Disposable Vape Ban – Is This The End Of The Lost Mary?

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Once upon a time the potent tar-like substance that is the cigarette was all the rage. Romanticised in hundreds of Hollywood movies since the 1960s, these cancer-causing sticks oozed glamour and rebellion.

However, in 2024 a more flavoursome and colourful alternative seems to have Gen Z and Millennials in a chokehold. Pink lemonade and blue razz ice flavoured air is now the chosen poison of hordes of young people to leave in their wake.

There was a time when smoking a cigarette would have given you some street cred from the cool kids, but now inhaling this brightly coloured toxic vessel with long-term side effects still unknown is the cooler option.

However, we could be about to see an end to this cherry ice puffing pandemic with the recent approval from the cabinet to allow Minister of Health Stephen Donnelly to put restrictions on the sale of disposable vapes in Ireland.

This ban, which will be brought in on environmental and public health grounds, will include restrictions on the flavours, colourful packaging and advertising of vapes in stores.

This action is being taken as the government believes that vaping companies are specifically targeting children with the bright multicolored packaging. The ban on selling vapes to under-18s was introduced in 2023 to curb the relatively inexpensive habit which had found its way into the pencil cases of secondary school students around the country.

Many vapes contain nicotine which can lead to people becoming addicted and dependent on them. A nicotine addiction can raise your heart and blood pressure as well as make you grumpier and more irritable if you come off it.

This ban on disposable vapes would be the next step in protecting children and adolescents from the possible harmful side effects of these devices. The effects of vaping are still a bit of a mystery to scientists and medical professionals around the world.

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Consultant Cardiologist, Prof. Mark Dayer explains how there was a 30- year lag period between the peak in smoking and the peak in lung cancer in the 1990s. “People haven’t been vaping for thirty years so, I don’t think we can know the consequences yet,” he says.

The consequences of smoking have been well-researched over the decades. Prof. Dayer mentions how “cardiovascular disease is one of the most common killers around the world and how smoking is a major cause for it”.

The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the side effects of smoking, a non-smoker can have on average an extra eleven and a half years of life compared to a smoker.

“If you stop (smoking) somewhere between your late twenties and early thirties you will lose about a year and a half of life rather than keeping smoking where you will lose eleven and a half years of life,” he says. “If you stop in your late thirties to late forties, you still have loads to gain and will lose on average two and a half years.”

Although moving on to e-cigarettes is still regarded as a safer alternative to smoking tobacco, the tables seem to have turned and there is a concern that vaping is creating a gateway for young people to start smoking in the future.

“People are trying to work out if vaping leads to smoking or if these people who are vaping would have been likely to smoke anyway because they are that sort of person,” he says.

As mentioned, there isn’t a whole pile of evidence yet on the consequences of vaping; Prof. Dayer points to a “strange entity called EVALI” which is a vaping-associated lung injury caused by vapes that contain the cannabis plant chemical THC or Vitamin E.

He goes on to say, “that is really nasty and has killed people. We know the short-term effects (increase in heart rate and blood pressure) but we don’t know the long-term effects,” he says. “You just have to let time evolve; we haven’t been inhaling strawberries every day for thirty years. You don’t know the impact of that and all the other chemicals that are in the vapes.”

But has the rise in vaping numbers has led to a decrease in smoking-related illnesses? Professor Dayer remarks how there has been a fall in the rates of heart attacks and lung cancer since the early 2000s but proving the causation can be tricky.

He says, “You can perhaps say there is an association, but a causation will be more difficult. If vaping is truly less harmful than smoking, we will still see rates continue to fall as people vape more and smoke less.”

While this proposed ban may see a reduction in the numbers of Lost Marys and Elf Bars littering the nation, only time will tell if it really changes the mindset of Gen Z towards this potentially harmful habit.

It may be another decade or so before we see with our own eyes the true impacts of vaping, so Prof. Dayer concludes that “There is no health benefit to vaping, so don’t start vaping”.

• health
• vaping