While fashion and department stores are disappearing from Kent's high streets at an alarming rate, there has been a boom in outlets feeding an ever-increasing demand for vaping.

There are few town centres in the county which don't boast at least one store dedicated to the vast variety of flavoured liquids and devices; while passing people breathing out a cloud of fruit-flavoured 'smoke' is now commonplace.

Today the vaping industry is worth a staggering £1 billion. According to the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), it is currently the UK’s largest growing consumer goods sector.

But it is not without its controversies.

Yes, vapes are a good tool to help smokers quit (about 15% of the county's adult population still puff away daily), and they appear - so far at least - to be far less dangerous than the toxic blend of chemicals cigarettes contain.

Yes, the rise in youngsters being attracted to the latest breed of easily accessible, colourful, fruit-flavoured, and cheap, disposables is probably better than getting hooked on real fags. Better, but far from ideal.

To be clear, vaping is not without its risks. The industry is so young, after all, so there has been no opportunity to properly examine just what the long-term health effects could be. Smokers are, it appears to be widely accepted, doing their lungs a massive service by swapping to a vape - but what happens if they then puff away on that for the next 10 years? Do we end up simply storing up a future health crisis?

Add into that the environmental impact of the disposables.

Recently an environmentalist from Maidstone warned that disposable vapes are being found in rivers, littering our countryside and posing a threat to wildlife.

Tony Harwood added: "I've been doing litter-picks for years, but recently there has just been a mega-increase in the number of discarded vapes, especially after a Friday or Saturday night.

"Vaping has become a part of going out for many youngsters."

That boom in demand was underlined by a report by Ash (Action on Smoking and Health) - a public health charity set up by the Royal College of Physicians to end the harm caused by tobacco.

It found that, this year, within the 18-24-year-old age group who vape, 48% said they primarily use disposables. That's up from just 2.8% a year before.

When you compare the average price of a box of cigarettes costing in excess of £12 and a disposable vape a more pocket-money friendly £3-5, it's not hard to see why they are taking the modern route in the clichéd act of experimentation or rebellion.

Meanwhile, the same survey found the proportion of the adult population using e-cigarettes has increased this year to 8.3%, the highest rate ever, amounting to 4.3 million people in Great Britain. It will, surely, not be long before there are more people vaping than smoking (which stands at around the 5.5m mark).

The research, carried out annually by YouGov for Ash, suggests the majority of vapers are ex-smokers (57%) while 8.1% of vapers have never smoked a cigarette.

Which poses a question - is there a danger we are storing up a health risk further down the line?

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, said: "Our views on vaping can be summed up very simply. If you smoke, then vaping can help you quit and is much less harmful than smoking - it’s the tar and carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke that kills you, not the nicotine.

"If you don’t smoke, don’t vape, as it’s not risk-free."

The long-term data, of course, simply doesn't exist for vaping's potential impact on the body. First created in China - which remains the major manufacturer - they only reached these shores 15 years ago and have been refined ever since.

"Nothing we do is 100% safe," says John Dunne, CEO of the UK Vaping Industry Association. "We drink, it's bad for us; we eat food that's bad for us. But I think, as adults, we have to make choices. People go from a product [cigarettes] 95% of people tell you will kill you at some stage, to one where it's more likely than not that it won't. So that's a great thing.

"Does it mean it may not have some negative effects? No, of course it might. You're putting something into your body that is not 100% fresh air.

"When you look at toxicology reports, you're probably inhaling far more things that are bad for you just walking down the street than you are from your vaping device. Both have harmful constituents, but it's at what levels are they there.

"In e-cigarettes, the levels of those are so minimal they barely register. But is it fair to say they are not there? No, the machine found it."

There is also a lot of misinformation out there. A recent spate of serious lung injuries inflicted on vapers in the US - called EVALI - generated plenty of headlines over here. By February 2020, the US had reports of more than 2,800 people hospitalised and 68 deaths.

However, it has since been identified the cause was a vitamin E acetate used to "adulterate cannabis-containing e-liquids". Both vitamin E acetate and the use of THC (the psychoactive compound of cannabis) are banned in the UK.

Conversely, a study in the US in 2020 found vaping still damages arteries and blood vessels.

But the stories fuel a distrust in vaping. After all, the tobacco industry's clout and disguising of smoking's harm (it was, after all, only in the late 1940s and early 50s that the link between puffing away and the serious health repercussions was made) has made anything to do with smoking rather murky.

"There are two different camps," adds Mr Dunne.

