A charity has expressed the urgent need for a service geared towards assisting young individuals in quitting vaping to prevent nicotine dependence in their future lives. The Irish Heart Foundation has voiced concern over what it considers a “tide of youth vaping” across Ireland, stressing the requirement for specialised assistance for the youth to overcome this massively addictive practice.
In their discussion about budget allocation, the charity advocated for hike in cigarette prices, arguing that each packet should cost €20. Additionally, they proposed imposing fresh taxes on vaping devices to deter young people from using them. The foundation’s Advocacy Director, Chris Macey, pointed out that numerous youths are actively seeking aid to quit vaping and stated that similar stop-vaping programmes in the United States have proven incredibly effective when made available.
Macey criticised the state for not doing enough to tackle the vaping crisis among young people till now, stating that failure to provide adequate support could result in thousands of teenagers falling prey to chronic addiction. He cited the Health Service Executive (HSE), which consistently receives requests via its quit smoking services from individuals seeking aids to quit vaping.
However, Macey further pointed out that the authority’s Quit.ie service does not have sufficient resources to service this escalating demand, as it needs strategies more tailored than traditional smoking cessation services. The Irish Heart Foundation also drew from data from Spunout, a youth information and support platform. It showed thousands of webpage viewings related to the health impacts of smoking and vaping, with the search term “how to quit vaping?” prominently driving the traffic to this site.
The Truth Initiative, a public health non-profit body based in the US, has successfully impacted more than 750,000 young individuals through its “This is Quitting” Programme, counteracting the surge in youth vaping, according to the charity’s statement. Mr Macey expressed concerning health issues associated with vaping, such as its potential to disrupt adolescent brain development, harm blood vessels, inflict high blood pressure, induce changes in heart rhythm and severely affect the respiratory system.
Shockingly, research suggests that it provides a gateway to traditional smoking, which continues to claim a dozen lives daily in Ireland, marking it as the top reason for avoidable deaths. There are fears that the proliferation of vaping, aggressively marketed to youths with an array of around 16,000 varying flavours, may result in elevated smoking rates and expose our younger generation to untimely death from illnesses related to tobacco usage.
The foundation is advocating for a budget exceeding €1 million to establish a vaping prevention awareness campaign and a research project, which would lay the groundwork for a vaping cessation scheme. It is also proposing a €3.25 price hike in cigarettes to elevate the cost to €20 per packet.
In addition, Mr Macey emphasised that the government should proffer more assistance to smokers attempting to quit, considering that they contribute an extra €1 billion in taxes, whereas annual expenditures on anti-smoking initiatives merely amount to €17 million. – PA