Professor Des Cox:

Let me come in on that. Ninety percent of adult smokers took their first smoke below the age of 18. The tactics in the past were to hook teenagers. That is the playbook of the tobacco industry. The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs, ESPAD, surveyed just under 2,000 teenagers aged between 15 and 16. It was found that between 2015 and 2019, there was a 50% increase in e-cigarette use. This is a problem. People who quote the Healthy Ireland survey should note it is not designed to rule out e-cigarette use. A number of other surveys show that teenagers are experimenting and that we need to protect children in that regard.