My colleague John Mallon was on a local radio station in Ireland yesterday talking about vaping.
We don’t actively seek to do interviews that are exclusively on vaping but he was booked last week to talk about a subject that has been bubbling away and was featured at the weekend in the Sunday Times Ireland - Vaping epidemic may be blowing up among teenagers.
The paper quoted Luke Clancy who has moved on since I first met him in 2004 when he was a cheerleader for the smoking ban in Ireland.
Yet despite vaping being an obvious ‘success’ story in terms of helping a significant number of smokers to quit, the former director of ASH Ireland still isn’t happy:
Luke Clancy, director of Tobacco Free Research Institute Ireland, believes children as young as 12 are becoming addicted to vaping, which is having an adverse effect on their brains. He said research showed that using the products also has a small impact on breathing and taste.
The Sunday Times’ article follows a report by the Joint Committee on Health that called for a ban on all flavoured e-cigarettes.
Published last month the Committee’s report - which I wrote about here - got very little coverage but it has not gone unnoticed by anti-smoking campaigners in the UK who are determined to clamp down on e-cigarettes too.
At the weekend the Sunday Times Scotland reported that:
Scottish ministers are coming under pressure to ban the sale of vapes that mimic the smell and taste of confectionery, following a surge in children turning to e-cigarettes.
Sound familiar?
Leading the campaign is Sheila Duffy, chief executive of ASH Scotland, who said:
“We are extremely concerned about the massive increase in children and young people using vapes in Scotland. The sweet tastes and vibrant colouring of e-cigarettes that are particularly attractive to young people and are major contributing factors to this upsurge need to be addressed.
“We are watching developments in Ireland with interest following their parliament’s health committee recently recommending prohibition on the flavouring of all vapes. ASH Scotland would welcome similar measures being considered and implemented by the Scottish government to reduce the appeal of these health-harming products to children and young people, and to eliminate the presence of toxic e-liquids that have not been safety tested for inhalation.”
The problem is that banning flavoured vapes will have a huge impact on the product’s core consumer, adults who are trying to quit smoking or have successfully quit by using e-cigarettes (although I don’t buy the argument that many will revert to smoking if flavoured vapes are prohibited).
As I’ve noted before, ASH Scotland’s hostility to vaping may be in marked contrast to its counterpart in London but the idea that ASH (UK) are paragons of liberty when it comes to e-cigarettes is a fallacy.
Restrictions on e-cigarette branding, including the introduction of plain packaging for vaping products to deter young people from vaping, has been on ASH’s agenda for some time.
Sooner or later, I’m sure, they will unite around a shared vision of a world without nicotine, and that will include the use of e-cigarettes.
To put this in perspective, do you remember when Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce a comprehensive ban on smoking in the workplace? It could never happen in the UK, we were told. Saner voices will find a compromise, especially in pubs and clubs.
But that was before Jack McConnell, the first minister of Scotland, spent a morning in Dublin visiting two or three carefully chosen pubs and then returned to Holyrood singing the praises of a law that had been enforced only a few months earlier.
Similar legislation was duly introduced in Scotland, with England, Wales and Northern Ireland meekly following suit.
If vaping advocates in England think a similar chain reaction can’t or won’t happen again they could be in for a BIG surprise.
The lesson is, keep a eye on Ireland, where some politicians would love to lead Europe in banning flavoured vapes, and beware a Scottish Government that will do almost anything to be different to Westminster.
As we all know, this is about politics not health.