They believe the marketing around e-cigarettes encourages young people to take up vaping.
In the last few years, there’s been a serious rise in people using e-cigarettes, or vaping. While once thought to be the lesser of two evils, there are now calls to ban flavoured e-cigarettes; there’s been a huge uptake of young people using them especially. Once used as a way to wean off smoking, e-cigarettes introduce their own host of issues, with the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) reportedly supporting the calls to ban them. The Independent says that the IHF hopes to ban flavoured e-cigarettes, with the hopes they’ll be less appealing to young people.
Advocacy officer for the IHF, Mark Murphy, says this of vape flavouring:
“Vape manufacturers clearly use flavours – and research has identified thousands of them – that they know will attract minors.”
In a study it was shown that third and fourth year students identified the marketing and packaging behind e-cigarettes to be more appealing to young people and children than adults.
The Oireachtas wants to do away with the bright packaging associated with vapes, and bring in plain packaging instead. They also want to scrap advertising on social media platforms for e-cigarettes. Finally they hope to consider increasing the age of e-cigarette purchase from 18 to 21 years.
According to the Independent, HSE research shows that 71% support banning tobacco sales to anyone under the age of 21.
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