What We’ve Been Doing Since the TPD Regulations

We’re getting asked a lot online and in store why we have stopped selling 20ml bottles and why certain flavours are now unavailable. We feel we must address this as we don’t want our customers to feel we have done this by choice.

Regulations came into effect in May 2017 outlawing the sale of any bottle of e liquid containing nicotine in bottles larger than 10ml and any e liquid containing more than 20mg of nicotine is forbidden completely. This was in no way our, (or any other retailers), choice.

Since May 2017 e liquid has effectively been grouped together with tobacco products, therefore it now falls under the regulations of the Tobacco Product Directive (TPD). There are many new regulations that must be adhered to but the two rules that will be most relevant to consumers are;

• E liquids containing nicotine can not be sold in bottles larger than 10ml.
• The maximum strength of e liquid sold in the UK must not exceed 20mg.

Pursuant to these regulations we’ve had to entirely drop our 24mg strength e liquid and we’ve had to redesign our own 20ml bottles into 10ml bottles with compliant labelling. This has been at great expense to us and all the other UK retailers. However, our primary concern was to minimise the impact of these new regulations on our customers and we’ve managed to absorb the extra costs ourselves and price the 10ml bottles at half the price of the old 20ml bottles.

The TPD also stipulates that every flavour/recipe has to be approved before it can go on sale. This means every recipe has to be submitted to the Medicines & Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) with laboratory reports.

This attaches a cost of thousands of pounds to bringing each and every flavour to retail along with the extra time it takes to attain the laboratory reports and the final approval.

This has slightly reduced the amount of flavours available in our own range and across the whole industry although we, and all our manufacturers and suppliers, are working towards returning as many flavours as possible along with lots of new ones.

We thank you for your patience during this difficult transition and would like to assure you that these new regulations will ultimately be good for the industry and for our customers as you can be sure that every e liquid you buy has been thoroughly tested and approved as long as you always buy from a reputable retailer.

Thanks for shopping with SmokShop!