More than a third of children between the ages of 12 and 15 in Plymouth who took part in a survey have tried vaping.

Public health specialists told a meeting of Plymouth City Council’s health and wellbeing board that among 4,000 year eight and year ten pupils questioned, there appeared to be “quite a lot of experimentation” but very few take up the habit.

“We probably look around town and think everyone is vaping but our figures give a truer representation,” said Dave Schwartz, public health specialist for children and young people. “Ninety-two per cent of those children who tried didn’t continue.”

The council has been working on a city-wide approach to discourage vaping amongst children whilst still supporting adults to use vapes as a way of cutting down and stopping smoking.

Vaping with regulated e-cigarettes is estimated to be 95 per cent less harmful than smoking tobacco, but vaping is not risk-free, so the council’s advice is: if you don’t smoke, don’t vape.

Councillors have welcomed the government’s ban on the sale of single-use vapes which came into force two weeks ago.

Labour is also banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born since 1 January 2009 in two years time.

There are also plans to regulate the marketing of vapes to restrict flavours, packaging and displays accessible to children and extend smoke-free places to specific outdoor public spaces like schools, hospitals and playparks.

Last year Plymouth schools saw a rise in children becoming ill after using vapes contaminated with THC (the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis) and the synthetic drug spice.

Public health was called in after a number of secondary school-age children were taken to hospital and one headteacher said she feared a fatality.

There were also concerns that vaping was having a negative impact on children’s learning.

The call to action in Plymouth involved health workers, schools and the council  developing a partnership other areas wanted to copy, the board was told.