Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To answer the Deputy's question, what is known about e-cigarettes is that there is a known harm reduction benefit to them for long-term smokers who have failed to quit using other safer methods. However, at the same time because of the business model and the marketing practices of certainly the vast majority of the people who sell them, there is a danger to young people. The issue is where to strike the balance. I do not know how anyone could even think a balance can be struck by having the availability of 16,000 different flavours that are in various markets.

These are marketing tools and they are almost exclusively directed at young people because if young people are not addicted, there is no business model. As Ms Power said, someone working in an industry whose products kill one in two of the people who use them is not really concerned about what effect those products will have. It beggars belief that anyone would think it is preferable to ensure that a long-term smoker has access to strawberry milkshake and chocolate fudge flavours of e-cigarettes, even though that creates a danger and risk for a whole generation of young people. We do not know the full extent of the problem. We can legitimately say that the impact of e-cigarettes on people's health will be less than smoking but a lit cigarette contains 4,000 different poisons and it has elements of rocket fuel and rat poison in it. There is little that could be sold that would be as toxic or more toxic than that. Just being less harmful than cigarettes is not a great recommendation for anybody to use e-cigarettes.

The balance has to be struck with children in mind because we cannot afford to have a situation in ten years' time where we see the effect of wider scale addiction than we have already. The addiction level is serious. It can still be tackled effectively but we are running out of time. We have to move on this quickly. We cannot afford to wait and see how this develops.