Kids as young as 10 in Herefordshire admit vaping amid calls for tougher rules
The county's director of public health has called for more to be done to stop children picking up the habit.
Children as young as 10 years old in Herefordshire have admitted vaping and the county's public health chief is joining calls for more to be done.
Director of public health Matt Pearce said he feels some disposable vapes are marketed for children with the colours and flavour names and more regulation is needed.
He said he's "really concerned" about the issue of kids vaping, with national figures showing the habit is on the rise.
The government says it is clamping down on youth vaping, with NHS leaders also sounding the alarm over a rise in the number of children admitted to hospital for vaping.
Forty children and young people were admitted to hospital in England last year due to "vaping-related disorders", up from 11 two years before, the NHS said.
These could include lung damage or a worsening of asthma symptoms. This is despite the sale of vapes to under-18s already being illegal.
Earlier this month paediatricians warned that "youth vaping is fast becoming an epidemic among children" as they called on the Government to ban disposable vapes.
Matt Pearce warned e-cigarettes are not a risk-free product and can be just as addictive as cigarettes, but they are a useful tool to help someone quit smoking.
But he doesn't want people who don't smoke picking up the habit, with research in Herefordshire showing a small percentage of year six pupils have experimented with e-cigarettes.
"As directors of public health, we encourage that greater, higher level of regulation, but it's really difficult because there are some of those flavours that are really appealing to young people," he said.
"But we have to just think about how we get those messages through to young people that actually vaping is not good for them to start."
He added: "Most of the research that's been carried out around vaping has found it is considerably better for you than smoking.
"Smoking itself contains lots of toxins. I think there's over 69 toxins that are related to cancer.
"So when you look at vaping compared to smoking, it's healthier for you. But a lot of the evidence is around the short-term to medium-term impacts of vaping, where actually the health risks are shown to be minimal.
"But the long term risks, we don't quite know yet.
"It's certainly not risk free and the the main message is we don't want people to start vaping, but if you're smoking then moving on to vape, it's certainly going to be more beneficial for your health."
He also highlighted the work of Trading Standards in Herefordshire, with more than 1,000 devices seized over the most-recent 12 month period.