James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is seen as cool and safe. I am loth to get into this because it is not part of the Bill. Having said that, I am very concerned about e-cigarettes and their availability to people under 18 years. I am very concerned that they would be used to sell a lifestyle and to normalise the habit of smoking, which is something we are trying to de-normalise to protect our children. We made a tactical strategic decision some time back not to put the two Bills together because the evidence around e-cigarettes was not as certain as the evidence that tobacco is detrimental to the people who consume it. Facts are beginning to emerge and the information from America is that there have been more than 200 admissions of young people to hospital because of overdosing on nicotine and messing around with cartridges. One of the entries in the Young Scientist Exhibition, and I apologise to the young lady from Derry whose name I cannot recall, was a project on tobacco substitutes that found that the product was labelled as having a certain number of milligrams per ml but on analysis some of them had up to 60 times as much as was advertised on the packet. There are inherent dangers and I am very keen to have this area regulated. I do not believe that e-cigarettes should be available outside of a pharmacy or under the direction of a pharmacist as an aid to cease smoking. They should not be sold outside of that. That is a matter for the Oireachtas and for the Minister for Health and me to discuss further, particularly the issue of them being classified as illegal. I am absolutely clear that they should not be legally available to children and people under 18.

I do not mean to be trite, but on the issue of whether it is possible under the regulations of 2002 Act, I do not propose to change the Bill in respect of cigars or pipe tobacco. In response to Deputy Ó Caoláin who spoke extensively on pipe tobacco, I make the following points.

Members will remember that pipes were the first to be banned in cinemas and on aeroplanes because of the extensive smoke emanating from them. If we cast our minds back to the role that the current Leader of the Opposition had in achieving the smoking ban in public places, the core principle was to protect workers from the harmful carcinogenic effect of environmental smoke and tobacco products. Pipe tobacco is very much to the fore in that area and it would make no sense to me for it not to be included in this directive. Some people may argue they do not inhale the smoke but the incidence of mouth, lip and throat cancers related to pipe smoking is well known. One may argue that young people are not taking up that type of smoking and would not be likely to do so, but I would quibble with that. If the vast billions of euro in the tobacco industry were focused on advertising this as a lifestyle choice, there could be unimaginable instruments for the consumption of pipe tobacco, and we would be amazed how quickly it might take off. I have no intention of excluding that element.

Who in this room could possibly believe that one of the most advanced societies in Europe currently has a tobacco product that involves a person cutting one's gum and shoving tobacco under the lip to absorb it? That country is Sweden. Sales of snus, as it is referred to, continue to be substantial. It is excluded from Europe's tobacco directive, as a compromise had to be made. Do not underestimate the ability of the tobacco industry to attract people to its product through new and innovative methods. As I have indicated here and in many other places, if there is a choice between jobs or lives, the choice will always be for lives. I hope I have addressed the issues in a way that does not cause the committee to think we are not on the same page. We all want to protect children from taking up this habit and we want to help those who become addicted to get away from this killer habit.