Rishi Sunak has refused to ban football shirts that feature vape company logos, speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday.
The PM said advertising decisions were up to individual teams, despite a voluntary ban on gambling sponsors appearing on the shirts of Premier League Teams.
Speaking at PMQs yesterday (May 1), the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald asked the prime minister whether he agreed that “permitting football strips to be sponsored by vaping companies sends entirely the wrong message to young people?”.
While the Prime Minister said he agreed about the need to tackle teenage vaping he said that “decisions about kit sponsorship will rest with individual teams”.
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This latest development follows on from the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which recently passed its second reading.
The bill will ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2009 for their lifetime, and looks to make vaping less attractive to young people by cracking down on marketing with measures like plain packaging.
Speaking about vape marketing, former chief medical officer Chris Whitty said: “If you go into many vape shops you look at them and you think is this aimed at helping a middle aged smoker stop smoking, or are they aimed at children? And in many cases it’s clearly aimed at children.”
“The marketing to children is completely unacceptable,” he added.
A vape ad which promoted unlicensed e-cigarettes was banned this week after featuring in a Scottish newspaper, after claiming that negative headlines were eroding the benefits of vaping.
Featured Image credit: Blackburn Rovers
