New law bans sale of vapes as Cork principal says kids as young as second year are using them

SINGLE-use e-cigarettes which cost less than €10 and come in bright colours with flavours like blueberry sour raspberry and green gummy bear are sold at almost every petrol station, as well as in many specialised vape shops, of which Cork has several.

New legislation banning the sale of vapes to under 18s was introduced on December 22, but does this come too late as Cork schools report students as young as second years vaping?

In addition to the laws, the new SPHE curriculum for first to third years includes lessons on vaping, tobacco, nicotine addiction, and marketing by vaping and tobacco industries, but paediatricians warn that “more is needed halt the upsurge in teenage vaping across Ireland”.

Aaron Wolfe, principal of Coláiste Éamann Rís in the city, told The Echo: “You can see quite obviously in schools that smoking has really reduced, you’d never catch a student smoking anymore.

“It’s much harder to catch them vaping as there’s not the same smell off of them as a cigarette, it’s a very difficult thing to manage.

“Before, you’d see the pack of cigarettes and the lighter sticking out of their pocket, but now they can hide a Lost Mary [vape] on them and it’s much harder to catch because you can’t smell it.”

Mr Wolfe acknowledged “the danger that the vapers might become smokers”, but described it as a “national issue”, saying that it comes down to parents and also to the Government to legislate the sale and advertising of them to young people.

Peter Hyde, deputy principal at Edmund Rice College in Carrigaline, said that there has been a “huge increase in vaping activity in recent years”.

“It’s been a number of years since I’ve caught anybody in the school smoking, but some of the second years would be vaping,” he told The Echo.

He agreed with Mr Wolfe that “catching them smoking was far easier, they had to have a cigarette or a rollie and they’d come out of the toilet and you’d smell it”.

One of their tactics is to allocate different bathrooms to different year groups, with Mr Hyde explaining that both first and second years have their own bathroom block, then third and fourth years share one, and fifth and sixth years share another.

“We had some of the junior students going into the toilets and there being five or six people in there vaping and telling them they can’t use the toilet, plus it sets a bad example to the younger students,” he said.

Mr Hyde said he and the principal are also considering the installation of vape detectors, but there’s a cost of around €1,500 for that.

He explained: “They’re not like a smoke detector where you just stick them up, you have to get them wired and then get them connected to a communications cabinet, then you get an alert on your phone saying vaping in toilet five, for example.

“You’ll have to go in there, say ‘I know you were vaping’, and they’ll all deny it, so I’m not too sure if it will work, we could just be getting an awful lot of text messages.”

Currently, they monitor the toilets and call out those loitering in there during break times, but he said that some of the teachers and year heads have raised the issue of students having to go to the toilet during class to vape because they are addicted.

“Compared to a pack of cigarettes, if they have an Elf bar [vape] in their pencil case it looks like a highlighter pen, they’re very easy to carry with them to the bathroom, and you obviously have to let them leave to go to the toilet.”

Mr Hyde said that all the different flavours seemed to be advertising towards children, asking: “Why else would you want strawberry or bubblegum candy flavours?”

He added that the issue has come up at various meetings with other teachers and principals, saying “all schools are saying that it’s an issue”.

A spokesperson for the Cork Education and Training Board (CETB) said all of its schools have had to include the issue of vaping in their school rules, telling The Echo: “All Cork ETB schools have a Code of Behaviour which addresses the issue of vaping, smoking, and misuse of illicit substances on school grounds.

“In addition to this, schools have a Substance and Misuse policy and the two are used in conjunction with each other to set out guidelines for students and parents.”

As well as getting young people hooked on nicotine, which is an addictive substance, disposable vapes are also terrible for the environment: they are a source of single-use plastic and contain lithium batteries which make them a serious fire risk.

In addition to banning these disposables, the Faculty of Paediatricians is also calling for a ban on the sale of flavours, apart from tobacco flavour, for refillable vapes, as several EU countries such as Denmark, France, and The Netherlands have done.

'ALARMING NUMBERS'

A member of the Faculty of Paediatrics at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland told The Echo that the organisation “strongly support the introduction of legislation to ban disposable vapes to protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people”, saying that they “are using them in alarming numbers”.

In a position paper, the Faculty of Paediatrics says that disposable vapes are the most frequently used vaping devices among young people and that the use of vapes by this age group poses serious health risks to them.

“The environmental damage of disposable vapes is also well documented,” the Dean of the Faculty of Paediatrics Dr Judith Meehan said, welcoming the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill, banning the sale of vaping products to under 18s.

The legislation will also ban the sale of tobacco and e-cigarettes through vending machines and at events for children; a new licensing system for retailers of tobacco and nicotine products will be introduced, and advertising of nicotine inhaling products around schools and on public transport will be prohibited.

“Vaping has significant long-term health risks for children and young people, whose brains and bodies are still developing,” Dr Meehan said.

“Nicotine, which is highly addictive, is the major psychoactive component of vaping solution, and exposure to nicotine can lead to long-term negative impacts on the brain, as well as addiction.

“Aerosols in most vapes contain toxic substances associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and lung disorders.”

The new law banning the sale of vapes to young people came into effect on Friday, December 22, meaning it is now an offence to sell a nicotine inhaling product to a child, and the offence carries a penalty of a fine of up to €4,000 and/up to a six-month term of imprisonment.

Other measures in the Act surrounding advertising, packaging, a licensing system, and vending machines will be signed early this year.

Dr Meehan says the legislation is a step in the right direction, but more is needed to “halt the upsurge in teenage vaping across Ireland”.

The Department of Health has recently launched a public consultation process to consider additional regulations on the sale of vapes in Ireland, which the faculty hope will lead to more effective legislation to help curb teenage vaping, such as raising the age for the sale of tobacco products to 21.

The position paper also outlines the immediate need to regulate digital marketing campaigns disproportionately targeting young people, and to ban the use of flavours other than tobacco flavour in all vaping products, as well as an outright ban on disposable vapes, which are the vaping product of choice among young people and are creating significant environmental waste.

Describing it as a “gateway effect”, Dr Meehan explained that a review by the Health Research Board in Ireland found that young people who had ever used a vape were three to five times more likely to start smoking compared to those who never used vapes.

“We are creating a new generation of nicotine-addicted young people, posing significant lifetime health risks,” she said.