smoking and vaping laws consultation, USA News: Three out of every four responses to a Government consultation on smoking and vaping laws were submitted by bots, a new study has revealed. More than 90,000 bogus submissions opposed plans to restrict disposable vapes, creating a misleading impression of public opinion. But after Government officials identified and excluded the fraudulent responses, almost eight in ten valid respondents backed restrictions. Researchers believe it is the first documented case of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health consultation.
The Tobacco and Vapes Act received Royal Assent in April, paving the way for a ban on tobacco sales to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, from January next year. A separate ban on disposable vapes came into force in June 2025, while the Act also provides powers to restrict the flavours, packaging and marketing of e-cigarettes. The new study, published in the journal Tobacco Control, examined responses to a public consultation held in October 2023 before the legislation was introduced.
University of Edinburgh Findings
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh analysed published Government reports and information obtained through Freedom of Information requests to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Of the 118,756 submissions received, DHSC officials identified 90,835 — 76 per cent — as fraudulent. Officials found that responses were frequently duplicated and submitted at high speed from a small number of internet addresses.
According to the study, all the bot-generated responses targeted a multiple-choice question opposing restrictions on disposable vapes. The same number claimed to have learned about the consultation through social media. Researchers said the scale and consistency of the automated submissions suggested a coordinated campaign, although they could not establish who was responsible.
They noted that this appears to be the first documented instance of large-scale, automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation. While the scale and directional consistency suggested a coordinated campaign consistent with prior evidence of tobacco industry efforts to manipulate public consultations, researchers stressed they could not establish who organised the submissions, their intentions, or whether commercial interests were involved. They also acknowledged they could not independently verify the Government’s bot-detection methods.
International Context and Future Safeguards
The British findings echo a scandal in America, where investigators found that nearly 18 million of 22 million responses to a 2017 consultation on internet regulation were fake. American broadband companies had funded a campaign to scrap rules preventing internet providers from favouring some websites over others, though marketing firms working on the campaign fabricated millions of responses. Another 9.3 million fake responses supported keeping the rules. The fraud was exposed by New York Attorney General Letitia James on May 6, 2021, leading three marketing companies to agree to pay more than $4.4 million in penalties and repayments.
In Britain, officials excluded the bogus vaping submissions before analysing the consultation results. However, the Edinburgh researchers warned that increasingly sophisticated bots could make future interference harder to detect, particularly where public bodies lack adequate screening systems. They concluded that strengthening detection capacity and governance safeguards will be essential to maintaining the integrity of public health policymaking as bot sophistication increases.
A DHSC spokesperson stated that robust controls are always maintained to prevent the manipulation of public consultations and that those controls worked effectively in this case. As a result, fake responses were removed, helping inform landmark action to create a smoke-free generation while remaining alert to future interference.
