Young people can get a nicotine vape “that matches their outfit when they go to a party” the Dáil has heard during a debate on vapes and their use by teenagers and adolescents.
Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins said vapes and nicotine products ”are the absolute bane of parents’ lives”, and parents repeatedly ask what can be done about “vapes, their contents, how they look and how they are sold”.
She said: “I know from talking to young people that they can get a vape that matches their outfit when they go to a party.
“They are absolutely marketing it so that young people will buy it. They go to a party and have a fantastic time. They are wearing whatever it is and their vape matches it. If I was young person now, I would probably be doing the same.”
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The Dublin South-Central TD said the sale of vapes to under 18s is banned but she questioned whether anyone had been prosecuted for selling to underage people.
Fianna Fáil TD Peter ‘Chap’ Cleere said a 15-year-old transition year student in his Carlow-Kilkenny constituency, as part of a project, went to 20 vape shops and in 17 no questions were asked about their age. In three they were asked for ID and when they said they had none on them “the shops still sold vapes anyway.
Such easy accessibility is a huge issue”, and “there have to be strong penalties in place”, he said.
Earlier, Minister of State for Health Jennifer Murnane O’Connor described vapes as “the revenge of the tobacco industry” with their colourful appearance and variety of attractive flavours.
Legislation passed in 2023 banned the sale of nicotine vapes to under 18s. From next week, vapes will no longer be sold from vending machines and their sale from pop-up shops or stalls at festivals will be banned from 2026.
But Government backbencher Malcolm Byrne has sharply criticised the delay in introducing updated legislation and criticised the Department of Health for failing to take the issue “sufficiently seriously”.
Speaking during statements on the use of vapes by young people, Ms Murnane O’Connor said legislation to ban the sale of single-use or disposable vapes was at an advanced stage and would be introduced this term. A second Bill will restrict the colours and imagery on vapes to make them less attractive.
It will also ban devices resembling toys to prevent them being attractive to children and prohibit point-of-sale display and advertising of these products so “they are not seen as ordinary grocery goods”. The legislation will be published this term.
Mr Byrne said, however, that in a 2023 Seanad debate there was a promise to introduce legislation to deal with flavoured nicotine-inhaling products and some of the marketing issues, “and yet it has not happened”.
Sinn Féin TD Ann Graves said the need for legislation “has never been more urgent” as she pointed to figures from the Institute of Public Health that 39 per cent of 15 and 16-year-olds, “which is nearly four in every ten, have tried vapes, and almost 18 per cent of them are regular users”.
[ Nearly a quarter of adults in Ireland aged 18-24 use vapes, survey findsOpens in new window ]
Her party colleague Mark Ward said there is a vacuum in the law and with a vacuum “it is like the wild west when it comes to vape shops” which are “lit up like Christmas trees” with young people regularly seen going into the shops in their school uniforms.
“There seems to be no regulation or policing of these issues. Vapes are definitely being sold to underage people.”
Labour TD Marie Sherlock said that “just like tobacco it may take a few decades to understand what the full impact of vaping is” and the “horrible reality” is that “we are now seeing a new generation of people with an addiction to a nicotine product”.
