Ireland has lost focus on tackling smoking while intensifying efforts to restrict vaping, a leading addiction specialist has said.
Dr Garett McGovern, a GP and Medical Director at the Priority Medical Clinic in Dundrum, says the national conversation has become increasingly hostile towards vaping, even though smoking remains a far greater health threat.
A polarising debate
“We’ve really gone to war now on vaping,” he said. “We haven’t really gone to war on tobacco, but we have on vaping, and I just think that it’s a very polarising debate now,” he told Ireland’s Midwest Radio.
“I’ll be honest with you, it really does polarise people. [Smoking has] not been forgotten, obviously, but it’s not getting the attention it needs.”
In response to figures showing a 30 per cent rise in 15 to 24-year-olds vaping in Ireland in 2023, Dr McGovern said the health risks associated with vaping are nowhere near those of smoking.
He stressed that diseases like lung cancer and strokes are not caused by vaping, but by cigarette smoking. He added that while vaping should be monitored, it remains a far less harmful alternative for those trying to quit tobacco.
His latest remarks follow similar warnings made in October, when he criticised government moves to ban disposable vapes. Speaking to Filter magazine at the time, Dr McGovern said Health Minister Stephen Donnelly was ignoring evidence that disposable vapes are widely used by adults trying to quit cigarettes.
A “big mistake”
Banning them to protect children would be a “big mistake”, he warned, arguing that “there is a huge danger that [former] smokers who use these products will return to smoking.”
While Dr McGovern said he supports regulation, he argues that the current strategy risks undermining harm reduction and failing the very people public health policies are meant to protect.
He pointed to the failure of Australia’s restrictive approach to vaping, which has led to an out of control illicit market. He said: “Who suffers the most in all this? The smoker trying to quit.”
Irish premier brands vaping “evil”
Earlier this month, Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin branded vaping as “evil” and “the revenge of Big Tobacco” as he called for “the strongest possible measures” to restrict its use.
In a high-profile speech at the World Conference on Tobacco Control in Dublin, Martin claimed the rise of vapes was part of a deliberate strategy by the tobacco industry to “get nicotine back on the agenda.” He called its marketing tactics, particularly towards young people, “disgraceful.”
“All the same issues we had to deal with in respect to cigarettes, we have to deal with vaping,” he said, adding that significant new restrictions on sales and packaging would come into force in early 2026.
‘Significant’ new restrictions coming
“We will have significant restrictions coming in next February as a result of legislation passed by the last government,” he said. Measures will include limits on sales, packaging regulations, and bans on pop-up vape shops.
In February, retailers in Ireland were hit with a new licence fee for selling vapes. Shops wishing to sell vapes are now hit with an annual charge of €800, and a further fee of €1,000 if they sell tobacco. Nicotine pouches are currently excluded from the legislation.
In October, the Irish government announced a major new levy of 50 cents per millilitre (ml) of e-liquid as part of its annual budget. The tax is far above the European average of €0.10 to €0.30, and adds €1.23 to the cost of a typical vape in Ireland.
Martin’s comments sparked backlash from public health experts, who warned that conflating vaping with smoking undermines harm reduction and could push smokers back to cigarettes.
At the same event, WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed concerns about the tobacco industry’s role, describing vapes as part of its wider effort to “profit from addiction, disease and death.”
Consumer group the World Vapers’ Alliance staged a protest at the conference, accusing global health leaders of excluding nicotine users from key policy conversations.
