Martin Daly supports Single-Use Vapes Bill over health and waste

Minister, I support the Public Health Single-Use Vapes Bill 2025 because it addresses a regulatory gap that now carries real consequences, not abstract ones, real consequences for health and for the environment and for the coherence of our public health and environmental policy. Disposable vapes occupy a peculiar position in our regulatory framework. They're legal, widely available, and yet they combine elements we would rarely tolerate together, an addictive substance, and electronic waste, and a design that actively discourages responsibility for responsible disposal. Much of the debate is focused on packaging, flavours, names and marketing. Those issues have already been addressed in Irish law, but even stripped of marketing gimmicks, the core problem remains. A single-use vape is a short-lived delivery system for nicotine, intended to be discarded and replaced, and that design choice is the issue before us. Nicotine is not benign. It alters neurodevelopment when exposure begins early, reinforces dependence pathways, and produces measurable cardiovascular effects, even in young users. In clinical practice, addiction rarely begins with a dramatic moment. It develops through repetition, accessibility, and normalisation. Products that remove barriers to that use accelerate that process, and disposable vapes do exactly that. Whilst we're not certain of the long-term health impacts of vaping, we know the effects of nicotine exposure and addiction, nicotine toxicity in pregnancy, nicotine harm to brain development until about the age of 25, and that adolescents who use nicotine may be at increased risk for future addiction to other drugs. And we know perversely that youths who vape are also more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future. We know the additional risks of e-cigarette aerosols, with cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals such as nickel, tin, and lead, tiny particles that could be inhaled deep into the lungs, with volatile organic compounds, increasing risk of chronic lung disease. Now, we know in the UK they're carrying out a prospective longitudinal study, with 100,000 children between the ages of 8 and 18 for over 10 years to try and learn what's happening to their systems. That's why the evidence on youth vaping matters. Irish and European data show high levels of experimentation amongst teenagers, and a significant proportion of teenagers are current users. That tells us something important, that this is not confined to a small, high-risk group. It is occurring at scale, and while there is ongoing debate about vaping as a harm reduction tool for established smokers, there is no clinical or public health rationale for a product format that lowers the threshold for nicotine initiation as far as possible. This bill draws that distinction carefully. It does not attempt to relitigate every aspect of vaping policy. It does not deny that some adults use regulated vaping products to move away from tobacco. It targets a specific category that serves no essential cessation function, but carries a disproportionate share of risk, especially for our young people. This is proportionate regulation. There is also a broader responsibility here, and it's one the public increasingly understands. Disposable vapes are electronic waste by design. They combine plastic, metal and lithium-ion batteries into a product intended for a very short lifespan. Millions are sold each year in Ireland. Most are not recycled. Many enter our general waste streams. Others end up in our streets and public spaces. Our own litter monitoring already reflects this trend. As well as being eyesores, discarded vapes have hugely damaging impact on our environment and wildlife. Whether littered or thrown in a bin and sent to landfill, single-use vapes also release substance like lead and mercury into our soil, rivers and streams. The plastic used in these products are nearly impossible for nature to completely break down. Instead, they break into tiny pieces of microplastics, which can enter our food chains. Last year, Material Focus estimated that almost 5 million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste every week in the UK. That's the equivalent of 8 being thrown away every second. And this is an extremely wasteful use of valuable resources contained in these vapes, such as cobalt and copper. In 2022, the same group found that 40 tonnes of lithium were discarded in single-use vapes in the UK. That's the same amount used to power 5,000 electric vehicles, and we can extrapolate from those figures to Ireland. For the small number of single-use vapes which are sent for recycling, it's a difficult job because they contain many chemical components and are not designed to be taken apart. They usually have to be disassembled by hand, a slow and tricky process, which struggles to match the avalanche of vapes that are produced and discarded. The lithium-iron batteries in these vapes can also cause fires, which risk the safety of waste management workers, firefighters and the public. International evidence reinforces the point. Other jurisdictions are now grappling with the scale of battery waste created by single-use vapes and the loss of critical materials that are in short supply. And at a time when the State is investing heavily in electrification, energy storage, sustainable supply chains, continuing to permit a disposable electronic product of this kind is increasingly difficult to defend. The Bill does not attempt to resolve every issue associated with vaping. It focuses on one product category that introduces avoidable risk and avoidable waste into everyday use. Considered from a health and environmental perspective, it is difficult to justify leaving this issue unaddressed. Thank you very much. Thank you.