Ireland’s anti-vaping stance is trapping smokers with cigarettes, new report finds
Major new research shows Ireland’s negative approach to safer nicotine products risks reversing progress against smoking and trapping millions with deadly cigarettes.
A new Smoke Free Sweden report comparing Ireland and New Zealand reveals a striking divergence in outcomes between two countries who once shared the same ambition of becoming smoke-free.
While New Zealand has almost halved its smoking rate in a decade by embracing safer nicotine alternatives as a core public health strategy, Ireland’s smoking rate remains nearly twice as high after years of increasingly restrictive policies towards products such as vapes and nicotine pouches.
The report, Tale of Two Nations: Ireland v New Zealand, finds that New Zealand’s adult daily smoking rate has fallen from 15.1% in 2015 to just 6.8% today – a reduction of more than 50%. Ireland, by contrast, has reduced smoking from 19% to 13% over the same period and has seen little meaningful progress since 2019.
Researchers say the difference reflects sharply contrasting policy approaches. New Zealand actively promotes vaping as a smoking cessation tool through government campaigns, proportionate regulation and public health messaging encouraging people to switch from cigarettes to less harmful alternatives.
Ireland, meanwhile, is moving towards tighter restrictions on safer nicotine products, including proposed flavour limitations, bans on disposable vapes and new taxes on vaping products.
Dr Garrett McGovern, an Irish addiction specialist and co-author of the report, said Ireland risks undermining one of its most effective tools for reducing smoking.
“The evidence shows that safer nicotine alternatives are already helping Irish smokers quit,” he said. “Government data show that one in four successful quitters used vaping and that around half of Ireland’s vapers no longer smoke.
“Yet instead of building on that success, policymakers are making these products less attractive, less accessible and more expensive. The likely result is that more people will remain trapped with cigarettes for longer.”
The report notes that Ireland records around 100 smoking-related deaths every week despite having some of the toughest conventional tobacco control measures in Europe.
Professor Marewa Glover, a New Zealand behavioural scientist and internationally recognised tobacco harm reduction expert who co-authored the report, said New Zealand’s experience demonstrated what can be achieved when governments give smokers practical alternatives.
“New Zealand has achieved one of the world’s fastest declines in smoking by recognising that smokers need viable escape routes from combustible cigarettes,” she said.
“By providing accurate information, maintaining access to safer products and regulating them according to their lower risk, New Zealand has helped hundreds of thousands of people move away from smoking. The results speak for themselves.”
The report highlights that adult daily vaping in New Zealand increased from less than 1% to almost 12% over the same period that smoking rates collapsed. Today, more than one in four New Zealand adults are former smokers.
Smoke Free Sweden says the findings carry important lessons for countries across Europe as governments consider new restrictions on smoke-free nicotine products.
Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden, said: “Ireland and New Zealand started with the same destination – a smoke-free future. One country opened the exit door from cigarettes and has almost reached its goal. The other is increasingly blocking that door and is falling behind.
“If governments genuinely want to defeat smoking, they must support smokers to leave cigarettes behind rather than making safer alternatives harder to access.”
The report recommends that Ireland adopt a harm reduction strategy, regulate and tax products according to their relative risk, maintain access to approved flavours that help adults switch and provide clear public information about safer alternatives.