North Somerset Council has executed its largest ever seizure of illegal vapes after uncovering sales of disposable vapes that had been banned. Good News Wine & Food, a village shop in Cleeve, continued selling disposable vapes after their sale became illegal on June 1.
On July 2, two trading standards officers, accompanied by a student on work experience, seized 917 illegal vapes from the shop. Trading standards officer Jay Capel described the haul as “the largest seizure of illegal vapes made by this service.” The officers struggled to remove all the goods due to a shortage of bags, resorting to using some from the shop itself.
Among the vapes, six bore markings indicating they were intended for the US market and not for UK sale. The shop owner, Ragavan Tharmakulasingam, suggested these might have been mistakenly accepted as returns. The remaining 911 were disposable vapes that, while previously legal, had become illegal to sell a month before being found.
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At the licensing hearing on September 2, held by North Somerset Council, Avon and Somerset Police and the council’s licensing department pushed to revoke the shop’s alcohol licence due to the infraction. However, the shop’s lawyer, Charles Merritt, highlighted “severe and unexpected personal circumstances” affecting Mr Tharmakulasingam. He had been overseas in Sri Lanka attending to his terminally ill father when the ban came into effect and later had family members hospitalized with a serious illness. Merritt emphasized the shop had no prior issues in its eight years of operation and that the vapes had been purchased legally before the ban, being sold openly with clearance signs.
Councillor John Crockford-Hawley, chairing the licensing subcommittee, expressed sympathy for the owner’s personal challenges and acknowledged the shop’s transparency in trying to clear stock. However, he also stressed that the owner had ample time to remove the illegal vapes but failed to do so. The committee decided against revoking the licence but imposed a three-month suspension as a clear deterrent to others.
This case sends a strong message to all traders: the sale of illegal vapes will not be tolerated.