"In the US, the narrative is nicotine is bad - condemn anything which has nicotine in it. Then the UK approach is 'we pay for our own healthcare system here', so if we've got a product that's better than smoking, and the science tells us that, shouldn't we encourage people to move from smoking, which we know kills 220 people a day in the UK, onto something that hasn't killed anybody? It doesn't cause cancer. Yes, nicotine is addictive, but nicotine as a substance is very benign.

"The medical community has been trying to solve the problem of smoking for decades. Along come these upstart entrepreneurs with this new-fangled electronic device and it has basically solved the problem that they couldn't. It has become the most used way, especially in the UK, to give up smoking.

"It's twice as effective as all the other NRTs [nicotine replacement therapies] combined - gum, patches, pills - and they don't like that it's not their community that has done that. This is where you start getting the 'we're sceptical of the long-term effects'.

"Well, how long do you need? They have been around for 15 years, I'm sure there are an awful lot of academics out there looking closely at the effects of e-cigarettes. The technology we have now dwarfs what was around when the whole cancer and cigarette thing was going round."

The message of it being a safer alternative, however, is lost on some.

The Ash survey revealed 33% of the population believe vaping to be "as harmful or more" than smoking.

Kent County Council's director of public health, Dr Anjan Ghosh, adds: “We support the position of the South East Association of Directors of Public Health – that vaping regulated nicotine products has a small fraction of the risks of smoking, but this does not mean it is safe. Smokers should be encouraged to try regulated nicotine vaping products along with smoking cessation medications and behavioural support. This will greatly increase their chances of successfully stopping smoking.

“People who have never smoked should be encouraged not to smoke and not to vape. Vapers should be encouraged to use regulated nicotine products only and stop smoking completely.”

There is a popular quoted statistic from Public Health England, which said vaping was "95% less harmful" than smoking. It is, perhaps, vaping's biggest selling point.

Issued in 2015, does that statistic still hold true today?

Ms Arnott of Ash, said: "The scale of the difference in risk is correct but we don’t have data to be certain of the exact amount – it could be slightly less or slightly more – it’s not inaccurate, merely a bit precise, which is why we prefer to say much less harmful."

Interestingly, a briefing note circulated to local authorities by Ash - and supported by such organisations as the Association of Directors of Public Health and the Faculty of Public Health - says "media reports that youth vaping risks becoming a potential ‘public health catastrophe’ leading to a ‘generation hooked on nicotine’ are not substantiated by the evidence".

Which will be of some relief to parents who find the brightly coloured disposable sticks lurking in their child's school bag.

Mr Dunne, of the UKVIA, said: "The uptake of vaping from non-smokers still remains low overall. To us that's a good sign.

"The overall smoking rate is still declining and at a similar rate. Which suggests people are not switching from vaping to smoking, which is the whole gateway argument. That doesn't fly.

"Are we going to stop 100% of people who don't smoke from trying vaping of cigarettes? No - that's not reality..."

"Are we going to stop 100% of people who don't smoke from trying vaping or cigarettes? No, that's not reality - it's never going to happen. But as long as the numbers are low that's a good thing, as we're switching far more smokers over to it than we are non-smokers. If that goes the other way, then yes, that's a problem."

If you're not familiar with vaping, the systems used are all much the same. Flavoured liquid is heated by a small element, either by pushing a button or - in the case of the disposables - simply by inhaling the device. All are powered by batteries. It generates flavoured water vapour which is then inhaled, in the same way as a cigarette. When you see plumes of 'smoke' it is in fact water vapour.

The liquid will be infused with nicotine - of varying levels of intensity - or, if you choose, none at all.

Traditionally, they were fed by a small 'open tank' which could be regularly topped up. Today's disposables are able to be used the second you take them out of the box.

Mr Dunne explains: "The current disposables were designed specifically for the US market because the regulations have recently tightened up over there with the PMTA [Premarket Tobacco Product Application] process and it costs millions of dollars to put products through. But there was a loophole in that legislation that allowed closed-tank systems - ie disposables - to bypass that regulation.

"So the Chinese, being ever entrepreneurial, developed them for the US market.

"People started talking about them on social media and they became very popular with young people over there - so it quickly moved over here.

"When we saw disposables coming to our shores, they were attracting a very young demographic, which we were extremely concerned about. Specifically because it's against the law and shops shouldn't be selling them to anyone under 18 - and unfortunately there's a subset who do.

"You're not seeing people staying on them an awfully long time - they are moving on to open-tank systems. From an economical standpoint, a disposable vape is probably the most expensive way you can vape if you're using it regularly.

