Sir, – The suggestion in “Widespread availability of black market vapes” (Letters, October 14th) that the introduction of an e-cigarette and e-liquid tax should be accompanied by additional measures to strengthen the regulation of e-cigarettes is, in one way, correct. However, your readers should be wary when the writer of that letter is employed by the world’s second biggest tobacco company with over €30 billion in annual global revenue.
Big Tobacco products are responsible for 4,500 deaths in Ireland every year and most smokers start smoking before the age of 18.
In their unceasing quest to maximise profit, Big Tobacco has diversified into the manufacture of many flavours of e-cigarettes, embellished with colourful packaging, to target a new generation to use nicotine, which research shows is a gateway to smoking.
This is the lens through which it is necessary to view tobacco companies in anything they say.
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The tobacco industry has long exaggerated the impact of smuggling and criminality to minimise the duties and taxes imposed on their products.
And yet it is important for public health, as well as the exchequer, that both anti-smuggling and enforcement measures are properly resourced. So we agree that e-cigarette taxes must go hand in hand with additional measures like retail licensing and regular inspections.
But we also need the promised ban on disposable vapes, e-cigarette flavours, and all forms of marketing, as well as the implementation of plain packaging to break the grip that Big Tobacco has over our children for once and for all. – Yours, etc,
Prof EMMET O’BRIEN,
Chairperson,
ASH Ireland,
Council of the Irish Heart Foundation,
Dublin 6.
