Irish Examiner view: A ban gone up in smoke

Popularity of vaping

There has been widespread acceptance of vaping in recent years. Picture: Nick Ansell/PA Wire

Given what we have learned in recent decades, it’s entertaining now to see old cigarette advertisements featuring doctors and athletes promoting various brands for being smoother or less irritating. 

One famous ad even claimed its cigarettes were better because the tobacco was “toasted”, as though that somehow reduced its culpability in giving users an assortment of deadly diseases.

It’s surprising, therefore, to see the widespread acceptance of vaping as an activity. While there is a general acceptance in society that drawing cigarette smoke and nicotine into your lungs can only be harmful, the explosion in vaping shows an odd reluctance to admit that inhaling a mouthful of chemicals when vaping might not be good for one’s health.

Speaking on the Irish Examiner podcast Let Me Tell You, Tánaiste Micheal Martin, who introduced the workplace smoking ban 20 years ago, described vaping as “the revenge of the tobacco industry”, adding: “I think it’s the tobacco industry coming back at us... I’m very angry about it. I think the number of children and young people vaping is too high”.

This is a particularly insidious ploy of the vaping industry, luring in younger people via sweet-smelling flavourings. If vaping is truly the revenge of the tobacco industry, then it deserves the same response that industry got — an outright ban on smoking in public places.

Otherwise, in 10 or 20 years’ time we are likely to view vaping in the same way that we now view those old cigarette advertisements, and with the very same reaction: What were we thinking?