“We are very conscious in terms of the costs
facing people who are thinking about making a quit
attempt… We currently know that about three percent
in the population are using e-cigarettes and I think
it’s very important that we are open and honest with
what we know.”
— Dr Paul Kavanagh of the Royal College of Surgeons
Twenty years ago, one third of Irish adults were smokers.
That figure has fallen to one-fifth, with the country being a
leader in implementing a widespread smoking ban in 2006
followed by tobacco product warnings coupled with year-on-
year rises in the cost of a pack of cigarettes.
Despite these measures, plus an uptick in vaping in recent
years and the emergence of a health conscious boxercising
and crossfitting generation, one expert has warned that Irish
millennials in particular are smoking too much.
Dr Paul Kavanagh of the Royal College of Surgeons is an
adviser to the Health Service Executive’s Quit programme.
Speaking on national radio, he said more than one-in-five
people aged 15 or over in Ireland smokes.
The expert told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme this figure
increases to one-in-three of 25 to 34-year-olds.
He welcomed the reduction in adult smoking rates over the
past two decades but said there is a long way to go.
“There’s about half a million quit attempts in Ireland each
year, and unfortunately one-in-two people go it alone, they
go cold turkey.”
One factor in the ‘going it alone’ mentality, Dr Kavanagh
said, could be the cost of nicotine replacement therapy
in the Republic of Ireland, where it is more expensive to
purchase the stop smoking aid than across the border in
Northern Ireland.
However, he said that someone who is smoking a pack of
cigarettes a day is spending around €2,000 - €4,000 a year
on the bad habit, so the investment upfront in an alternative
to smoking increases their likelihood of becoming smoke-
free and saving money and lives long-term.
Dr Kavanagh added: “We are very conscious in terms of
the costs facing people who are thinking about making
a quit attempt.”
On e-cigarettes as a means to quit smoking for good, the
doctor said:
“We currently know that about three percent in the population
are using e-cigarettes and I think it’s very important that
we are open and honest with what we know and do not
know when it comes to e-cigarettes. Vaping does deliver
nicotine but what’s different to smoking is that people don’t
burn tobacco, so the risk profile associated with vaping is
different and that has been in a number of large reports.
But reports show that we don’t yet know the long-term
implications of vaping.”
Meanwhile figures from Euromonitor International published
last summer show Irish vapers are the third biggest spenders
on devices and e-liquids. The nation’s spend on vape products
shot up by over 30 percent from €10.70 in 2015 to €14.40
per capita in 2017.
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