TPD laws have been in full effect for over a year now. Are you up to date on the repercussions on the vape industry?
The TPD laws were introduced in May 2016 as a way to curb the nations addiction to tobacco products. In raising prices and culling advertising and branding freedoms, Theresa May’s government were trying to put a stop to the debilitating effects of tobacco addiction, a noble cause to quell the strain on our health system, but this has had a definite knock on effect on vaping.
Vaping has proved itself to be one of the most successful smoking cessation tools, and due to its use of nicotine in its products, it has been lumped in with the tobacco products affected by the TPD laws. If you’re still unsure on how the TPD laws have affected the vaping industry, you can learn about the effects it has had below.
What are the TPD laws?
The TPD laws were introduced as a way to quell the international addiction to smoking. Through restriction on packaging, a price bump and a range of other restrictions on size and where you are allowed to smoke, the plan is to deter people from starting to smoke as well as push existing smokers to quit.
How has the TPD laws affected vape juices?
E liquids suffered from several repercussions due to the TPD laws. One effect was that they were only allowed to be sold in bottles of 10 milliliters. THis means that there was extra packaging and that you have to spend a little more money on e liquid bottles. One way that this was counteracted was through the selling of multi packs which give you better value per bottle of e liquid, which saves vapers money and ensures that you don’t end up spending too much on single bottles.
Another way that this affected vapers was that suddenly e liquid had a limit to how high the nicotine content could be. E liquids can now only reach a maximum of 20 mg per 10 ml bottle, about 2 percent nicotine. The lowest is 3 mg, and this means that an estimated 200,000 vapers who preferred higher nicotine levels have lost out. The upside to this is that it has forced vape devices to become a lot more efficient in how it extracts nicotine. Take the new nicsalt e juices for instances, which use a different process to freebasing to satisfy customers. On top of this, you can now buy short fill bottles of vape juice. This is nicotine free vape juice which has about 20 percent of the bottle unfilled so that you can add your own nicotine shots to it, exceeding the amount of nicotine allowed in prefills.
How have TPD laws affected vape tanks?
Vape tanks must now not exceed a maximum of 2 ml per tank. This means that those who were fans of cloud chasing and high VG vape liquids will have to refill a lot more. With more refills comes the potential for more spillages and potential flooding of vape devices when siphoning off vape juice. Those who like to chain vape have been getting through a lot more vape liquid in the past year.
TPD laws and packaging
All of this reduction of bottle size means that a lot of vape products have been subject to a lot more plastic usage. This can only have a bad effect on the environment, and whilst glass vape bottles do exist, they are a little more delicate and not suitable for travelling, unless you want vape juice in all of your luggage.
Some vape juice companies are promoting the use of recycled plastic bottles to combat this. rPET bottles, a type of plastic which is blended to be durable, chemically resistant and 100 percent recyclable, have been introduced into the market to make up for the laws on smaller bottles.
Where can I vape?
Luckily, the TPD laws have not affected the already stringent smoking laws. The only problem is that these laws apply to vaping as well. You can’t vape inside or in public interiors. At least there are a few public areas where it is up to the discretion of the manager or owner to allow vaping inside. These include pubs and office spaces.
Emissions testing and TPD laws
When the TPD laws came into effect in May 2016, many products had to be taken off the market to undergo 6 month long emission tests. 6 months was how long it took for e juices and devices to undergo testing. Many vape juices had to be taken off the market quite abruptly, and so flash e liquid sales took place, which is never a bad thing. What’s more, this also made sure that vape juices were free from harmful chemicals, taking control of the market to make sure that no foul play and customer misleading was going on.