It goes hand-in-hand with a further rise in tobacco duty, also announced today, which seeks to discourage children priced out of vaping not to start smoking.

The nation’s dominant tobacco company, maker of the top-selling Marlboro cigarette, is trying to become the next e-cigarette giant. And Atlanta is ground zero in the high-stakes experiment.

Since 2020, the council's trading standards team has seized 26,860 illegal cigarettes, 7.45kg of illegal hand rolling tobacco and 284 illegal e-cigarettes from the shop, the local authority said.