On April 17, it was reported that a 13-year-old girl was holding a day's supply of store-bought e-cigarettes - which contain as much nicotine as 100 cigarettes.

It is illegal to sell e-cigarettes containing nicotine to children under 18. The undercover shopper went to 16 retailers in Manchester and almost half of them sold her e-cigarette, which contained the highly addictive drug.

As many as a quarter of vape shops are selling oversized e-cigarettes containing illegal nicotine to children, a Mirror investigation has found.

Sent the undercover shopper to 16 retailers in Manchester, four of which sold her 3,500 or more e-cigarettes - which contained up to five times the legal amount of nicotine - for as little as £10. Three other stores sold her regular, legal, single-use e-cigarettes, some retailers offered her discounts, and only one out of seven stores sold her e-cigarettes, even asking if she was over 18.

Within hours, nearly half of the stores tested sold the teenager a package of e-cigarettes that contained as much of the highly addictive drug nicotine as is found in 100 cigarettes.

The UK has strict guidelines on nicotine content for single-use e-cigarettes - no more than 2ml of liquid and no more than 2% nicotine.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, told the Mirror it was like the Wild West.

There is evidence of alarming rates of underage e-cigarette use, which doubled last year, according to ASH, who found that 7% of 11 - to 17-year-olds surveyed in 2022 were current users, up from 3.3% the year before.

There are also concerns about the rise of illegal-sized black market e-cigarettes, with the Chartered Trading Standards Institute warning that around a third of vcigarette products on shelves are in breach of UK law.

The illegal e-cigarettes bought by the undercover children contained five times the nicotine content of legal e-cigarettes and cost only twice as much.

Organised criminal gangs are believed to smuggle £500m worth of illegal e-cigarettes into the UK every year. Most of them are made in China and are designed for larger and stronger markets where e-cigarettes are legal, such as the United States.

The survey confirmed what some experts had feared - many of the shops selling illegal e-cigarettes are the same ones that do not carry out ID checks on children. Two of the shops selling e-cigarettes to young teenagers are post office franchises, one of which openly advertises the Elux Legend 3500 e-cigarette stick - five times larger than the legal limit - on a pavement hoarding in the middle of Manchester's busy shopping street of Dingsgate.

The survey was repeated in Coventry, where two of the 20 shops tested sold the same girls' e-cigarettes, both legally.

The post office in Deansgate, Manchester, initially sold 13-year-old Rose an Elf Bar 600 worth £6, which is legal in the UK - although it is not legal to sell it to anyone under 18.

She returned to the shop and asked to exchange it for a sour Apple Elux Legend 3500, which was being advertised outside the shop despite being illegal in the UK.

When challenged, a shop assistant later told: I was told not to say anything. We don't sell to children under 18. I was shocked.

Three shops in Manchester's busy Piccadilly Gardens neighbourhood also sell Rose's illegal e-cigarettes.

First, a shop called Vaping Mart sold her another Elux Legend 3500 for 11.25. The manager later said: I was very shocked. Even without nicotine, we say no hundreds of times.

Two doors down, a shop assistant at Smokers Paradise sold her a Crystal 4000 Puffs e-cigarette, which was 100 per cent illegal because it was not registered with the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, as an expert showed.

The shop assistant asked for ID, but when Rose said she had left it at home, she sold it to her anyway for £13. When we asked the manager if he wanted to comment, he blamed a hoax and then tried to stop the reporter from leaving.

Police were called and informed about the sale of illegal e-cigarettes. One officer said he would pass the information on to Trading Standards, adding that he had been on their raids and said it was an issue we were aware of.

Further in the Marhaba newsstand, Rose asked about another brand, lost Mary triple mango. But instead of the legal 600 puff version, which normally costs £5, she was given the illegal 3,500 puff version for £10, without asking her age. The manager later declined to comment.

Most e-cigarette brands offer 0% nicotine versions that can legally be sold to children of any age. Rose didn't say she wanted a nicotine-containing e-cigarette, but still no store owner offered her a nicotine-free version.

Department of Health and Social Care: It is an offence to sell e-cigarettes to children or to e-cigarettes that break our clear rules, and just this week we announced a new illegal e-cigarette enforcement team, which has been supported with £3m to take further action.

"The team will have the authority to disrupt illicit supplies, conduct test procurement and testing of products, and will share knowledge and intelligence across the country."

"We will not tolerate the sale of illegal products and will take the necessary action to remove them from shelves and prevent them from crossing our borders."

John Dunn, director general of the UK Vape Industry Association, said: In the areas you look at, the results don't surprise me. This is one reason why UKVIA has been urging the government to take tough action. We fully support putting these guys on the job. We don't tolerate their behavior at all. It is retailers like these that put entire industries at risk.

Mr Dunn said retailers could face a paltry fine of around £200, but the maximum fine would be £2,500. He called on the government to raise this to £10,000.

He also wants licensing programs for all e-cigarette retailers and distributors, including robust age-verification training and a national testing program like Mirrors has been doing.

Illegal e-cigarettes may have the wrong tank size, illegal nicotine concentration levels, may contain CBD from marijuana, or be incorrectly labeled and include false health warnings.

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute warned last month that while trading standards officers were working tirelessly to crack down on the wave of non-compliant e-cigarettes being sold by retailers, there was a wider problem of breakdowns in the supply chain.

Dr Mike McKean, vice-president for policy at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, wants it to go further and impose tighter restrictions on e-cigarette advertising.

He called for action on bright packaging, exotic flavours and alluring names that appeal to children.

Each year, 45 million illegal e-cigarettes are believed to be smuggled into the UK by criminal gangs, believed to be based in West London and Manchester, and then sold more or less openly in shops, online and on social media.

The gangs could have cost HMRC up to £150m in lost VAT and customs duties alone.

John Dunne of UKVIA added: "The problem is serious. There are 4.2 million e-cigarette users in the UK and the industry is worth £2bn. They earn millions of pounds a week. This is big business.

Twenty milligrams of nicotine is about the same as 20 cigarettes. The Elux Legend 3500, which contains 2% nicotine, is illegal in the UK because of its 10ml can capacity - five times the limit.

The packaging of the illegally Lost Mary BM3500 clearly states that it has the same 10ml can capacity and 2% nicotine strength.

The Crystal 4000 Puffs does not show tank size on its packaging, but the MHRA has not approved it for sale in the UK.以上翻译结果来自有道神经网络翻译（YNMT）· 通用场景

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