The Minister for Justice has today published a Bill to regulate the sale and supply of vaping products to children. This Bill does this by amending the Children and Young Persons (Alcohol, Tobacco and Gaming) Act 2006.

A statement continued: “Vaping products under the Bill includes e-cigarettes, e-cigars and e-shisha whether they include nicotine or not. Also included are items intended to form part of such a device such as cartridges, refill containers and substances intended to be vaporised.

“The Bill will make it an offence for a person to sell a vaping product to a person aged under 18. The Bill also makes it an offence for a person aged 18 or over to buy a vaping product for a person aged under 18, in the same way as it is an offence for a person aged 18 or over to buy tobacco for a person under 18. Furthermore, the provisions on notices to be displayed by retailers selling tobacco are amended to extend to retailers selling vaping products. Where a child is found using or intending to use a vaping product in a public place a police officer may confiscate it from them.

“This is not a situation where a child is criminalised for vaping but rather intended to stop the supply of these products to children and also allow for them to be removed lawfully from children in public places.

“Anyone concerned about vaping should contact the GHA Smoking Cessation Clinic on 200 52441 for advice.”

The Minister with responsibility for Justice, Samantha Sacramento, said: “The increasing use of e-cigarettes and other vaping products by young people is a public health issue in Gibraltar. Part of this concern is that there is some evidence that the use of these products by adolescents increases their chance of starting to smoke cigarettes later in life with the risks to health that this brings. As such, following consultation with the GHA, this Bill will regulate the supply of these products to children and grant the police powers to confiscate them from children in public so as to protect children from these products in the same way as they are protected from tobacco and alcohol products.”