This week, like many before, there was an incessant barrage of anti-vaping messaging across many different spaces, including the Dail Chamber (see here) where a Minister of State, Jennifer Murnane O Connor TD (FF Carlow Kilkenny) opened an hour and a half discussion around a Statement on what the Government intended to do about nicotine inhaling products.
A Statement that was billed in the Oireachtas Diary as “Statements on the Use of Vapes and Nicotine Products by Young People and Adolescents”.
The Minister of State responsible for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy outlined the additional laws she and the Government are preparing to introduce; legislation to ban the sale of single use or disposable vapes is at an advanced state and will be introduced this term.
A second Bill will also be introduced that will restrict the colours and imagery on vapes “to make them less attractive”. This Bill will also contain bans on devices resembling toys and prohibit point of sale displays, in addition to a ban on instore advertising.
The Minister suggested that she was minded to write to individual Local Authorities suggesting that they implement some form of restriction on the number of stores that are permitted to sell nicotine inhaling products. She also stated that she would favour “shutters” in front of vaping products that would prevent them from being displayed.
It is the intention of the Environmental Health Service to continue to Test Purchase both tobacco and nicotine-inhaling products.
In the past 18 months, the EHS tested 700 stores and found 600 of them sought ID/refused to sell; although this 86% compliance rate is most welcome and encouraging, the detractors are more prepared to focus on those that failed the Test. (See here).
Of the 20 or so contributors to the discussion, not a single legislator was prepared to note the rights of adult users of nicotine containing products to have these products made available in ways that do not suggest that they are in need of protection.
We will have to await the Bills to see how many restrictions on existing users are being proposed and how costly to implement will these restrictions be for law abiding compliant retailers servicing an adult demand.
