Cigarettes, vending machines and vaping - is Ireland having a collective meltdown?
Saturday, September 28, 2019 at 19:21 John Mallon, Forest’s man in Ireland, has been on the road again.
Once a year John embarks upon a media tour around the country. It’s a good opportunity to visit and maintain contacts with radio stations outside Dublin.
Each tour has a theme. This year, knowing that health minister Simon Harris was about to announce plans to ban cigarette vending machines in a forthcoming health bill, we chose to focus on that.
As luck would have it, Harris made his announcement the day before John began his tour in Limerick where he was launching Forest Ireland’s ‘Butt Out’ campaign.
Initially this gave the tour a boost because the subject was seen as topical. Within 72 hours however interest in vending machines began to wane and we were struggling to book interviews for week two of the tour.
It didn’t help that the US vape scare was also in the news, added to which two domestic vaping stories hit the headlines.
The first appeared last Sunday when the Irish Sunday Mirror reported that:
A leading heart consultant called for a ban on vaping and warned: “It’s more dangerous than smoking and booze combined.”
President of the International Society For Vascular Surgery, Prof Sherif Sultan, described e-cigarettes as “the disaster of the century”.
He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “We need to ban them immediately.”
The following day the president of the University of Limerick urge the government to ban vaping across all Irish educational institutions.
According to the Irish Independent:
Dr Des Fitzgerald, a professor of molecular medicine and former chief academic officer for the Ireland East Hospital Group, said vaping is now “a real health risk and is being directly implicated in health crises and even deaths among users.”
As a result of this story, an interview we had arranged with Cork’s 96FM became a discussion about vaping on campus rather than cigarette vending machines!
We managed to regain momentum by changing the theme of the tour, so instead of talking exclusively about one issue (vending machines) we sold it in broader terms, how it was ‘Time to give smokers a break’.
That seemed to do the trick. We didn’t hit all our target stations but, given the circumstances, the final list wasn’t bad.
Tues 17th - Limerick 95FM, Limerick Today
Wed 18th - Galway Bay FM - Keith Finnegan
Thurs 19th - Ocean FM, North West Today
Friday 20th - Midlands 103 - Midlands Today
Tues 24th - Cork 96FM, The Opinion Line
Thurs 26th - Radio Kerry, Talkabout
Friday 27th - Tipp FM, Fran Curry
As for vaping, I’m beginning to wonder whether Ireland is having some form of collective meltdown.
Yesterday former health minister James Reilly today weighed in to the debate by calling for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes.
Dr Reilly has been on an anti-smoking crusade for several years now. Having introduced plain packaging when he was in government, he then urged the government to ban smoking in al fresco dining areas.
Now he’s targeting e-cigarettes.
And he’s not alone. The anti-vaping hysteria that has gripped parts of America now seems to be infecting Ireland too.
A poll asking ‘Should Ireland ban flavoured vapes?’ is currently showing 50% in favour, 45% against, and 5% don’t know.
To vote click here.
Below: John Mallon on Ocean FM
Reader Comments (3)
It looks like antismoking/anti-vaping hysteria is in full bloom in Ireland. Of course most of the actual science disputes the draconian measures being imposed. Dr Reilly should be exposed a being the hate monger that fuels societal division and persecution of smokers for his own political gain.
I wonder if the root cause of all this anti-vaping hysteria is the fear that if vaping really does take over as the “new smoking” then there simply won’t be enough smokers around left for any meaningful harassment to take place. The law of diminishing returns and all that – after all, as you have pointed out on here many times, Simon, funds for many quit-smoking initiatives have been cut in recent years, because it really is crazy for much-needed funds to continue to be pumped into a diminishing target group year on year. And even putting aside the financial side, it’s also a waste of time and resources to be constantly thinking up new rules and regulations and restrictions (and enforcing them) when you’re only talking about a tiny number of people. So perhaps the anti-smoking industry’s objections to vaping aren’t that vaping is harming people (because, let’s be honest, in comparison to smoking tobacco, vaping as an activity simply hasn’t actually been around long enough for anyone to know how harmful it might or might not be) but that it’s harming their own need for there to be sufficient smokers left to justify their own existence. Not to mention the fact that it might deny them any more really juicy opportunities to indulge in their greatest pleasure of smoker-bullying! Even anti-smokers can't bully a group that is virtually, if not actually, non-existent!
I’d be inclined to say that they might also fear the revenue that they will no longer be receiving from smokers if significantly more people switched but, in truth, that could be quite easily resolved by the simple expedient of the Government imposing a “sin tax” on e-cigarettes – ostensibly for all the same reasons as they are imposed on real cigarettes. So that can’t be the reason for their fear because, from the Government’s point of view, it’s very easily solved.
It is the irrational fear of smoking that causes the irrational fear of vaping which is why I firmly believe that any vapng organisation that does not fight for the right to smoke is by default fighting for vaping to be attacked.
Those vapers flirting with tobacco control with the promise of using ecigs to help eradicate smoking forever are also fighting for ecigs to be targeted in the same way next.