“Moral Panic”—Irish Government Plans Sweeping Anti-Vape Legislation

October 9, 2024

Ireland’s health minister, Stephen Donnelly, has received cabinet approval to move forward with a bill to radically reduce the availability and variety of nicotine vapes—ignoring the results of a public consultation on the matter.

In a September government press release, Donnelley said the ban on selling “nicotine inhaling products” to under-18s was insufficient to curb what he framed as the problem of rising youth vaping.

“[W]e must go further and this legislation will tackle the rise in the use of ’vapes’ among children and young people by reducing their attractiveness and availability,” he said, “… so that our children can grow up without the risks associated with these products.”

The planned legislation would see a complete ban on selling, manufacturing and importing disposable vapes. It would ban point-of-sale displays and in-store advertising of vapes in all retail outlets except specialized vape shops, and impose further restrictions on colorful packaging.

It would also heavily restrict vape flavors, with a “prohibition on all flavor descriptors and language other than basic flavor names,” and a “limit on flavors in nicotine inhaling products … with provisions to amend the list of allowed flavors as new evidence presents.”

The government held a public consultation on the future of vaping in Ireland from November 2023 to January 2024. At the time, advocates told Filter they feared the exercise was aimed at restricting access to tobacco harm reduction products.

Those fears have now been realized, in spite of key outcomes of the consultation.

Of 15,821 people who responded, 63 percent opposed restrictions on vape flavors, which are central to many people’s ability to switch from cigarettes. And 58 percent agreed that current laws restricting smoking should not be extended to vaping.

“This is a huge insult to the thousands of ordinary people who went to the trouble of making a submission.”

“Our government has spun the response to the public consultation as giving ‘huge support’ for the proposed legislation,” Tom Gleeson, a trustee of New Nicotine Alliance Ireland (NNA Ireland), a consumer-led harm reduction advocacy group, told Filter. “They did this by dismissing opposing views as astroturf by the tobacco industry.”

“This is nothing more than a spin, and a huge insult to the thousands of ordinary people who went to the trouble of making a submission,” added Gleeson.

On the question of taxing vapes, consultation participants could opt between a tax rate in line with other European Union countries, or a higher rate. A 57 percent majority wanted to be in line with the EU; 33 percent responded “other,” while only 10 percent wanted a higher tax on vapes.

Regardless, Ireland’s government is planning a new vape tax, announcing a levy which Tobacco Reporter describes as “adding €1.23 to the cost of a typical vape … far above the European average of €0.10 to €0.30.”

This would reduce people’s financial incentive to switch from cigarettes, in addition to the obstacles presented by flavor restrictions and the loss of disposables, which for many are a low-barrier way to switch.

While majorities in the consultation favored some regulation of in-store advertising and packaging, harm reduction advocates also believe those moves send an unhelpful message.

“Removing the most popular and widely used means of smoking cessation is not the way to reduce smoking rates.”

On October 2, NNA Ireland sent an open letter to Donnelly, calling the plans “retrograde.”

“Removing the most popular and widely used means of smoking cessation is not the way to reduce smoking rates,” read the letter, which has the backing of a number of international tobacco control experts. It noted that a rise in vaping in Ireland from 2017-19 saw a big decline in smoking rates.

In 2023, the Healthy Ireland Survey found that 25 percent of people who managed to quit smoking in the past year used vapes, compared to 19 percent who used all NRT products combined.

“I know that some adult smokers use nicotine inhaling products to quit smoking so these products, other than disposable vapes, will continue to remain available,” Donnelly said in the press release.

But Donnelly ignored the fact that disposables are very popular with adults who wish to quit smoking, said Garrett McGovern, the medical director of the Priority Medical Clinic in Dundrum and a GP specializing in addiction medicine. Banning them in the name of protecting children would be a “big mistake,” he told Filter.

If disposables and flavors are removed from the market, “there is a huge danger that [former] smokers who use these products will return to smoking,” Dr. McGovern said.

He pointed to Australia’s experience, of inferior smoking cessation rates plus violence associated with an illicit market, as an example of how prohibitions do not work.

“Who suffers the most in all this?” McGovern asked. “The smoker trying to quit.”

“Vapes saved my life.”

Ken Heffernan lives just outside Dublin. He started smoking at the age of 12, and as an adult smoked three packs a day. After suffering from upper respiratory problems, bronchitis and other health issues, he tried to quit—for years.

He tried NRT, hypnosis and acupuncture. Then vapes worked for him, when nothing else had.

“I am now 12 years vaping, and have not had a bronchitis attack, sinus infection or high blood pressure in years,” Heffernan told Filter. “Vapes saved my life.”

Heffernan is concerned about the coming legislation, when he knows how important flavors can be in journeys like his. “I’m a big dessert flavor fan!” he said, listing rum and raisin, maple syrup and vanilla custard among his favorites.

A 2021 survey of over 35,000 adult EU vapers, conducted by European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (ETHRA), found that only 5.4 percent used tobacco flavor exclusively.

But both flavors and disposables are routinely blamed for youth vaping, and Irish advocates are far from alone in confronting that message.

“The narrative around protecting children and preventing a new generation from addiction is quite powerful,” Gleeson said. “However, it fails to consider the counterargument that in the absence of vapes, what would these ‘children’ do? We know that prior to vaping, they smoked.”

“Donnelly has been convinced by a well coordinated group of people in my own profession, largely, and he probably thinks this is a vote-winner.”

Why is this happening now in Ireland? McGovern said the government was “ill informed” and had given in to “moral panic.”

“I believe [Donnelly] has been convinced of the ‘youth e-cigarette epidemic’ by a well coordinated group of people in my own profession, largely, and he probably thinks that this is a vote-winner,” he added. “What he doesn’t seem to realize is that there are possibly 200,000 or more vapers in this country who are using these products to stop smoking.”

“Smoke-free products must appeal to smokers to compete with cigarettes,” the NNA Ireland letter stated. In the event of a ban on disposables and flavors, “We should expect [it] to prompt adverse behavioral responses in both adolescents and adults, protect the cigarette trade, promote black markets and informal trade, and weaken Ireland’s response to the public health burden of smoking.”

The Irish government argues that disposable vapes are often “an impulse purchase in shops and disproportionately used by younger people who often experiment with them.”

“I have a friend with bad arthritis in his hands who cannot fill tanks or change coils,” Heffernan said. “Disposables work perfectly for him.”

 


 

Photograph by Lindsay Fox/EcigaretteReviewed via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

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Kiran Sidhu

Kiran is a tobacco harm reduction fellow for Filter. She is a writer and journalist who has written for publications including the Guardian, the Telegraph, I Paper and the Times, among many others. Her book, I Can Hear the Cuckoo, was published by Gaia in 2023. She lives in Wales. Kiran's fellowship was previously supported by an independently administered tobacco harm reduction scholarship from Knowledge-Action-Change—an organization that has separately provided restricted grants and donations to Filter.