"Will disposables remain as popular as they are now? I don't think so. I think this is one of these social media-driven fads which will probably disappear the next time something else comes along.

Will disposables remain as popular as they are now? I don't think so

"I was speaking to a major manufacturer the other day and he said he'd give it 12 months.

"For me the youth access is the biggest issue, then the second is the environmental impact as well.

"We're really focusing on both those issues. Part of my discussions in the US and in China has been meeting with manufacturers to look at how they can look at new technology and materials, to redesign these to be easier to take apart, so easier to recycle them, or make them out of materials which biodegrade.

"So, cardboard outer tubing, so batteries can be removed and disposed of and the outer packging biodegrades like compost."

Whether teenagers on a night out will bother being quite so conscientious is, of course, a different matter.

In the UK, the industry is tightly regulated. You can't sell pre-mixed e-liquids (as they're known) in sizes of more than 10ml containers. The tanks in which they are held on the device cannot exceed 2ml. And the maximum nicotine level permitted for sale is 20mg/ml.

But there's also a black market in these devices - those sold in bigger bottles and with sometimes extraordinary levels of nicotine. One vape shop owner, who did not want to be quoted, said he was aware of levels in excess of 50mg/ml.

While nicotine, in itself, if a relatively harmless drug, it can be dangerous in large amounts and, of course, is addictive.

The boom in demand has, needless to say, generated a response from Trading Standards - keen to crack down on products which breach the guidelines, and the sale of regulated products to those under-age.

"We carry out test-purchasing operations where intelligence leads us to believe shops are supplying to children," says a spokesman for Trading Standards in Kent.

"The offence of selling to a child is a level 4 offence, so if prosecuted it is potentially a £2,500 fine for the person making the sale and potentially the business. Other legislation does allow a three strikes policy. If a shop is caught multiple times then a banning order can be put in place, preventing them from selling vapes."

It's an issue the industry, as a whole, is keen to see tighter rules and regulations introduced to address.

Mr Dunne, of the UKVIA, says: "We would love to see any retailer selling vaping products have to be registered, can only sell products that are licensed and approved by the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency], have to have a robust age-verification process in place - regardless of whether you're bricks and mortar or online - and if you don't and you get caught, you get a big fine and potentially lose that licence for 12 months. To me that's the right thing to do.

"It's up to me to persuade legislators that's the right thing to do rather than banning flavours, or packaging, as that sends the wrong message.

"If the government wants to be smoke-free by 2030, then they need to increase vaping by about 40%. They won't rock the boat too much, but they also have constituents they must appease and report back to, so they are acutely aware of what's going on."

If we go back less than 50 years ago, cigarette smoking was just a part of life. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), around 45% of the adult population of Great Britain were regular smokers. But times have changed.

The health concerns became a major barrier and, by the turn of the century, the government decided to take significant steps to curb it in a bid to ease the burden it was placing on the NHS; helped in no small part by mounting concerns over 'passive smoking' - in other words, those simply breathing in the dangerous fumes of others.

While smoking in cinemas, workplaces and pubs was once commonplace, in 2007 a ban on smoking in public places was introduced.

By 2011, the national smoking rate had dropped to 20%.

According to the Kent Public Health Observatory, the rate across the county in 2018 stood at 15% - broadly in line with national trends.

A considerable contributory factor was also an increasing tax burden put on all smoking products, as well as a rolled-out ban on advertising.

In September 1992, according to the ONS, an average box of 20 cigarettes would set you back £2.09. Twenty years later it was £7.26. By August of this year, it was more than £12. Smoking for many was being priced out of the market.

Enter the electronic cigarette. Little wonder, then, so many stores dedicated to the industry have appeared on our high streets - as well as being stocked widely in supermarkets and convenience stores.

Helped, in no small part, by the mark-ups retailers can impose on the products. While cigarettes commanded an 8-10% profit margin, vaping products are anywhere between 50-100%.

Jo James, chief executive of the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, said: "Vaping has increased among people across the socio-economic spectrum, hence their rapid rise on our high streets.

"The town-centre offer needs to appeal to a wide audience, so therefore they are part of the mix. Sadly, it’s the retail element that is rapidly disappearing, which in some cases is changing the appearance, atmosphere and feel to the high street."

We'll leave the last word to KCC's director of public health, Dr Ghosh, who says: "Many thousands of people in the UK have already stopped smoking with the help of an e-cigarette and we recommend their use as part of support to quit."

To get advice and further support about local services to help you stop smoking click here.