Meeting of the Parliament 14 September 2023
Presiding Officer, thank you for doing your absolute best to make sure that we all get to make a contribution today. I also thank Gillian Mackay for bringing the debate to the chamber and I certainly back up what my colleague Brian Whittle was saying earlier.
The fact that we are so pushed for time today is a testament to how seriously we all take the environmental health impact of vaping. First, I welcome the consultation. There really is no place for single-use vapes in a zero waste Scotland, and the array of discarded shiny, coloured, used vapes that are scattered everywhere is a hot topic at the moment when I am out and about dog walking.
The meteoric rise in vaping among young people has rocked all of us, and the Scottish Youth Parliament report “Single Use, Many Voices”, which was released earlier this month, highlights that 84 per cent of young respondents have seen no information on where and how to dispose of single-use vapes. We must take that seriously. It is our responsibility to provide good information on disposal by using the same platforms that the tobacco industry uses to glamorise vaping, which young people use every day.
We have heard plenty about the health and wellbeing impacts of vaping and none of us wants to imagine how that could affect families across Scotland in the future. Let us make no mistake—the tobacco industry will continue to promote misinformation and sell vaping as a positive lifestyle choice to young people, so we need to help them fight back, and that will be the focus of my speech today.
I recently spoke to a young constituent, in her early 20s, who talked of the shock that she felt when she realised the high levels of nicotine and the range of chemicals that are in e-liquids. She told me that pubs and clubs are full of young people openly vaping, and that they believe that social vaping on weekends is pretty much harmless, that vapes merely contain water vapour and that using them has no real consequences. Since finding out the facts, she has stopped vaping completely. She is now aware that high nicotine intake impacts brain development and that her age group has an increased vulnerability to nicotine addiction. She rightly sees herself and her friends as victims of a targeted marketing campaign. Trust me, she is really angry and is setting all her friends straight on what she sees as the dangers.
As my young constituent demonstrates, arming our young people with the facts is the biggest weapon that we have in the fight against tobacco industry propaganda. Unfortunately, the large sums that big tobacco spends on influencing social perceptions often work. The report that I mentioned tells us that young people’s vaping consumption makes them feel anxious and trapped, which is incredibly sad. Frankly, it is devastating to think that what we once used as a smoking cessation tool has been used to peddle a lifestyle con.
I could say much more about the amazing work that is being done across my constituency by Public Health Lanarkshire and organisations such as Landed, which has worked tirelessly to educate and inform people over the past six years. However, I am aware that we are very short of time today, so I finish with this. We already know enough to take action on vaping. We must not delay. We must use the legislation that we have. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the 1950s, when emerging dangers around smoking first arose. Let us act now.
13:26