Government signals on future-proofing nicotine products legislation welcome, says Irish Cancer Society

Wednesday, 4 March: The Irish Cancer Society has welcomed the Government’s announcement that it has approved legislation tightening restrictions on nicotine inhaling and novel nicotine products, such as nicotine pouches.

The Irish Cancer Society has long-called on Government to future-proof this legislation highlighting the fact that the tobacco industry was one step ahead of policymakers.

Suzanne Dowd, Senior Advocacy Officer, Irish Cancer Society said: “This is very welcome step which, once enacted, will protect future generations of young people in Ireland from being exposed to harmful ‘novel’ nicotine products.

Whilst recent regulations tackling the availability of vaping products has been hugely helpful, it also had an unforeseen counter-productive effect: it meant Big Tobacco pivoted and began targeting young people with novel products like pouches, in a cynical attempt to circumvent the vaping restrictions.

The Irish Cancer Society has been sounding the alarm bell for two years on this issue. We had raised concerns that our national legislative system was not adaptable to the emergence of novel nicotine products. Government has been too slow to catch up, and stay ahead of, the cynical marketing tactics of the tobacco industry.

In particular we called for this legislation to be future-proofed. We see this working well already in other EU countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands. Instead of having to legislate for every new product that emerges onto the market, a Minister for Health can impose regulatory measures to restrict new and emerging nicotine products as and when they become available. We want Ireland to follow this model so that we can avoid playing catch up while big tobacco invents new products to get young people hooked on nicotine.

We look forward to further engagement with Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, and Minister of State, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, and to scrutinising the legislation when it becomes available.

Without urgent action, there is a significant risk that the anti-smoking generation could become the nicotine addicted generation.”

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