Unlicensed vape shops pose obvious safety risks
A major fire in Glasgow’s Union Street this weekend has destroyed part of a listed Victorian building and caused significant disruption to services at Glasgow Central Station. More than 200 firefighters were involved at the height of the blaze as emergency crews battled flames that spread through a complex of historic buildings adjacent to the station. An investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing, but early reports suggest it began in a vape shop operating at 105 Union Street.
While it would clearly be wrong to speculate about the precise cause of the blaze before investigators have completed their work, several details which have already emerged raise serious questions about the regulation of vape retail in Scotland.
Most immediately, the shop where the fire is believed to have started does not appear on the Scottish Government’s statutory Register of Tobacco and Nicotine Vapour Product Retailers. All businesses selling nicotine vapour products are required by law to register, and operating without registration is a specific offence under the Health (Tobacco, Nicotine etc. and Care) (Scotland) Act 2016, which carries potential penalties including fines of up to £20,000.
At the same time, reporting around the premises has revealed a somewhat opaque business structure. The property itself is owned by a landlord company with substantial assets, while the shop tenancy appears to have been held by a separate retail company whose director has expressed shock at the incident but whose business presence is difficult to trace. The property’s business rates bill for the current financial year – close to £10,000 – was reportedly returned by Royal Mail marked “addressee gone away”, and the company’s registered address appears not to be widely recognised by neighbouring businesses.
None of this is necessarily unusual in itself. Across many UK cities, vape shops have expanded rapidly over the past decade, often operating as small retail units selling imported disposable products through relatively lightly regulated business structures. The sector has grown quickly because disposable vaping products are both inexpensive to produce and highly profitable to sell, and because regulatory frameworks have struggled to keep pace with the speed of market expansion.
The products themselves also introduce a technological dimension, which complicates the picture further. Disposable vapes typically rely on small lithium-ion batteries, the same technology used in mobile phones, laptops and e-bikes. These batteries are generally safe when manufactured and handled correctly, but they can pose a fire risk if damaged, poorly manufactured or improperly stored. Fire services across the UK have repeatedly highlighted the growing number of incidents linked to lithium battery failures, particularly in devices where quality control may be inconsistent.
This matters because the global supply chain behind disposable vaping products is complex and often difficult to trace. The vast majority of disposable vapes sold in the UK are manufactured overseas, predominantly in China, and pass through several stages of distribution before reaching retail shelves. Ensuring consistent safety standards across that supply chain can therefore be challenging, particularly when products are sold through small independent outlets with limited regulatory scrutiny.
None of this is to say that vaping itself should be treated in the same way as smoking. Public health authorities have long taken the view that vaping can play a role in helping smokers quit tobacco, and many people have successfully used vaping products as a smoking cessation tool. However, the rapid rise of disposable vaping products has changed the structure of the market significantly. These products are cheap, widely available and increasingly marketed as convenience consumer goods rather than medical cessation aids.
That shift has implications for regulation. At present, vape retailers in Scotland are required to join a national register, but beyond that, they operate under a relatively light-touch framework compared to many other retail sectors dealing with potentially harmful products. Alcohol retailers, for example, must obtain licences from local authorities, meet specific conditions and face regular enforcement checks. Vape retailers, by contrast, are largely regulated through registration schemes and reactive enforcement when problems arise.
Some policymakers have begun to question whether that approach remains adequate. Calls for a more robust licensing system have been growing, with proposals that could give local authorities clearer powers to approve or refuse new vape retailers and to enforce safety standards around the storage and handling of products containing lithium-ion batteries.
This incident highlights a broader issue which policymakers have largely avoided confronting: the rapid growth of a retail sector selling addictive products which contain electronic components and lithium batteries, often through businesses with limited oversight and opaque supply chains.
When such businesses can operate in city-centre buildings with minimal regulatory scrutiny, unclear ownership structures and patchy enforcement mechanisms, it should not come as a surprise when questions about safety and accountability begin to emerge. If Scotland intends to continue allowing a rapidly expanding network of vape retailers to operate in dense urban environments, relying on a simple registration scheme may prove to be an increasingly inadequate safeguard.
The Union Street fire will rightly be investigated in detail. The wider regulatory questions it has exposed, however, are unlikely to disappear any time soon.
