Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 3 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

General Scheme of the Public Health (Tobacco and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019: Department of Health

Ms Claire Gordon:

It certainly will be. This general scheme was submitted in October 2019. It is hard to keep track of years since the pandemic. Following the submission of the general scheme, the new programme for Government came in and one of its recommendations is the curbing the advertising of nicotine inhaling products near schools, public transport and cinemas. This is a similar provision to the one that is in the Public Health (Alcohol) Act. That is clearly in the programme for Government and is something that we would go to the Government on in order that we can include it in the scheme.

The other very good provision in the general scheme is the ban on the sale of tobacco products in places or at events which are designed for children. We do not have any of the detail of that provision right now - for example, with regard to what would constitute a place for children or a children’s event - but it will definitely be a very powerful provision if the Office of the Attorney General drafts it in the way that we hope, which would involve keeping it fairly wide. Essentially, you are not naming out.

This is one of those provisions whereby it is quite difficult to set out in law exactly what events or places you are talking about, but anyone would know them if they saw them. For example, we would all know that a Peppa Pig concert would be directed primarily at children, so that would be an event at which we would not want someone selling cigarettes.

Deputy Hourigan referred to the density of retail outlets. This is another way to address that issue and make sure that a child can go about his or her daily life without being exposed to the sale of cigarettes. Somebody mentioned denormalisation earlier. That is the issue for us when we look at the damage. This is a normal consumer product. That is what is so odd about tobacco and cigarettes. As a legacy, for historical reasons, there is a product for sale beside the chewing gum and the newspapers that will literally kill two out of three people who use it. Historically, fair enough, it was there as a consumer product, but now, when we know what we know, it is always a matter of saying this is not an ordinary consumer product. It kills, I think, 7.6 million people a year and, because our population is increasing across the globe, yes, the proportion of people who smoke is going down, but the actual number of people who smoke is going up. There is a huge level of disease and death to come, and that is from just a consumer product. That is what it is. It is sold in shops, it is legal to buy it and there is nothing going for it except that it will kill you if you keep using it. We are trying to find ways-----

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