Don’t Let Flavoured Vapes Disappear
Urge election candidates to protect access to flavoured vapes
With Election day next Friday, it is important that candidates looking for our votes commit to make sure the new Government adopts a reasonable approach to flavoured vapes.
The Government’s annual Healthy Ireland survey shows that 18% of Irish people smoke, down from 23% in 2015.
Healthy Ireland also highlights that flavoured vapes are the most successful tool to help people quit and more smokers quit using vapes than NRT products – gums, sprays and patches.
Up to 15,000 vapers called on the Government not to ban flavours in the Government’s 2023 public consultation on the future of vaping regulation.
Polls carried outby Red C also found that if flavoured vapes were banned in Ireland, one in five vapers would return to smoking and half (49%) of those surveyed said they would buy flavoured vapes online from abroad.
Despite these findings, the then Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has called for the ban on the sale of flavoured vapes in Ireland.
Ireland’s 320,000 vapers use flavoured vapes to help them disassociate nicotine from the taste of tobacco. The new Government must recognise the role of flavoured vapes in helping quitters stay off cigarettes.
It makes no sense to focus on vapes, when the real problem is cigarettes, which are killing people. Without flavoured vapes, the number of people smoking today would be much higher than 18% as would the cost of treating those with smoke-related problems.
