On 23 July, the Government announced a 20% business rates cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues, around 32,000 of them, worth roughly £100 million a year. Fair enough. Nobody at Riot begrudges the local pub a break.
It's how the Government chose to pay for it that stopped us cold. The announcement says relief will be trimmed for businesses that don't make a positive contribution to their communities, and the example it reaches for, in black and white, is "anti-social businesses, such as vape shops."
Six words. No definition, no evidence, no distinction between a responsible specialist retailer and a rogue seller flogging illegal stock to teenagers. Just a label from the Prime Minister's office that lumps them together and invites the country to do the same.
Let's be accurate about what this is: a review of reliefs, not an enacted tax. No rate has been set, no relief named, no definition of "anti-social business" written. Which is exactly why this matters now. Labels written today become policy definitions tomorrow. Before that happens, it's worth asking what the evidence actually says about the shops being singled out.
The strange arithmetic of "contribution"
Consider what this policy celebrates and what it condemns. Venues whose core business is selling alcohol, a product with well-documented health and social harms, are "the beating heart of our communities." Shops whose core business is helping adult smokers move away from the most lethal consumer product ever sold are the example of what a community doesn't need.
Smoking still accounts for an average of 61,439 deaths a year in England, on the Government's own figures. That's the problem specialist vape shops exist to work on. One customer, one conversation at a time.
What actually happens inside a specialist shop
If you've never crossed the threshold, here's what the caricature misses. A good specialist doesn't open with a sales pitch. It opens with questions: How many cigarettes a day? How soon after waking? What have you tried before? From there, staff match nicotine strength to dependence, find a device the customer can actually live with, and crucially, are still there next week when the coil leaks, the strength is wrong, or willpower wobbles. Quitting smoking is rarely a single transaction. It's a process, and specialist shops are one of the only places on the high street built around that process.
Don't take our word for it. The NHS's own quit-smoking guidance tells smokers they can get advice on models and e-liquids from a specialist vape shop, and that expert support gives the best chance of success. That's the health service pointing smokers at the very shops the Government just branded anti-social.
The evidence, not the vibes
The data here is stronger than most people realise:
- Vaping works as a quit aid. The Cochrane living review (the gold standard of medical evidence) finds that 8 to 11 in every 100 people using nicotine vapes quit smoking for at least six months, compared with around 6 in 100 using patches or gum.
- Smoking is at a record low. UK adult smoking fell from 20.2% in 2011 to 10.6% in 2024, the lowest since records began. Vaping didn't do all of that — but it's been part of the most successful period of tobacco control in our history.
- Specialist shops can deliver measurable public health outcomes. In Essex, the county council commissioned trained vape shop staff to deliver structured stop-smoking support with carbon monoxide verification. The scheme reported more than 900 verified four-week quits and a net saving of over £100,000. That's a Government-published case study of vape shops doing precisely the community work this announcement says they don't do.
Yes, there's a real problem. It's just not this one.
We won't pretend the label came from nowhere. Some retailers sell illegal products. Some sell to children — in one national Trading Standards programme, 24% of 775 test purchases ended in an illegal underage sale. Children should not vape, full stop, and any seller who thinks otherwise deserves everything enforcement can throw at them.
But here's the thing: nothing in that evidence tells you a shop's conduct from its signage. A responsible specialist with traceable stock, age-refusal logs and a clean compliance record shares a category label and now a Government insult with the worst offender on the street. That's not regulation. That's stereotyping.
And the tools to do better already exist. The Tobacco and Vapes Act gives ministers the power to build a retail licensing scheme: inspections, conditions, suspensions, revocations. License every seller. Trace every product. Shut down repeat offenders. Judge shops on ownership, stock, age checks and conduct, not on what the sign above the door says.
What we're asking
Punishing compliant specialists doesn't protect a single child. It just thins out the one part of the high street where a fifty-a-week smoker can walk in and get practical, repeated, judgement-free help to stop, while doing nothing to touch the illicit trade, which pays no rates at all.
So our ask of the Government is simple: define "contribution" by conduct, not category. Fast-track the licensing scheme. And drop the label.
There's a live consultation on vape packaging and retail display right now. It closes at 11:59pm on 2 October 2026. If you run a shop, work in one, or quit smoking because of one, respond in your own words. The people writing these policies should hear from the people who'll live with them.
Protect the child. Preserve the route out for the smoker. License conduct, not stereotypes.
