Mr. Chris Macey:

The intention to raise the age at which nicotine products can be bought by a young person is definitely not aspirational. We had a transatlantic conference yesterday on this issue. The HSE spoke in support of this measure. We believe there is support in the Department for it. I do not know how substantial it is at this point but there is definitely support. The Economic and Social Research Institute stated in 2017 that this is the way to go, or one of the significant ways to go to further reduce tobacco use. This measure became federal law in the United States in 2019, having been introduced in a number of states, starting with Hawaii and California in 2016. The evidence is suggesting that among people aged 18 to 20, it is reducing smoking by between 21.7% and 33.9%. It is also having a major impact on people aged between 15 and 17. Older groups often procure cigarettes for those younger groups when they are underage. This is a serious and important measure that will come through because it makes sense. As I said in my opening statement, it is proportional because of the damage that smoking does to people, particularly young people. We heard evidence yesterday about how one is more prone to addiction to cigarettes when one is young and the damage, not just from the length of time one is smoking but the actual damage being done while one is young, is much more considerable than among people who started in older age. It will be effective. We have done it before. In 2002, we increased the age of sale from 16 to 18 and it was incredibly successful. It is one of the main reasons our teenage smoking rate fell from 41% to 13%.

It is enforced in other countries, such as India. This is not an out-there, extreme proposal. The other thing is that it does not go against young people's rights. People have said to me that if you are old enough to go to war for your country, you should be old enough to buy a packet if cigarettes. That is fair enough. The first question is who would want to send an 18-year-old to war. We did send 40,000 young men to war in the First World War, many of whom were aged between 18 and 20. Many of them did not come home. This is about protecting young people's health. Based on the American figures, if we introduced this measure today, we would save the lives of roughly 3,500 people born between 2000 and 2019. It is a measure that can have a big and long-term impact on smoking rates. It would reduce much of the misery and destruction caused by smoking for future generations.

We must deal with it. We need an endgame for smoking. Tobacco had a beginning and it must have an end. We cannot just wait and hope, and go along as we are doing, with 6,000 deaths a year in Ireland. We must deal with this and the legislation is a very sensible measures that will help.