MORE than a third of children between the ages of 12 and 15 who took part in a survey commissioned by a Devon council have tried vaping.

Public health specialists told a meeting of Plymouth City Council’s health and wellbeing board that among 4,000 year eight and year ten pupils questioned, there appeared to be “quite a lot of experimentation” but very few take up the habit.

“We probably look around town and think everyone is vaping but our figures give a truer representation,” said Dave Schwartz, public health specialist for children and young people. “Ninety-two per cent of those children who tried didn’t continue.”

Seventy-five per cent of the two year groups from all Plymouth secondary schools responded to the survey.

The council has been working on a city-wide approach to discourage vaping amongst children whilst still supporting adults to use vapes as a way of cutting down and stopping smoking.

Vaping with regulated e-cigarettes is estimated to be 95 per cent less harmful than smoking tobacco, but vaping is not risk-free, so the council’s advice is: if you don’t smoke, don’t vape.

Councillors have welcomed the government’s ban on the sale of single-use vapes which came into force two weeks ago.

Labour is also banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born since 1 January 2009 in two years time.

There are also plans to regulate the marketing of vapes to restrict flavours, packaging and displays accessible to children and extend smoke-free places to specific outdoor public spaces like schools, hospitals and playparks.

Last year Plymouth schools saw a rise in children becoming ill after using vapes contaminated with THC (the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis) and the synthetic drug spice.

Public health was called in after a number of secondary school-age children were taken to hospital and one headteacher said she feared a fatality.

There were also concerns that vaping was having a negative impact on children’s learning.

The call to action in Plymouth involved health workers, schools and the council developing a partnership other areas wanted to copy, the board was told.

At least two members of staff from each school are being trained about issues around vaping and the focus is widening to include primary schools and early years.

Two vape workers are employed in the city using money seized from people convicted of drugs offences.