Michael Moynihan: Cork City has a staggering number of vape shops among all the store closures

In late June, though, a new law which will see a ban on flavoured vapes and limits on the colours used in packaging moved a step closer to coming into force. It passed through the Dáil and went to the Seanad for consideration, while last month other legislation banning disposable vapes has completed its passage through the Oireachtas. File picture

You’re aware of what happened in Edenderry in Offaly recently.

As reported here, two gardaí became seriously ill while handling confiscated vapes which were believed to contain cannabinoids at Edenderry Garda Station. The two were hospitalised but thankfully were soon released.

A Garda source told this newspaper: “Both men, one is a sergeant and one is a garda, are fit and healthy. They're in their 30s. If these fine, fit, healthy gardaí who train hard can be hit like this, I worry about what would happen to kids...No one knows what’s in these things [vapes]. Vape shops are popping up everywhere, and everyone is using them and passing them around.” 

The source went on to add that the vapes believed to have caused the gardaí to become ill had been stored securely in a box; they had been seized from a business and were believed to have been intended for sale through vape shops.

To sum up, then. Two fit, strong men had to be hospitalised when handling a commodity being sold on every main street in Ireland, often by multiple outlets.

This seems dangerous at the very least and adds to a widespread sense of unease about vaping. There certainly seems to be no shortage of hand-wringing from the government about it, even if it’s taken a bit of time to see some legislative action.

In late June, though, a new law which will see a ban on flavoured vapes and limits on the colours used in packaging moved a step closer to coming into force. It passed through the Dáil and went to the Seanad for consideration, while last month other legislation banning disposable vapes has completed its passage through the Oireachtas.

However, these restrictions co-exist with a fact familiar to all readers: the sheer number of vape shops on our streets. I’m not exaggerating when I said multiple outlets above.

I know I’m not the first to make this point. Earlier this year, dereliction campaigners Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry pointed to the proliferation of vape and phone shops in Cork City, counting 35 such stores, 23 of which promoted vaping on the shop front.

But the vague sense of a rising tide of vape shops can be sharpened by direct experience, which happened to me on a quick run into town recently. On my travels I went along Oliver Plunkett Street, or as I now prefer to call it (in the style of The French Dispatch), le quartier vape.

On my travels I went along Oliver Plunkett Street, or as I now prefer to call it (in the style of 'The French Dispatch'), le quartier vape.

Coming up from the Parnell Place end, all seemed normal until I passed the intersection with Winthrop Street, after which the vape shops came thick and fast, occasionally one of them facing another across the street.

I counted six vape shops on that one half of the street alone (though at least one had also diversified into phone repairs, and may not be solely concentrated on the vape trade.) That seems an extraordinarily high number of retail outlets focused on selling a pretty narrow range of products.

Is the demand for vapes in Cork so high that all of these stores are profitable? We are gnawingly aware of the popularity of vapes among the youth of the country, for instance, but this seems a staggering number of shops offering this product. 

Even in the nicotine-stained days of near-universal smoking in Ireland, tobacconists usually doubled up as newsagents or corner shops rather than focusing entirely on cigarette sales.

Looking at this in a wider context, it’s also a remarkable comeback for bricks-and-mortar retail outlets.

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Everywhere, traditional shops and stores are under pressure to get customers through the doors, with the explosion of online shopping eviscerating main street retail. This is true all over the globe and Ireland is no different: we are as guilty of loving Amazon as every other territory, it seems.

Yet somehow the vape industry can buck that trend. Vape stores appear to have no issues with footfall; such shops can open next door to each other, almost, and still flourish, even as other retail outlets, some of them in operation for decades, decline and fall nearby.

While I was in town business also took me over to the North Main Street, a journey which entailed passing another couple of vape emporia as I approached — one on Castle Street, the other on the corner of Castle and North Main Streets, so close that the vape odour at one could probably be detected at the door of the other — before turning north along North Main Street itself.

Shop closures

The challenges facing traditional retail certainly seem to exist along this stretch of real estate.

In order, as I headed for the North Channel, I passed a furniture store (The Loft), suit shop (name hidden, apologies), sportswear store (Cummins Sports) and pet shop (Ideal Pet Shop) which were either closed, shut down, or sale agreed (and in some cases all three). That’s a fair variety of shops that are either gone or close to going.

Clearly this is not an either-or situation. Those shops on the North Main Street are not shutting down just because vape shops are opening up nearby or in the wider area; trade in one sector is not replacing trade in another, and it’s not as if someone going to town to buy a pair of football boots or a two-seater couch decides to spend that money on vapes.

In addition, the reason one shop closes may not be the same reason a neighbouring outlet shuts down. One may be struggling for custom; another may have received an offer from a developer which is just too good to ignore.

It is worth pointing out, however, that in a city with no shortage of long-vacant shopfronts, derelict buildings, and retail outlets shutting down — four within 60 metres on North Main Street — our vape shops continue to flourish and expand.

Witness the half-dozen mentioned above on Oliver Plunkett Street. That same area is home to Casey's Furniture, by the way, which is to relocate from those premises to open a new store at the former Webprint facility in Mahon Retail Park.

As reported here a couple of weeks ago, the furniture store stated that it will maintain its presence at the Oliver Plunkett Street-Grand Parade premises until future uses for the property have been secured, and it was striking to read that the company had commissioned an architect and property agent to undertake a feasibility study into the potential reuse and redevelopment of its city centre premises.

Is it too cynical to suggest that the most obvious new use for those open-plan, airy showrooms is staring us in the face? Surely the best way to use that space would be to subdivide it, carving it into a dozen or so vape shops, one inside the other like matryoshka dolls?

Don’t worry about the vape shops which are already in the city centre. We know there’s room for plenty more.