ASH have become shameless grifters

When the government first proposed a ban on disposable vapes, ASH said it would disadvantage mental health patients, elderly smokers and those who have dexterity issues. They said that “the risk of unintended consequences is too great for us to support a ban”.

But once it was clear that the government was serious about the ban, this supposedly “independent” charity dropped its objections and, when it came into force last year, ASH called it “a step in the right direction”.

For several years, ASH have been calling on regulation to stop “cartoon characters, garish colours and sweet names” being used on vape packaging. I think this is a policy that most adult vapers could live with. ASH never called for plain packaging for vapes which is hardly surprising since they once insisted that the idea that “once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false.” It was only in September 2025, after the then-health secretary Wes Streeting announced his desire to put vapes in plain packaging, that ASH came out in favour of this policy. I can find no record of them ever supporting a full display ban for vapes and, as the image above shows, they still don’t. They say, quite rightly, that treating cigarettes and vapes as if they were equally dangerous “risks undermining the role of vapes for smoking cessation”. You’d think that smoking cessation would be a priority for an anti-smoking group, but they are urging their supporters to support a full ban anyway because that’s what the government wants to hear.

These people are amoral grifters. They have achieved everything an anti-smoking group could dream of and now exist purely to ensure their own preservation. They were always going to throw vapers under the bus, but their attack on a real health charity (the NNA) is a new low. ASH are cynical, unprincipled agents of the state that who say anything to keep the grant cheques rolling in. 

 

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