Meeting of the Parliament 31 January 2023 [Draft]
I thank Siobhian Brown for bringing the debate to the chamber and for all the work that she has been doing on the issue for quite some time.
There have been some great speeches that have covered all the main points—sales and advertising, flavours, recent reports and statistics, the environmental impacts and the health impacts—so I will keep my contribution quite short. However, I wanted to speak in the debate because—I admit it—I am a vaper. Quite a lot of people know that already; I have vaped for several years. My mum is always on at me to stop, and I hope that, one day, I will, but not right now.
After smoking cigarettes for 30-plus years, I am massively relieved that I now vape instead of smoking. Giving up the fags is probably the best thing that I have ever done for myself. I used to lie awake at night worrying. I did not want to die and not see my children grow up and not meet my grandkids. Cigarettes kill, as I think we all know. My dad died of lung cancer in 2020. His dad—my granda—was also a smoker and he died of lung cancer relatively young. My mum was a smoker, but she stopped decades ago. She has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is likely to have been caused by the fags.
For many people, vaping is a really valuable route to stopping smoking. I am not sure that I could ever have stopped otherwise, and I am certainly not alone in that. However, although quitting smoking is one of the best things that I have ever done, and vaping helped me to get there, as a parent, I am seriously worried about the sharp rise in the number of young people who regularly use vapes.
The main point that I want to labour tonight is that although vaping is a valuable tool in stopping smoking, marketing recreational single-use vapes to young people who have never smoked is an entirely different issue. We must not conflate the two. Evidence shows that vapes are less harmful than tobacco, but we do not yet know what long-term health harms are caused by breathing vape liquids into your lungs. Frankly, it is high time that we got rid of the rainbow displays at vape bars, where every flavour under the sun is available. I fully support the suggestions that have been made by other members.
Is vaping less dangerous than smoking? The evidence tells us that it is. How safe or harmful is vaping? In truth, we really do not know, but it is common sense that breathing such substances into your lungs is not a good thing. That is why I hope that I will stop vaping at some point. Less bad than smoking does not equal good, which is why I believe that urgent action is needed to protect our young people and avoid a new generation of nicotine addicts.
I will finish with a question: who benefits from creating a new generation of nicotine addicts? I think that we all know what the answer is.