UK Vape Laws: Explained

As of May 2016, the UK Government introduced a series of vape laws and legislations surrounding the sale and manufacture of tobacco and vape products within the UK.

These legislations had a heavy impact on the vaping industry, with changes on the maximum juice capacity of vape tanks allowed, the maximum nicotine content permitted within vape juice sold at retail and also bottles of vape juice that contain nicotine cannot be over 10ml in size.

In this article I will explain the Vape Laws and legislations surrounding vaping, and what impact they have on you as a consumer as well as us as a manufacturer as well as answer some most commonly asked questions.

What is TRPR?

The Tobacco and Regulated Products Regulations govern everything related to Tobacco and regulated products, such as vaping products. The MHRA made changes to these regulations in 2016 and introduced the new rulings to ensure that:

• Minimum safety and quality of all e-cigarettes and e liquids
• The information is provided and open to access by consumers for them to make informed decisions on whether to buy the product or not
• To create an environment to protect underage users from using these products

How are these vape laws implemented?

The requirements put in place to ensure the above legislations have been met are:

• Vape Tanks must not exceed a capacity for vape juice larger than 2ml
• A single bottle of vape juice that contains nicotine must not be larger than 10ml in size
• Vape juice nicotine content must not exceed 20mg in strength
• All vape related products must be tamper and child resistant
• Specific ingredients can no longer be included in vape juice
• Large health warnings about nicotine must be clearly displayed on vaping products
• The MHRA must be notified before the introduction or sale of any new e cigarettes or vape juice.

When these legislations got introduced back in 2016, it sent shockwaves throughout the vaping industry, with a lot of retailers and manufacturers having to seriously overhaul their business strategies to cater to these new requirements.

What ingredients are banned from being added to vape juice?

As mentioned, specific ingredients were banned from being included in vape juices. The most significant being Diacetyl, which is a sweetener that had a lot of bad press surrounding it due to the “Popcorn Lung” misinformation that was being widespread. Other additives like caffeine and taurine are also forbidden, which were less commonly seen in vape juice, but some companies used it believe it or not.

The other big thing which is now banned is colourings. Some companies used food colourings in their vape juice, like the classic blue colour seen in Blue Slush or Heisenberg flavours. This was outlawed as a strategy to stop making vape juice look appealing to underage users.

How are shortfills allowed to be sold?

One of the first and longest standing “loopholes” on vape laws that was introduced and touted in the vaping industry was the introduction of shortfill vape juice bottles.

These are bottles that are either 60/100/200ml in capacity, and are shortfilled with vape juice to a certain level, and people can then add nicotine shots to it to reach the desired nicotine strength that the consumer wants and voila! 120ml of 3mg vape juice is yours without any laws and legislations being broken.

What testing happens when it comes to vape juice?

At 2X Vape, we pride ourselves on how our vape juices are made. All our liquids are made within ISO9001:2015 lab that is HACCP Certified.

We never use anything that is not permitted by law in our vape juices. This means no oil bases and no additives such as colourings, or sweeteners like Diacetyl are used.

#With the TPD regulations that were introduced in 2016, all new vape juice flavours need to be submitted to the MHRA to ensure that there are no banned ingredients. As we have our own flavour house and produce out flavouring from scratch, we control everything that goes into our flavours.

We also test all our vape juices. The tests we perform are:

• Nicotine Testing
• Emissions Testing
• Refractive Index & Density

We also pride ourselves on being able to ensure all our flavours are free from any CMRs (carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic substances) and we can verify this through our industry-standard GC systems. Upon testing, it was proved that our e liquid produces 99.73% less toxicants than cigarettes do.

And on top of these superb facilities, we also have our own flavour house, where we mix our flavours from scratch, and we know exactly what goes into our vape juices.