Happy new year!

My first quote of 2025 concerns vaping and the tobacco industry.

Published yesterday by The Journal (also known as TheJournal.ie), an online publication based in Dublin, it was included in a feature written by The Journal’s ‘investigations’ team.

The investigation, such as it was, appeared to be motivated by the thought that the tobacco companies’ interest in selling e-cigarettes might be driven not by altruism but by the need to fill a hole caused by the declining sales of combustible tobacco products.

Hence yesterday’s report:

Today, we can reveal that Irish tobacco businesses are increasingly turning to vaping as a way to mitigate falling sales from smoking.

You can read the result of The Journal’s ‘investigation’ here. As I say, it includes a short quote by me:

“Vaping has been a free market success story. Instead of obsessing about the motives of a legitimate industry, public health campaigners should work with the industry for the long-term benefit of adults who enjoy consuming nicotine.”

The full quote, most of which was not published, read:

“Vaping has been a free market success story. In Ireland alone hundreds of thousands of adults have quit smoking by switching to a product that, on current evidence, is far less harmful to their health.

“There will always be a demand for nicotine products so what matters is offering legal reduced risk alternatives that satisfy consumers who would otherwise smoke tobacco.

“Instead of obsessing about the motives of a legitimate industry, public health campaigners should put their prejudices aside and work with the industry for the long-term benefit of adults who enjoy consuming nicotine.

“The issue of children vaping does need to be addressed, but suggesting that vaping is a gateway to smoking is not borne out by most of the evidence.

“The answer is not to go to war with the vaping industry by imposing further restrictions on the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes, but to enforce existing age restrictions and punish retailers and illicit traders who sell vapes illegally to children.”

Anyway, having posted the edited version (with a link to the article) on X, I saw that it had been reposted by someone with the handle @irishmednews who added the pejorative comment:

Tobacco company shill is pro-vaping. There’s a surprise.

Beyond a social media account, there doesn’t seem to be much substance to the otherwise anonymous Irish Medical News other than a series of left-leaning tweets and retweets, including sarcastic references to Brexit and Mrs Thatcher’s privatisation policy.

Despite that I wish him (and you) a belated happy new year!

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

There is nothing sinister about it but obviously tobacco companies are in for profit. They are businesses not charities.

What is sinister is the disgraceful way that certain tobacco companies think that bullying, coercing or insulting the intelligence of consumers who prefer to smoke is justified as a way of pushing them towards vaping and smokeless products because that's the way industry wants to go.

What is also scandalous is the view that harm reduction can only be achieved by forcing smokers to vaping and this is because vaping companies are in it for business and profit too whatever they say using health as the cover.

No harm reduction advocate can possibly be taken seriously if they do not recognise that some people like smoking, they have no intention of quitting, and they really dislike vaping.

Take the politics out of it, remove the ideologues and those in it simply because they despise industry, and start listening to smokers about ways to reduce harm from smoking that does not simply depend on quitting or switching.

Ignoring and excluding smokers from debates about harm reduction may be fashionable but it is not helpful. All that will achieve is to push them towards contaminated tobacco sold on the black market which is at least honest about it's intentions that nothing matters but how much money can be made.