Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

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

Photo of Neasa HouriganNeasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The research from King's College, London and the University of Waterloo in Canada found that children are more likely to find a range of popular vaping brands appealing if the packaging used incorporates bright colours as opposed to being plain. I am watching my speaking time tick down. In the time remaining, I want to try to understand how we got to the flavours issue altogether. On the one hand, we are talking about the cessation of smoking and trying to control people's smoking of tobacco, which is a very valid thing to explore. On the other, I walked past somebody recently who was vaping and there was a cloud of blueberry water vapour all around them. That bears no resemblance whatsoever to any experience of a long-term smoker who would have been smoking. I wonder how flavours have become such a large part of the market and how are we justifying it, not generally in terms of whether it is nice and I am not really interested in whether it is nice, but in terms of it as a cessation device. How have we come to the place where flavours are so important to the sector?

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