Thousands of cases of children being illegally sold vapes have been recorded by councils between 2022 and 2024. One way local authorities catch sellers red-handed is by sending undercover teenagers into shops across England. We spoke to some of those who spend their free time trying to catch law breakers in the act.

Oliver is 15 and has been test purchasing nicotine vapes for three years. None of his friends know what he does. We are not using his real name.

He says while many shops refuse to sell him vapes, he has successfully bought them “countless” times. When he is sold one, he hands it to a trading standards officer waiting outside the shop.

“We just go in, ask for it and they just hand it straight over. Don’t ask anything,” he says. “Sometimes they’re more sneaky. Try hand it to you in secret, make sure no-one notices.”

Oliver says on one occasion, a shop worker told him to wait outside and “walked back out with a brown paper bag, concealing the fact he had given me a vape. It felt really dodgy.

“You feel like you’re not buying a vape. At that point, it’s like you’re buying illicit drugs.”

The Independent British Vape Trade Association says the majority of purposed vape shops operate within the law, serving adults that would otherwise be smoking.

Of the 136 trading standards bodies in England, 133 responded to Freedom of Information requests from the BBC. Between 2022 and 2024, they recorded at least:

• 3,774 reports of shops selling vapes to children, with some retailers potentially caught more than once. This is based on both test purchases and complaints from the community.

• 67 instances of a shop being closed due to, at least in part, the selling of vapes to children. Many of those closures were temporary and some retailers may have been shut down more than once.

These figures do not account for the number of shops selling vapes in the area or the number of vapes sold.

Selling nicotine vapes to under-18s is illegal in the UK. The government says nicotine vapes carry the risk of harm and addiction, which is “particularly acute for adolescents, whose brains are still developing”.

Oliver became a test purchaser because vaping is “becoming a bigger and bigger problem as time goes on”, he says.

Now in Year 11, he thinks about a quarter of his school year is vaping and the toilets often “stink” because of it.

“I thought I could help out, see if I could get numbers down a bit, so I do whatever I can to help stop it,” he says.

Katie (not her real name) also goes undercover as a test purchaser. The 13-year-old says lots of pupils in her year use vapes or sell them to their peers at school, out of sight of the teachers.

The trick to test purchasing, she says, is to act with confidence. “You’ve just got to try and relax – remember that you’re not in the wrong and you’re just doing it to prove a point and for a purpose.”

If shop workers agree to sell vapes, she says “we’ll grab the product, walk out and go back to the van”, where trading standards officers will be waiting.

Oliver and Katie enjoy taking part in test purchases. “You know that it’s actually making a difference and that over time this difference can actually be seen,” Oliver says.

Nazir Ali is a service manager with trading standards in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham. He helps to organise underage test purchases of vapes.

“We send in an undercover officer that goes in and acts like a normal customer,” he explains, “just to keep an eye on the young test purchaser”.

If the test purchaser is refused a sale, they should walk out of the shop “without interacting with the officer in the shop”, Nazir says. If the sale takes place, the child hands the product to another trading standards officer waiting outside.

Trading standards will speak to the seller and, if needs be, interview them on the spot under caution and speak to the company’s director.

They may then be written to or invited to come to the office for a formal interview process. The seller and company owner could face prosecution.

Oliver says he has had many different reactions from shop workers when trying to buy vapes.

“They can start shouting about how your parents will be disappointed with you. Some have shouted that they need to report me to the police.

“Or they’re just talking to someone else on the phone, talking to someone else in the back, and will just glance over to scan the product, take the cash, and continue on with their conversation.”

In his day-to-day life, Oliver says: “I don’t really have conversations with people about vaping. I think it’s awful and because the health risks are unknown it’s really dangerous.”

Nazir says in Barking and Dagenham they have seen a drop in the number of vapes reaching young people.

“But I’m sure they find other means of buying these vapes, often online, from friends and family abroad,” he says. “There are so many ways it’s coming and reaching the young people, which we need to obviously do a lot more work around.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill “introduces £200 on the spot fines to allow trading standards officers to act more quickly against anyone found to be selling tobacco or vapes to people underage”.

They said the government was investing an extra £10m for trading standards “to tackle underage and illicit sales and stop harmful tobacco and vape products” finding their way into shops.