Ms Claire Gordon:

The lack of research on the long-term effects is a feature of the fact that these are a new product. There is no way around that. We cannot go forward. I would not say there is a lack of research. There is significant focus on this at the WHO level. Across the globe, there are at least three scientific papers on different aspects of the issue every week.

From our point of view, the Minister for Health asked the Health Research Board to examine three areas of e-cigarettes in 2019 and published a paper in October 2020. I wish I had brought in the paper on the harms and benefits because it is about 400 pages, but it is too much research. The Health Research Board came to some conclusions. It was asked to look at three areas on e-cigarettes.

The first was whether they were useful as an aid to smoking cessation. It concluded that e-cigarettes were as useful or as effective as nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches, nicotine gum and those sorts of items.

The second area that they looked at was whether the use of e-cigarettes appeared to lead to smoking tobacco products by adolescents. The Health Research Board found an association between adolescents who use e-cigarettes and subsequent smoking.

The third area looked at was that the board did a map of what might be called the harms or benefits, or both, of e-cigarettes. That is the 500-page document. This examines matters at a chemical level and the effect of the vapes on one’s cells and such matters. The essential conclusion was that it definitely appears that from all the research examined - I forget how many research papers it looked at but it was probably 150 - there is evidence that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco cigarettes. There is also evidence that e-cigarettes are not harmless. The final point that the board made, which returns to the Deputy’s point, was that more research is needed.

We are at a point in history, unfortunately, where e-cigarettes as a product are relatively new - I believe they were introduced in 2005 or 2007 - but it is also the case that the e-cigarettes that came on the market at that time bear little resemblance to the e-cigarettes that are around now and there are new products coming on stream all the time. As I was saying earlier about the heat-not-burn products, weird hybrid products are appearing. They are e-cigarettes in the sense that it is a liquid that is vaped but there is also a capacity for tobacco to be used in those products. Much of the research is trying to keep up with the technology, no more than mobile phones. There are some very attractive, sleek, e-cigarette products out there and these are being developed all of the time and made more beautiful in appearance, for want of a better term. Also, I cannot remember how many ingredients are in the average e-liquid but there are quite a few. As has already been mentioned, the flavours are out there. To try to have solid research on all of those aspects is very difficult because the minute the research is done another product is coming out in Japan or somewhere else. Then, exactly as the Deputy has said, it is a question of the point at which we can say we know what the long-term effects are.