Toy cup vape among £35,000 worth of vape products seized in Soho
September 5, 2025
The illegal vape designed to look like a children’s toy cup
A vape containing illegal amounts of nicotine and designed to look like a children’s toy cup is among £35,000 worth of products seized in a joint operation by Westminster City Council Trading Standards officers and the police.
The single-use plastic vape – called a Taki 99 Tiger Cup, complete with a straw –was labelled as containing 30 mg/ml of nicotine (3%) when the legal limit is 20mg/ml (2%). The product also contained 12ml instead of the permitted 2 ml of nicotine containing liquid. Generally, retailing at around £15, the Chinese-made device is also illegal on the grounds it looks like a food product so could pose a risk to young children if the contents were ingested.
Single use vapes were made illegal on 1 June to curb use among young people as well as on environmental grounds. But when Westminster City Council officers went to a vape shop in Soho, they found at least 3,000 single use vapes.
The haul of single-use vapes at the shop is thought to be one of the most significant in London since the ban came into force. The size of the haul means council officers believe it will take them weeks to go through the items to assess them properly.
Also found at the shop were vape refills and pod salts with an excessive volume and suspected illegal nicotine content. A number of them were clearly not intended for the UK market as they displayed the wrong health warning on the label. Vape kits and electrical devices were seized as they were not correctly labelled for the UK market and may be unsafe.
A quantity of illicit tobacco and shisha was recovered along with containers of nicotine pouches with foreign labels not meant for the UK market.
Westminster City Council leader Adam Hug welcomed the result of the joint operation and warned unscrupulous traders there would be no let up.
“It appears some shop owners are determined to flout the change in UK law and sell illegal and unsafe single-use vapes to people in Westminster. Particularly cynical is the use of devices shaped like a child’s toy cup which could run the risk of luring children into vaping,” Cllr Hug said.
“Thanks to targeted intelligence work by police and the council, thousands of items are now off the streets. If dodgy businesses try to pedal such products, we will ensure their illicit vaping profits go up in smoke.”
