The Tobacco and Vapes Bill 2025: what do hospitality and retail businesses need to know?

In the second of a two-part series, our licensing partner Gareth Hughes explains what hospitality and retail businesses need to do to comply with the potential provisions in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Compliance in the retail environment

Compliance will not depend solely on enforcement. It will turn, as it always does, on education, clarity, and practicality.

The burden on small retailers is significant. A corner-shop owner or a vape-kiosk manager will need to:

• Understand and apply rolling age-of-sale restrictions;
• Implement staff training protocols;
• Display correct signage for each cohort;
• Maintain any records required by secondary regulation.

In many cases, these businesses operate on tight margins and employ part-time staff. Without clear guidance and proportionate expectations, there is a risk that minor infringements — honest mistakes — may be treated as persistent offending, with disproportionate consequences.

The Commons Library briefing on vaping regulation notes concerns among retailers about “regulatory confusion, not deliberate non-compliance”. That distinction matters. If the enforcement regime does not make room for it, the courts will.

Enforcement in hospitality businesses

For hospitality venues — especially those offering cigars, shisha, or outdoor smoking — enforcement is likely to be nuanced. Few will be prosecuted for retail sales. But all may be drawn into enforcement disputes over:

• Facilitation of smoking by underage guests;
• Improper handling or storage of tobacco for cohort-restricted adults;
• Misuse of exemptions or ambiguity over licensing status.

High-end hotels and cigar lounges may find themselves navigating enforcement by implication. For instance, a hotel that allows a guest to bring and smoke their own cigars may face scrutiny over whether a retail transaction or promotional association has occurred, especially if the guest is under the 2009 cohort threshold.

Such venues will need clear policies, risk assessments, and staff training not just in age-checking, but in tobacco law compliance. In the absence of statutory guidance, many may err on the side of over-caution.

The Government proposes, on one hand, to eliminate smoking for future generations, and on the other, to formally license its sale and control. The result is a regime that resembles the Licensing Act 2003 in form, but not always in spirit. Where the Licensing Act balanced enforcement with procedural safeguards, this Bill empowers regulation by secondary legislation, often without clear checks, consultation rights, or avenues of appeal.

How can businesses enforce the changes?

Even if the ban survives judicial scrutiny, it will still require enforcement. Here, the practical difficulties become clear.

Retailers are well accustomed to “Challenge 25” policies — checking whether a person is over 18. But the generational ban requires something more complex: staff must assess not how old someone is, but what year they were born.

This subtle change has significant implications:

• Retail till systems will need software updates to assess eligibility based on rolling birth-year thresholds.
• Staff training will have to include year-by-year logic, with procedures that shift annually.
• Retail signage and ID-check posters will need to specify the exact date threshold, changing every 1 January.

The Government has suggested using digital ID apps to help. But these are not yet universally adopted, and public trust in biometric systems remains tentative. Facial estimation software (used in self-checkouts) raises both privacy concerns and accuracy challenges, especially in a fast-moving retail environment.

In hospitality, particularly hotels, cigar lounges, and private member venues, the implications are thornier still. Should staff demand ID from a 29-year-old business traveller to prove they were born before 2009? How does a high-end humidor or cigar terrace monitor compliance without disrupting its ambience or guest experience?

Procedural fairness and appeal rights

At present, the Bill is silent on appeals. There is no express route for:

• Appealing the refusal or revocation of a licence;
• Challenging enforcement decisions short of prosecution;
• Reviewing the application of court orders once made.

Until secondary legislation is published, the absence of explicit procedural safeguards, especially for small or independent operators, is troubling. One of the Licensing Act 2003’s great strengths is its multi-layered appeal structure: first to the licensing committee, then to the magistrates’ court, with rights of representation and notice throughout.

The Bill, by contrast, seems to assume court enforcement as the default, without embedding rights of reply, proportionality assessments, or time-limited suspensions. For retailers and hospitality operators, particularly those with diversified offerings, this raises questions about regulatory certainty and basic fairness.

What will the Bill’s impact be on licensed premises?

The licensing scheme is likely to affect tens of thousands of businesses, from supermarkets and petrol stations to cigar lounges and online vape retailers, yet many of those affected still do not know how or when to apply, or under what conditions their right to trade might be revoked.

The generational ban, though bold in rhetoric, risks appearing arbitrary in law and unworkable in practice. It draws a permanent legal line between citizens of equal age and capacity, based solely on date of birth. Whether the courts, or indeed the public, will tolerate such a distinction over time remains to be seen.

Enforcement, for its part, is both court-centric and underdefined. With no summary powers granted to local authorities, and no appeals structure set out in the Bill, the regime may prove slow to respond and difficult to administer, particularly in under-resourced areas.

And yet, it would be unwise to dismiss the Bill’s intent. The decline in smoking rates is a public health achievement of the first order. The challenge lies not in the ambition to finish the job, but in doing so without unintended harm — to business, to legal certainty, and to the trust between citizen and state.

For those in the retail and hospitality sectors, the task ahead is clear: prepare for compliance, anticipate change, and remain alert to the machinery of delegated regulation. For lawyers and policy advisers, the responsibility is equally weighty: to ensure that liberty, proportionality, and clarity are not lost in the pursuit of a cleaner future.

If you have questions or concerns about the Tobacco and Vapes Bill 2025, please contact Gareth Hughes.

The full article was published on The Licensing Experts, read it here.