The child vaping crisis: ‘From what my daughter says, 90% of her year do it’

Last week, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said disposable vapes should be banned because of their popularity among children - with many parents now feeling they are fighting a losing battle

The first time Hannah got an email from her son's school to say he had been caught vaping, and that she was to collect his confiscated vape, he had just turned 14. Hannah thinks Josh, now 16, started vaping mainly because his friends did it. One friend had been excluded from his previous school for vaping THC, the main psychoactive component in cannabis.

I used to find vapes in his bedroom, in his bed - he's rubbish at hiding things," she says. I had a drawer full of his old vapes because I just used to take them." She gave up after a while. Hannah and her husband would sometimes find the back door open at 2am because he had gone out to vape and forgotten to close it.