A ban on smoking e-cigarettes indoors should become law to prevent them being attractive to children, according to Dundee City Council.
Responding to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the regulation of the vapour devices, the council has called for similar regulation for e-cigarettes as normal cigarettes.
The Scottish Government is seeking views on a range of potential measures for the sale, use and advertisement of e-cigarettes, as well as strengthening tobacco control in Scotland.
A report by Dundee City Council’s director of environment, Ken Laing, called for controls that should be consistent with smoking.
In the report he said: “Current smoking controls should not be undermined by simulated smoking through e-cigarettes.
“There is a need to uphold the gains achieved in the current smoking restrictions and reduce the risk of making smoking attractive to children.”
Smoking is still a major health problem with a recent survey showing an increase in the number of participants who smoke from 22% in 2012 to 26% last year.
Those living in the most deprived areas are also the most likely to smoke (38%) than those in other areas (17%) according to the survey results.
Councillors also voted to give their approval to making smoking e-cigarettes in cars with children a criminal offence.
The report said: “Smoking exerts strong peer pressure on young people. A young person sharing a vehicle with peers who are smoking will be reluctant to ask for cigarettes to be extinguished.
“Making this an offence will reinforce the message that it is unreasonable for a smoker to expose someone else to a health risk in such a confined space.”
The report also states there are some doubts as to whether e-cigarettes are effective in reducing cigarette smoking.
However Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ rights group Forest, said that using e-cigarettes, or ‘vaping’, was entirely different to smoking.
He said: “There’s no evidence e-cigarettes are harmful to the user or anyone else, nor is there evidence e-cigs are a gateway to smoking, so a ban is out of all proportion to the risk.”
The Scottish Government is inviting responses on proposed legislation by January 2.