cigarettes marketed towards children.
In addition, earlier this year prime minister Rishi Sunak introduced a new £3m ‘illicit vape enforcement’ squad in a crackdown on legal loopholes that allowed brands to give free e-cigarette to children as part of their marketing strategy.
