MLAs are set to vote to include Northern Ireland in the UK's new Tobacco and Vapes legislation despite questions about whether the legislation would comply in Northern Ireland following the post-Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. The new legislation follows a previous bill introduced by the Conservative government before the election.
Under the proposals, anyone born after 1st January 2009 will be banned from ever purchasing tobacco products. The legislation also includes a provision to allow for the introduction of a retail licensing scheme in the longer term to replace the Registration scheme.
The bill will also see the extension of existing tobacco advertising, sponsorship and brand-sharing rules to include cigarette papers, herbal smoking products, vaping products and other nicotine products. The legislation will also allow regulations to be made to extend smoke-free provisions in public outdoor places (or workplaces) and to make smoke-free places also vape-free and heated tobacco-free.
Speaking in the Assembly chamber, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said that the challenge faced to address health inequalities is "Executive wide" and said that 30 per cent of the work on shifting the dial on life expectancy includes individual behaviours such as drinking alcohol, smoking and drug use.
"Last year, the House voted to support Northern Ireland's inclusion in the previous tobacco and vape spill, which unfortunately fell on the dissolution of Parliament.This new tobacco and vapes bill introduced last November is broadly the same. It will create a smoke-free generation, making it an offence for anybody born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products.Going further than the previous bill, it seeks to address the deliberate marketing of vapes to children, and that's nicotine and non-nicotine vapes," the Health Minister said.
"Consequently, in respect of vapes and other nicotine products, the bill will ban their sale to under 18s, and that includes from vending machines.It will ban advertising and sponsorship and ban their free distribution.The tobacco retailers register will be extended to include retailers who sell vapes or other nicotine products.
"The bill also provides a power to introduce a licensing scheme. Each of the four nations will have powers to extend smoke-free places and to designate them vape and heated tobacco free. So why do we need these measures? Because smoking kills."
Mike Nesbitt said that smoking is the number one cause of preventable illness and premature death and that each year, 2,200 people in Northern Ireland die from smoking-related conditions.
"Smoking rates in the areas where deprivation is highest are threetimes that in the least deprived areas.This bill's generational approach to eliminating tobacco use offers a groundbreaking way to address this public health threat. Smoking also impacts non-smokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke and families who have to deal with the illness of the death of loved ones.Smoking affects us all.
"Members will be all too aware of the financial pressures facing our health service. In 2019/20, Northern Ireland hospitals spent 218 million pounds treating smoking-attributable conditions, and there were 38,617 smoking-attributable hospital admissions.
"There are growing concerns about the harms of vaping.Recent data shows that among Year 12 pupils, vape use doubled from 11.7% in 2019 to 23.6% in 2022.The Institute in Public Health find evidence of a gateway effect between e-cigarette and subsequent tobacco use, so robust measures are needed to address the appeal of these products to children."
The Health Minister also addressed concerns that the rules would be different over the border, which could result in people travelling to the Republic of Ireland to purchase tobacco products, but said that MLAs "share a common goal of reducing smoking prevalence and the level of tobacco harm."
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll said the proposal is a "dangerous move away" from a public health approach to smoking and compared the legislation to the prohibition of alcohol in the USA in the 1920s and said that it risks driving tobacco underground.
"Fifty years ago 45 per cent of the population smoked. Today it's around 12 per cent, which is a huge drop, and I would suggest, unusually so in this House that the current approach is actually working. It's seeing a dramatic fall in smoking, and this has been achieved by adopting a public health approach to tobacco, including banning smoking indoors, as was referred to earlier, and around children as well as banning advertising and vending machine products.
"I want to commend those in the PHA and the trusts and and various organisations who are advocating this public health approach issue through this very serious and important issue. And the age at which a person could legally smoke was raised from 16 to 18, which saw a 30 per cent reduction in smoking in that age group.
"The next logical step many would suggest in an effective public health approach would be to increase the minimum wage from 18 to 21. There's data showing that this could potentially really work and to further develop prevention and education programmes. But instead, the Labour government that seemingly today here, is barrelling blindly ahead with a completely new and untested approach originally proposed by the Tories.
"So I think this bill is a regrettable move away from treating smoking as a public health challenge and an issue, and towards treating smoking as a new chapter in the war on drugs."
DUP MLA Alan Robinson raised concerns that the legislation may be incompatible with the post-Brexit Withdrawl Agreement as Northern Ireland remains subject to the EU's Tobacco Directive and also said that the bill may have unintended consequences.
"I can only surmise that the outworking of this bill if enacted, may see the closure of a raft of vape shops on our high streets.I will, however, say this, vapes being used by adult smokers who use these products to try to quit smoking is no bad thing.
"What we would not want is the offer of legal vapes being lost and therefore pushing the smoker who's trying to cut back on to the dreaded fag, the unintended consequence of the bill concerned me a little.
"The views from shopkeepers and what their thoughts are on the ball, especially when trying to say to a growing adult in say for example, their 30s or 40s in the future, to produce identification and telling them that they're too young to purchase tobacco, what will be the implications for the shopkeepers when violence against businesses are in an all-time high," he asked.
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