Vapes have been seized by Dorset Trading Standards officers and advice or cautions offered to a number of shops in a crackdown on under-age sales.

Test purchases by a 15 year old saw more than a third of 11 premises prepared to go ahead with a sale, despite the customer being under the legal age of 18.

In just one case, the sale was legitimate because the vape was a zero nicotine product.

Trading Standards say that from January to July, officers visited 32 retailers selling vapes with eight seizures of legally non-compliant vapes – and in the same time period seized 3,470 vapes from nine premises.

The department says it is currently working with Dorset schools, the Youth Service and police to drive down the sales of vapes to children and legally non-complaint vapes.

The information came in response to questions from Dorset councillor Gill Taylor, who said she was concerned about the use of vapes by young people under 18.

She told a Dorset Council Cabinet meeting that almost half of vapes purchased by under 18s are from shops, according to national statistics, although no local data is available.

The meeting heard that, over the past year, the proportion of children experimenting with vaping had grown by 50% year on year, from one in 13 to one in nine.

"Children's awareness of promotion of vapes has also grown, particularly in shops where more than half of all children report seeing e-cigarettes being promoted, and online where nearly a third report e-cigarette promotion," said a statement to councillors.

"Only one in five children now say they never see vapes promoted, down from 31% last year. It is an offence to sell e-cigarettes to children under 18 in the United Kingdom and children means those aged 11-17 years old, unless otherwise specified."

In response to another question from Cllr Taylor, the council said there are no current plans for an awareness campaign about the dangers of vaping by Public Health Dorset.

Said the statement: "This is partly because we do not yet know enough about the dangers, and any campaign would have to be carefully designed with a clear call to action.

"Simply asking children not to vape is unlikely to be effective without knowing more about the behaviours and underlying reasons behind vape use.

"However, we do work with local schools at their request and have delivered some behaviour change workshops around vaping in schools.

"These aimed to provide information on vaping, but mostly focused on helping schools to understand the issue they are experiencing – vaping during school hours and the selling on of vapes in schools – and helping them break down their problem to think about what they could do to address these issues."

The meeting also heard that the government had endorsed the inclusion of education on vaping to be included in PSHE lessons and plans a national survey of drinking and drug use in school-aged children.

The survey will also ask about vaping with schools participating in the survey receiving two supporting lesson plans.

"Public Health Dorset and Dorset Council children's services are raising awareness of the survey and asking schools to take part, so we get a better understanding of the data on use," said the statement.

"The Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, sets out a clear position on vaping, which Public Health Dorset supports - 'The key points about vaping (e-cigarettes) can be easily summarised. If you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don't smoke, don't vape; marketing vapes to children is utterly unacceptable.'"