Vaping is ‘the revenge of the tobacco industry’, says Micheál Martin

On the latest episode of the Irish Examiner podcast Let Me Tell You, he discussed the difficulties in establishing the law some two decades ago and its legacy.

He also said that vaping is “the revenge of the tobacco industry” and is something he is “very angry about”.

Mr Martin told the podcast that he believes the Government must now get on with passing legislation which would ban under 18s from vaping.

“I think it’s the tobacco industry coming back at us,” he said.

“It’s the revenge of the industry and I’m very angry about it. I think the number of children and young people vaping is too high. And we’ve to start again and get this sorted. So there is legislation coming to ban under 18s from vaping.

But what strikes me about vaping is no one seems to have done any quality control research. How does a product like that end up on the market? 

“We’ve lots of quality control around a lot of food products and so forth.”

After two decades of persistent decline in smoking rates among children, data issued in recent years shows a gradual change in that trend, with health experts pinning the blame on vaping and the ease and accessibility of such products, many of which have nicotine at their core.

“I think we just have to firm up faster and get moving on the legislative template to take this on because there’s no benefits from it,” he said.

“And there’s too many young people — parents are saying it to us, a lot of teachers are saying it to us, that the incidence of vaping is growing.”

Ireland led the way when the indoor smoking ban came into force in March 2004, but Mr Martin said that it did not come without resistance.

In the podcast, Mr Martin says that the public bought into the idea, but publicans and the tobacco industry were staunchly opposed. Mr Martin said that publicans had been “lining up in TDs’ clinics across the country”.

He said that the industry attempted to create a “nanny state” idea. He said that the argument was won by presenting the legislation as a “workers’ rights issue”.

Mr Martin said that he later received comments from UK counterparts about how the Irish ban had put pressure on them to follow suit, which they did.

Asked about the overall impact of the smoking ban, Mr Martin said that it “went beyond” what he had envisaged nearly 20 years ago and contributed to the “denormalisation of smoking”, which he called “the ultimate prize”.