Could the generational ban be applied to vapes?

Newstalk, Ireland’s leading independent talk radio station, got in touch yesterday to ask if I would be available ‘to discuss the [Irish] government's possible generational ban on vapes and cigarettes’.

Yes, you read that right - a generational ban on vapes as well as tobacco. The situation is complicated because the Irish parliament has already passed a law that will raise the legal age of sale of tobacco from 18 to 21, starting next year, so it seems outrageously premature to be considering a generational ban even before that law is enforced but it demonstrates, yet again, that the stop smoking brigade never rests.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Ireland is a member of the European Union and the European Commission is currently considering a revised Tobacco Products Directive (TPD3) that may, or may not, advocate an EU-wide generational ban on tobacco.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that the Commission will probably propose a policy similar to the one it introduced on standardised packaging in TPD2 a decade or so ago whereby individual member states (like the UK) were permitted to introduce plain packs but it was their choice, unlike the ban on menthol cigarettes which was imposed on every member state whether they liked it or not, and several didn’t.

But back to the prospect of a generational ban in Ireland. First, it’s interesting that all ‘nicotine inhaling products’ (including vapes) should be included in the conversation because whether it happens now (unlikely) or in ten years it’s arguably inevitable at some point because, once campaigners and politicians have got it in their heads they can steer new generations of adults away from a product like tobacco by banning it at the point of sale, they will surely move on to other potentially unhealthy products - and vapes, regardless of their reduced risk, are an easy target. 

When I say ‘unhealthy’ I’m using the public health definition which seems to include any potentially addictive product, even one that evidence suggests is ‘safer’ compared to other products in its category (in this case nicotine). If however that ‘safer’ product is still potentially addictive it’s considered fair game for the Prohibitionists because, as we know, the war on smoking has already morphed into a war on addiction regardless of the relative risks.

Unfortunately I had to decline Newstalk’s request for an interview because it was live and I was unavailable, but I understand they interviewed Professor Luke Clancy and it would have been fun to go head-to-head with our old adversary, if that was the plan. In the early Noughties, before Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce a national indoor workplace smoking ban, Luke and I sparred several times on Irish radio and television but we were usually in studios on opposite sides of the Irish Sea. Eventually I met him in person when we were both invited to be interviewed by a local radio station in Ireland. I can’t remember which one but I do remember chatting to him very civilly in the car park afterwards and (whisper it) I rather liked him.

That was more than 20 years ago and in those days Prof Clancy would represent ASH Ireland (which seems to have been adopted by the Irish Heart Foundation and has a fairly low profile these days), but he’s been director-general of Tobacco Free Research Institute Ireland (which he co-founded in 2002) for yonks and that’s how he is usually introduced.

Whether the idea of a generational ban (tobacco and vapes) has any immediate legs in Ireland remains to be seen. Nevertheless, if I was a vaping advocate or worked for the vaping industry I’d been keeping a close eye on developments because Ireland may be a relatively small market but once the ball starts rolling it’s hard to stop internationally, as we discovered when the Irish Government unilaterally chose to ban smoking in all enclosed public places.

“It’s Ireland,” I was told more than once. “It’ll be fine. What happens in Ireland stays in Ireland.” Remind me, how did that work out?

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