International health experts have condemned Ireland’s latest move against nicotine alternatives as another backward step in the fight against smoking.
A Private Member’s Bill tabled by Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne (pictured) would permanently ban selling cigarettes, vapes and nicotine pouches to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
It treats products that are far less harmful exactly the same as the combustible cigarettes that cause almost all smoking-related disease.
Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden, says the Bill gets the science badly wrong.
“Applying the same lifetime prohibition to products with very different risk profiles fails to recognise the role that non-combustible nicotine alternatives can play in helping adults move away from smoking,” he said.
“Protecting young people from nicotine use is an important public-health objective. But cigarettes are deadly because they burn tobacco and produce toxic smoke. Treating every nicotine product as though it presents the same risk ignores that fundamental distinction.
“A policy described as creating a ‘smoke-free generation’ should focus first and foremost on eliminating smoking. Extending the same permanent prohibition to alternatives that do not involve combustion risks confusing nicotine use with the far greater dangers created by cigarette smoke.”
The new Bill follows a series of increasingly restrictive moves against smoke-free nicotine products in Ireland. The Government has introduced legislation that would restrict vape packaging, appearance, flavours, advertising and retail display, while extending controls to nicotine pouches and other nicotine products. Earlier this month, Taoiseach Micheál Martin went further, signalling his personal support for an outright ban on vapes and describing them as “nearly worse than cigarettes”.
In August, an updated Cochrane review – the gold standard of scientific evidence – concluded there is “high certainty” that nicotine vapes increase smoking quit rates compared with nicotine replacement therapy, such as patches and gum, which are on the WHO’s list of essential medicines.
“Sweden has already shown that a smoke-free future is achievable,” said Dr Human, a former secretary-general of the World Medical Association. “Daily smoking is falling below 5% – a rate almost one third of Ireland’s – because adults have retained access to smoke-free nicotine alternatives.
“Irish lawmakers should be looking to emulate that progress, not pursuing policies that risk making it harder for smokers to move away from cigarettes. To save lives, they need regulation based on evidence and relative risk, rather than treating cigarettes, vapes and nicotine pouches as equally harmful products.”
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Image created using photos courtesy of Creative Commons
