Experts advise an urgent ban on disposable vapes

Advice from Respiratory medicine experts calls for an urgent need to ban the use of disposable vapes. The long-term effects of vaping are still unknown and raise a number of concerns in regards to health risks especially in children and young people under the age of 25 who are still developing.

Professor Des Cox, a consultant in paediatric respiratory medicine and represents the faculty of paediatrics at the RCPI, said the main concern is around the liquid that is used in vapes as they contain nicotine, causing a huge spike in addiction in young people.

He said that "chronic exposure to nicotine in the developing brain can lead to cognitive defects [and] also causes an addiction."

"We now have a new generation of children and adolescents addicted to vapes, which is a whole new problem that we haven't really thought of before." He continues.

"And then the second issue is that if you expose the lungs and the heart to vapes at a young age, it's very likely you will develop health problems. So cardiovascular and lung problems down the track."

"Now obviously we're only ten years into this, so we're probably not going to see the effects for a number of years to come."

"But even the experimental research that we would see now does indicate that people who chronically vape are at risk of developing these problems."

He admits that although vaping is less harmful than traditional cigarettes, the danger lies in young people assuming they are not harmful at all: "There's a perception out there that, especially with teenagers, that they're not harmful, that they're just a bit of flavour and a bit of colour and we're trying to get rid of that perception that they're harmless."

For just €5/6 in any petrol station, many people argue that they are way too convenient for young people.

In order to combat the issue, Cox suggests restrictions on how they are marketed must be put in place: "We need a ban on disposable vapes. We need restrictions on flavouring and also restrictions on advertising and marketing because the problem is that they're marketing these products to children and adolescents."