Mark Murphy: Yes. The Irish public wants a tobacco endgame
The UK made history at the end of April when it passed the Tobacco and Vapes Act. This landmark piece of legislation has global health implications and consequences across the island of Ireland.
Firstly, the Act prohibits the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1st, 2009. As this age group gets older, they can never legally be sold tobacco. So over decades, a smoke-free generation becomes a smoke-free society.
The Act is not a prohibition on smoking, nor does it restrict the choice of people who currently smoke. Rather it diminishes the ability of the tobacco industry to recruit and addict new customers.
Secondly, the Act strengthens the regulation of vapes and other nicotine products, especially where products are cynically designed and marketed to target children. Crucially for Ireland, it will apply to all four regions of the UK, meaning children and future generations in Northern Ireland will be better protected from tobacco and nicotine harm than those in the Republic. Is that acceptable?
As the only European Union country to share a land border with the UK and one with deep ties going back generations, it is time for Ireland, I believe, to follow suit.
Banning the sale of tobacco products to children born after a certain year would be utterly transformative for Irish society and our healthcare system. It is often forgotten that 4,500 people die every year from tobacco. Every week in Ireland, smoking kills nearly 100 people and causes 1,000 hospital admissions due to preventable heart disease, stroke, lung disease and cancer.
Sadly, despite the State being a traditional leader in tobacco control, 17 per cent of the Irish population still smoke. That’s more than 800,000 people. More alarmingly is that 12 per cent of Irish teenagers smoke, according to 2024 research by the TobaccoFree Research Institute Ireland for the Department of Health, while the reduction in smoking has stalled since 2019.
Not only does smoking destroy lives, families and childhoods, and take loved ones from us early, it places a colossal burden on our healthcare system. And despite this human tragedy on an unimaginable scale, there is a fatalism that it will always be like this, and that smoking will always be a virus on our society.
It does not have to be that way. The UK has set the benchmark, and it is vital that Ireland follows.
Fortunately, the Irish public are overwhelmingly in favour of a tobacco endgame. A 2022 Health Service Executive poll shows 83 per cent of the public support a complete phase out of tobacco product sales, while a 2023 Irish Heart Foundation Ipsos/B&A poll shows 76 per cent support children born after a specified date never being able to buy cigarettes legally.
On vaping, Ireland is already moving in the right direction. Two Bills are progressing through the Oireachtas that will ban disposable vapes and bring in stronger regulations on e-cigarettes, including the complete ban on all e-cigarette flavours bar tobacco and unflavoured, which is to be hugely welcomed.
For too long, vapes have been designed to appeal to children with their bright, colourful packaging and their enticing fruity flavours. These Bills will put an end to that to protect youth health.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin showed historic leadership by introducing the world’s first national workplace smoking ban in 2004. As Ireland takes up the EU presidency on July 1st, it is time that we seize this unique opportunity and announce plans for the EU’s first smoke-free generation across the island of Ireland.
Mark Murphy is the interim director of advocacy at the Irish Heart Foundation
Larissa Nolan: No. We need to resist following Britain on this
By rights I should support Britain’s upcoming ban on smoking for those who turn 18 next year. My own son is in this group, so if we lived there he’d be spared the deadly culture I experienced as a teenager in the 1990s, where a cigarette was the coolest fashion accessory. Almost all of us were social smokers then, and I’m forever thankful I copped on quickly enough and stubbed the hateful habit out. The fallout of that era is becoming sadly more evident around me as the years go on.
Yet I have misgivings about what our nearest neighbours are about to do and I would caution our leaders from rushing to copy them and this superficial law. It’s a law that trades personal freedom for the false promise of security.
At first glance the UK “generational” ban on tobacco products appears a noble aim, as smoking is undoubtedly awful so surely it must be a good thing to shield our young people from buying cigarettes into the future. But this is not a public-health intervention with clear merit, like, say, Ireland’s workplace smoking ban, which meant we could all go to the pub without choking in a fug of fag fumes.
In the culture of safetyism, it takes away the prize possession on becoming an adult – personal autonomy.
It’s denying the next generation the liberty that only fully arrives on turning 18: the capacity to make your own decisions without intervention, come what may. That’s true empowerment, really; the opposite is coddling.
Making choices and taking responsibility for the consequences is one of the greatest privileges of being human. It also has an important purpose in personal progression: it’s character-building, forms personalities and ensures we gain wisdom, not by force or blind rule but through lessons learned from experience. It rewards personal responsibility, which strengthens resilience for both a nation and its citizens.
This landmark legislation launches a new era where those born after 2008 are absolved – or deprived – of the right to be wrong.
If authority figures believe they know better than everyone else and can prevent people from doing things that are within the law, for the public good, then where does it end? Can we justify creating a society that prevents adults from making choices, whether bad or good, once those choices are legal as a whole?
Such civil liberties are outlined in the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, which declares all humans are equal in dignity, including dignity of such things as risk, failure, making mistakes and lifestyle choices. It could also come under the right to free development of personality.
This forthcoming ban fails on a number of other practical points. It may well be unworkable to have different regulations depending on age range, with one law for a person aged 18 and another for their 19-year-old friend, and so on. There is also the gamble cigarettes will gain a certain nostalgic, rebel cachet from being prohibited in this way.
The big flaw in the British Bill is that it lets vapes off the hook in that they are not included in the ban. It neglects to tackle the very product that has created a new generation of child nicotine addicts; and the one whose harms are yet unknown. This means Big Tobacco gets to keep its current new batch of customers, hooked on the most addictive substance in the world, for life, immune from the effects of the new law.
We need to resist following Britain headlong on this one. Both New Zealand and Denmark have reversed plans to bring in generational bans.
Its basis is in making security and comfort sacrosanct at the expense of liberty. Better to look at other ways before making such a sacrifice.
Larissa Nolan is national communications director for Aontú and is writing in a personal capacity