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Underage Sales

What we do

More and more young people are starting to smoke and consume alcohol at an earlier age.

At Trading Standards we have responsibility to enforce laws designed to protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people from harmful and damaging products.

The Service works with retailers to ensure that they and their staff understand the law. Young volunteers are used, in accordance with Government approved guidelines, to test whether retailers are selling to young people and approriate enforcement action is taken if an illegal sale is made.

Advice for Parents and Young People

Many parents worry about their children smoking, drinking alcohol or taking drugs. When is the right time to talk to children? Young people may also want advice about these subjects and may find it difficult to talk to their parents.

Please see the Parents webpage on the Direct Gov website or logon to the Talk to Frank website for further advice and information.

Business Advice

Age restricted products

Legislation prohibits the supply (sale or hire) of specific products to persons under certain ages. For an advice guide sheet designed to guide you through the requirements of law and assist in compliance, please see the Age Restricted Products advice sheet on the Trading Standards UK website.

Legislation

From 1 October 2008 legislation in the UK requires pictorial health warnings to be displayed on all tobacco products manufactured for the UK market.

However, retailers have until:

30 September 2009 to sell through cigarette packs that carry existing text health warnings,
and until 30 September 2010 to sell through all other tobacco products that carry existing text health warnings.

Tobacco products with existing text health warnings will continue to be supplied by manufacturers prior to 1 October 2008 is exhausted. It is likely that the first packs containing pictorial health warnings will start to appear in the supply chain in Mid November 2008, depending on the rate of sale of specific brands.