Hundreds of vapes and cigarettes seized from Sleaford store

According to Lincolnshire Police an officer was at a grocery store in Sleaford, on routine enquiries for another incident unrelated to the store, when the force says he saw the shop worker about to sell vapes to children while he was in the store.

A force spokesman said: “He intervened on the sale, which would have been illegal due their ages. Just as with cigarettes, vapes containing nicotine cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 18.

“This is when he spotted that the vapes on offer were all illegal.”

They said: “Each one was offering between 4,000 and 10,000 puffs per vape. As a rule, disposable vapes should have around 600 puffs in them, so they comply with the legal limits on size.

“This is when the local Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) were called in to help search the premises for any further illicit goods.”

That search led to the team finding suspected illicit cigarettes, and in total, officers pulled out 14 sacks full of vapes and cigarettes from the shop.

“All of these could have been sold to the local community,” said the spokesman. “Illicit e-cigarettes and cigarettes are not compliant with UK legal regulations on labelling, and could lack important self-extinguishing safety features, have higher nicotine concentration levels, contain banned ingredients or have oversized tanks for nicotine.”

The case has now been passed to Lincolnshire Trading Standards to investigate.

The original case that had brought the first officer to the shop initially was also not forgotten, and he continued with that investigation.

If you have any information about shops selling illegal vapes or cigarettes, or selling vapes to children, report this to Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer service.