Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not think there are too many people in the House who will be objecting to the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill. It is timely and required without a doubt, in particular some of the measures the Minister of State is proposing to introduce in terms of interacting with under-18s and particularly those who are seeking applications through licences, and even when they are not, banning the use of remote selling and trying to licence selling online for those who are, which is very important.

Having some of the measures the Minister of State is proposing in terms of penal measures are well-required. We have seen them before in the alcohol industry and they do work if they are properly enforced. That is also to be welcomed. Not having them as vended products available to under-18s is very important.

Advertising restrictions have been mentioned in this Chamber a number of times. One area of the Bill about which the Minister of State spoke was with regard to cinema advertising. I point out to her that there is a very large industry in America around product placement, of which I am sure the Minister of State is well aware, where companies actually pitch and pay to put their products into movie sets. In certain films, at times one wonders whether one is watching a film or an advertisement for certain products. I will give the Minister of State one example. "Peaky Blinders" is a series I like very much. Our own Cillian Murphy plays the lead role in that, but I would say the amount of time Cillian does not have a cigarette in his mouth is approximately 10% of his acting time on that programme. That is a big problem. It suggests to me the question as to how we are going to get that message out because much of the informal advertising that is going on is targeting underage people.

Another thing that is welcome in the Bill is highlighting the issues of electronic cigarettes, not just tobacco products. Deputy Alan Farrell outlined this already. There was a seismic shift in terms of the tobacco industry over the last ten or 15 years. We can all remember some of the famous movies that were released in the late 1990s about how big tobacco was fighting back and how whistle-blowers in the tobacco industry were being absolutely tied up in the courts in terms of the evidence they were giving as to how big tobacco was trying to make its products more addictive, essentially, and how it was trying to market them in different ways. Ultimately, the tobacco industry understood that once a smoker was hooked, as with any addiction, it created a customer for life. That was the outline idea. That was what it was trying to achieve. It is not because the industry would like to see people smoking. It is a product, and they are selling it and making money. Many companies are making a lot of money.

As Deputy Alan Farrell outlined, we had a major change probably in the last decade, and we even saw it in Ireland, whereby a large number of vaping companies were suddenly acquired and consolidated by the tobacco companies. Big tobacco is no longer big tobacco only; it is big vaping. Big vaping as far as I am concerned is a completely different product to a tobacco product. In fact, I do not see that they bear much relation at all. I have a 16-year-old son who hangs out with eight kids, on average, who are half split between boys and girls. Three of them who are involved in GAA do not vape, but all the others do. When they are asked the reason why they do it, some of the girls say they are doing it for the same reason as smoking cigarettes. It is dietary; they say it curbs their appetites. I do not know whether it does, but I will tell the Minister of State what I do know. I have seen them going out at night with their nails, handbags and vapes all colour co-ordinated. It is a fashion accessory. Unfortunately, that is where big tobacco has taken it. Deputy Alan Farrell also outlined the issue of flavours. It is not too dissimilar to the alcohol industry when we allowed vodkas and colas and all of those drinks to be absolutely adulterated with sugar to try to get younger people drinking them. We see all that in our social drinking scene now. The same is now happening with vaping with all these colours and flavours. In large part, however, it has largely become a fashion accessory. I do not know how we try to turn back the clock on that.

I spent some time doing research in the medical area, and anybody who thinks that vaping - taking small molecules of oils and other vapours into the very deepest tissues of the lungs - is not going to have a negative effect over time is deluded. I know that big tobacco will keep bringing out different surveys and records to say vapes are a tool to get off smoking and no long-term damage can be attributed to them. I speak to many doctors, however, and they already see a lot of different types of damage from vaping.

There is much work going on in Ireland particularly at the moment around trying to give drug delivery to the very smallest tissues in a person's lungs as one of the most effective ways to introduce needed medication into a person's system. What we are now doing is putting vapour into those tissues. In medicine, we want to target them for a benefit, but big tobacco wants to target them for their addictive effect. That is what is happening. I support what the Minister of State is doing with this Bill but there are other areas around it.

What we have now is the normalisation of smoking and vaping. We have got to try to find a way to get back at that. We were doing so well up until about ten years ago. We were finally starting to get to a point where there was a change in young people in terms of how they perceived cigarettes and vaping has absolutely pushed that to one side. It is a very sad fact but whether a person is vaping or smoking, the addictive nature of the product will stay with him or her. It is very difficult to get off and unfortunately, people are made more addicted over time. The longer a person is smoking, the harder it is to get off. There are health implications of tobacco for the youth.

One other thing we see is that there is a lot of marijuana smoking going on in the country among youths, as I am sure the Minister of State is aware. Whether that starts with smoking tobacco products or people smoke it because they vape or whatever, there is sometimes a large cultural synergy between those things. We have to try to get back to the health metrics, but we have to take this out of the fashion space. There is nothing fashionable about vaping.

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