Vaporized, the Edinburgh-based e-cigarette firm, is planning to open 200 new stores on top of its existing 100 outlets in the UK in the next three years.
The company, which claims to be the country's largest vaping firm, said it will double its staff numbers to 1000 to bolster the expansion push.
Doug Mutter, director at Vaporized, declared: “With increasing numbers of smokers recognising the lifestyle benefits of switching to vaping, we are well positioned to meet this growing demand and truly cement our position as the country’s leading vaping specialist.
“Vaping represents a huge public health opportunity and the market will continue to grow as increasing numbers of smokers recognise its effectiveness in helping people to quit smoking.
“To meet this growing demand, we are set to embark on significant organic and acquisitional growth that will see our store footprint rise to 300 by 2021."
A review by Public Health England published in 2015 said vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking tobacco, however this year research by the University of Birmingham said e-cigarette vapour has a similar effect on the lungs and body that is seen in regular cigarette smokers.
Mr Mutter said: "Consumer education is crucial too and we will be investing heavily in our people strategy to ensure our teams are equipped to help smokers understand the evidence based public health opportunity of vaping products so that their positive impact can be maximised .”
Mr Mutter is calling on government to create new and proportionate regulations for vaping that removes it from existing tobacco laws.
He said: “Latest medical reports say that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes, but government policy and regulations do not reflect this.
“We are calling for new regulations that will allow smokers to make informed decisions about vaping.
"The current advertising restrictions are stopping smokers from fully understanding the benefits of vaping.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here