OPINION: Did we waste our chance to end the cigarette industry for pineappley-air?

I saw a TikTok a while back that called Gen-Z the generation that could have crippled the cigarette industry, but instead they succumbed to the allure of ‘pineapple-flavoured air’.

Vaping was first created by Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, in 2003. After the death of his father from lung cancer, Lik wanted to find an alternative method of smoking in order to cure his own addiction, and so the e-cigarette, or the vape, was born.

There are two types of e-cigarettes available: disposable vapes and modifiable tanks. Disposable vapes come fully charged, are already filled with liquid, and cannot be recharged or refilled once they’re used up. Modifiable tanks can be recharged and refilled, with settings on the device allowing users to control aerosol levels.

As a method of quitting smoking, vaping cannot be overlooked. A 2021 review by the NHS found that people who used e-cigarettes to quit smoking were twice as likely to overcome their addiction as people who used alternative nicotine products such as gum or patches. It has been reported that one of the best methods of beating the addiction is to gradually reduce the nicotine levels in your e-liquid over a period of time. This will help subdue withdrawal symptoms, essentially weaning you off nicotine.

However, the Irish Cancer Society does not recommend using e-cigarettes as an aid to stop smoking, and recommend evidence-based quitting methods such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and smoking cessation medicines.

I’m a non-smoker, but I have smoked both cigarettes and vapes on a few social occasions. Smoking makes me sick, vaping gives me a sore throat. Ironically, it is the secondhand smoke and vapour that has left me feeling the worst.

But if someone put one of each in front of me, I’d choose the vape every time based entirely on taste.

I don’t say this to advocate for the use of vapes. The flavoured aspect of a vape could be considered its biggest draw for non-smokers. It has created an entire generation of nicotine addicts from those who never picked up a cigarette in their life, who may have never intended to pick up any form of a cigarette. The Irish Heart Foundation has called the use of vapes by young people in Ireland an epidemic.

A common misconception is that nicotine can cause cancer. There is evidence to suggest that nicotine can abnormally speed up the formation of cancerous cells, but for the most part the problem with nicotine lies in its addictive nature. The absence of tobacco from e-cigarettes greatly reduces the risk of cancer, but it’s not impossible.

There are a number of dangerous chemicals in vapes, including formaldehyde, which is used to make adhesives and solvents. Formaldehyde can lead to both lung and heart disease. They also contain acrolein, a herbicide used to kill weeds. E-cigarettes can aggravate asthma, cause acute lung injury, or lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), for which there’s currently no cure.

The long-term effects of vaping are yet to be determined. It took almost 100 years of research before cigarettes were proven to be dangerous to health. Modern technology should allow for a much shorter timeframe to determine the long-term effects of vaping, but it will still take years.

There’s an ease of access to vaping that makes it a more worrying counterpart to cigarettes. There’s a lot of moving parts to lighting a cigarette. You need a lighter. You have to stop what you’re doing to light it. You’re more than likely going to smoke it outside; the smell of smoke clings in a way that vapour doesn’t.

Disposable vapes come pre-packaged for convenience. You take it out of its box and you can pull away on it until it runs dry. The repetition of using a vape allows for a constant fix of nicotine, rather than the burst of nicotine acquired from smoking a cigarette. New legislation introduced by the government in late 2024 has outlined a ban on the import, manufacture and sale of single-use disposable vapes.

The marketing of vapes also poses a serious problem. Vapes first began to flourish on the Irish market in 2012; since then, they have been marketed in packaging that’s vibrant, colourful, and eye-catching. In 2015, President Michael D Higgins signed into law legislation that stated all cigarette packs were to be of plain packaging. Yet, no such laws were introduced on vapes until the afore-mentioned legislation stated that vapes would now only be sold in child-resistant packaging.

We will just have to wait and see whether this new legislation can reverse the tide of nicotine addiction that has swept over the young people of Ireland.