Ken Heffernan says the new vape tax will only ‘stagnate’ progress on stamping out smoking
Ken Heffernan (58) first started smoking in his teens and has credited vaping as a “success” for him, though believes increasing the price of e-liquids could risk pushing people towards purchasing products online.
A tax of 50c per millilitre of e-liquid will be introduced by the middle of next year, bringing the price of a typical disposable vape with 2ml of e-liquid from €8 to €9.23 including Vat.
Mr Heffernan said the changes will do little to tackle the issue of young people vaping and will instead impact older people and long-term vapers who used e-cigarettes to quit smoking.
His regular purchase is a 120ml bottle of e-liquid, which is used to refill non-disposable vapes and costs around €25, but the new tax will increase the price, a move he described as “ridiculous” and “frustrating”.
“50c per millilitre is outrageous. The European average is between 10c and 30c, it doesn’t make sense. I knew they were going to increase it but to something like 50c for every 10ml, not to 50c per millilitre.”
He believes the increase in price of e-liquids will only serve to “stagnate” progress on achieving a ‘smoke free’ Ireland and the Government should instead only allow vapes be sold in regulated shops.
“All that’s going to happen now is that people will buy e-liquid online and concentrate and make their own liquid before the tax comes in,” he said.
“They have to bring in proper regulations for disposable vapes. It should be regulated to the highest amount possible, you should not be able to walk into a phone shop and buy a vape. That in itself will discourage an awful lot of the supposed youth vaping.”
Mr Heffernan said he doesn’t believe the Government understands how to tackle the problem of smoking, adding that the €1 increase in excise duty on a packet of 20 cigarettes and a pro-rata increase on other tobacco products will also do little.
He added that e-cigarettes should be recognised as a means to quit smoking instead of being considered as part of the problem.
“When I smoked, every year, when they upped the tax on cigarettes, I just kept smoking. I did everything possible to justify the price and the reason to smoke at that stage,” he said.
“Vaping has been such a successful story for me. I started smoking when I was in my mid teens and it got to the stage where I was smoking three packs a day for over 30 years,” he said.
“I tried everything (to quit). I tried hypnosis, I tried acupuncture, I tried gums, I tried patches. The only thing that ever got me off the cigarettes was vaping. I’m 12 years off cigarettes and my vapes nowadays don’t even have nicotine in it.”
