OPINION: "Vaping is still relatively new but if major harms emerge we will look back on Britain putting e-cigarettes in plain packaging as the day we saw sense"07:13, 10 Jul 2026More than one million youngsters in Britain have tried vaping - attracted by sweet, fruity flavours that are clearly marketed at children.Recently, my six year old son and I walked past a group of young people puffing on e-cigarettes and he asked me what that smell was. He told me he liked it.We may eventually look back on the large, garish displays of e-cigarettes in off-licences up and down the country and wonder how we let that happen.E-cigarettes have only existed since the turn of the century and people have been using them in large numbers since 2021 when the boom in brightly coloured ones really took off.‌To put that in context, It took over 50 years of widespread cigarette smoking for the medical link to cancer to be definitively confirmed and accepted by the authorities.I have had major concerns about the long-term impact of vaping since I travelled to cover Europe’s biggest heart health conference in Madrid last year.Evidence was presented at the annual gathering of the European Society of Cardiology which had one leading expert warning that we could face a “vaping epidemic” among the young.‌The presentation by Prof Maja-Lisa Løchen, a top cardiologist from the University Hospital of North Norway, suggested e-cigarettes might increase the risk of a stroke by a third. She told us of emerging evidence that vaping increases your blood pressure, your heart rate, and makes the arteries more stiff.E-cigarettes contain 133 potentially harmful chemicals - of which 107 are known carcinogens. They include nitrosamines, carcinogenic carbonyls, harmful metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).The vaping industry points out that research can not yet prove definitively whether these chemicals are contained in e-cigarettes in high enough dosages to cause harm. We will only know that for certain in the decades to come - but by then the harm will have been done to millions around the world.‌Today’s announcement that the UK government plans to put vapes in plain packing to be sold under the counter suggests our lawmakers have learnt from the mistakes made in dealing with tobacco smoking in the 1950s.The best evidence we have still suggests vaping is much less harmful than tobacco smoking, but our leaders are adopting the precautionary principle.Smoking still kills around 70,000 people in England every year. While e-cigarettes are still promoted as a quitting aid for smokers by the NHS, huge concerns remain about young people taking up vaping who have never smoked.‌Since the Tobacco and Vapes Bill became law earlier this year, ministers have been looking at how to use the sweeping powers granted by it. Today we can finally see their grand plan to eradicate the scourge of nicotine addiction for generations to come.This plan is about protecting children from a lifetime of addiction and it cannot come soon enough.Choose Daily Mirror as a 'Preferred Source' on Google News for quick access to the news you value.‌