SHOW VAPES A RED CARD

Experts call for teams to ditch e-cig promotions

- VIVIENNE AITKEN

EXCLUSIVE TOP CLUBS TOLD DEALS ARE ‘OWN GOAL'

FOOTBALL clubs have been criticised by medical experts for striking sponsorship deals with vaping firms.

Doctors from the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow hit out at tie-ins between top-flight teams and e-cigarette companies.

Rangers, Celtic, Hibs and Livingston have signed contracts with VPZ, which also saw the Edinburgh-based firm get permission to sell licensed products bearing the clubs' badges.

However, authors of a report say exposing youngsters to this kind of sponsorship reverses the good work done to reduce nicotine use.

Vape firms insist their products are a smoking cessation aid.

But Sheila Duffy, chief executive of health charity ASH Scotland, said clubs accepting such deals would be "scoring an own goal".

It comes as Jonathan Coutts, a consultant neonatologist at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, and Ross John Langley, of the hospital's Department of Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, recently published a report in the British Medical Journal.

The two experts drew attention to the deals, saying: "This may seem of little interest to UK paediatricians but this is the latest commercial link between sport and the vaping industry.

"The UK worked hard to reduce the exposure of children to combustible tobacco and its toxic by-products such as nicotine.

"Since the 1960s, teenage use of cigarettes has steadily decreased via a campaign highlighting negative health impacts, stopping advertising, banning use in social spaces, raising the legal age and limiting access in shops.