On November 1, the Irish government will impose a tax on all vaping e-liquids, regardless of whether they contain nicotine. The country will then have the highest taxation rate, at €0.50 per milliliter, of any European Union member.
The government intends to follow up on the tax hike with further measures to restrict vape flavors, packaging and advertising, and ban disposables.
These policies will erect new barriers to smoking cessation, tobacco harm reduction advocates say, at a time when Ireland has spectacularly missed its smoke-free goal.
In 2013, the country’s Tobacco Free Ireland plan set a target of a national smoking rate below 5 percent by 2025. Ireland’s current smoking rate is estimated at 18 percent.
Damian Sweeney, a partner with the advocacy group New Nicotine Alliance Ireland (NNAI), said smoking prevalence is the same as it was in 2019, after the country experienced “historic reductions” from 2016-2019, when smoking fell by 6 percent.
Sweeney said that 38 percent of people who quit smoking deadly cigarettes were using vapes to do so. But in reaction to the 2019 “EVALI” outbreak in the United States (which in fact was not caused by nicotine vapes), Irish health authorities and politicians ramped up misinformation, resulting in a decline in vape use. The impact on smoking rates was predictable.
“This upcoming tax is yet another attack on something that can help public health goals.”
“It’s clear that vaping was furthering the goals of reaching smoke-free status, but now this upcoming tax is yet another attack on something that can help public health goals,” Sweeney told Filter. “It’s illogical and backwards thinking.”
Ireland is far from alone in Europe when it comes to implementing retrograde policies. A recently leaked European Council document indicates that at the World Health Organization’s November COP11 conference to discuss tobacco control measures, EU countries will support restrictions or bans on safer nicotine products.
But evidence from many countries shows that both vape taxes and restrictions on the availability of vaping products are associated with increases in smoking. Countries where vapes are freely available and affordable perform better at smoking cessation than countries with limited and costly access.
The Irish government says its new tax is a way of reducing youth vaping by making products less affordable. The government only set a minimum age of 18 to buy vapes as recently as 2023.
“Protecting children and young people from these products is a priority for this government and this measure will strengthen the work already underway in my department,” said Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill in a press release. “Alongside forthcoming legislation [for restrictions and bans], this tax further supports efforts to reduce the appeal and accessibility of vapes to young people.”
But advocates say it will punish those who have switched from smoking, and deter others from doing so.
“This tax is a tax on quitting smoking, disproportionately affecting people who have less to spend,” Tom Gleeson, a trustee of NNA who personally quit smoking using vapes, told Filter.
The link between smoking and poverty is well established. People in low-income households are more likely to smoke, making them the group with most to gain from switching to safer options. But higher taxes on vapes reduce their incentive to do so.
Gleeson said the policy would result in “a further shift to black-market products and an increase in smoking.”
“This is a dreadful public health policy, which is likely to disproportionately affect the poor and marginalized whilst also misinforming the public.”
As NNAI explains, Ireland’s new tax means, for instance, that a 10 ml bottle of e-liquid, retailing at €3, will soon cost €9—with comparable steep hikes for other products.
“This is a dreadful public health policy, which is likely to disproportionately affect the poor and marginalized whilst also misinforming the public about the benefits of vaping,” Dr. Garrett McGovern, medical director of the Priority Medical Clinic in Dundrum and a GP specializing in addiction medicine, told Filter.
Referencing how a tobacco tax increase means the price of cigarettes has just risen by €0.50, to €18.55, McGovern said, “it makes no sense to tax vaping products in the same way tobacco is taxed.”
“It sends the message that the harms of e-cigarettes are comparable to smoking, which flies in the face of the scientific evidence,” he added.
Though vaping will for now remain less expensive, overall, than smoking, Sweeney said that pointing to this can oversimplify the issue.
“A lot of people make the mistake of making the direct comparison between total costs of cigarettes compared to vapes,” he said. “The real issue is that the price gap between products that are economic substitutes is narrowing, quite significantly, due to excessive tax on vapes. Cost is a major factor in switching from smoking to vaping, particularly for those from a lower socioeconomic background, who also have the highest smoking prevalence.”
Photograph by Matheus Bertelli via Pexels
