We have all seen the huge upsurge in the use of vapes. We have seen them normalised. An awful lot of us would have probably been happy in the initial period. At this stage, we know an awful lot of people who have used vaping as a means of getting off cigarettes and that is the piece that needs to be protected. However, anybody who has walked around any town or city will have seen the place absolutely littered with single-use vapes and, as has been said previously, you do not have to put your head into the bins to see them. They are multicoloured. The attempt to sell them to a younger audience is absolutely huge and it is no shock that big tobacco is behind a huge amount of this. It needs to get a number of new clients hooked because that is the history of what it is has done. We need to protect against this. The idea of banning single-use vapes and finding a framework to do this is something we support, but it would be fair to say the way this issue of regulating vapes has been tackled by the Government has been slipshod. We have had numerous pieces of legislation and dealt with all these issues on a piecemeal basis. We should just get our act together on this. We know the issues that exist around advertising as regard flavourings. I am not talking about an outright ban, with the only thing allowed being a tobacco flavouring, but we need to look at this. I do not think the Government deciding to jack up the taxation on vapes was particularly helpful. It has created an issue for those people I spoke about earlier who are using vapes as a means of staying off cigarettes. We can all see the benefits there from a health point of view. While it is far from perfect to be vaping, it is a lot better than to be engaging in smoking, as regards carbon monoxide and all the other poisons that are delivered by cigarettes. If we were being serious about this, we would tackle the whole sphere. We would start with the issue that exists around this normalisation and the fact a huge number of kids and others have been impacted by HHC. We know the huge impact that has had on some and, unfortunately, as a gateway to other drugs beyond. We know the health implications in general in relation to regular vapes. I do not think there is any parent who has not done an inspection around their own house to make sure there is not a plentiful supply there, and I cannot say that has always been successful either. That is the world we are living in. We have to make it somewhat better from the point of view of these being not as readily available, particularly to children, to whom they should not be sold in any way, shape or form. We need to make sure we have sufficient leverage to deal with that. We need to make sure single-use vapes, which are an absolute disaster even from an environmental point of view, are dealt with, and we need to make sure we do everything from the point of view of looking after those who use vaping as a means of staying off cigarettes. We know a greater level of support is required for that but we need to make sure we do not allow big tobacco to sell to another cohort of people and get them addicted. It is particularly unacceptable that children would suffer as a result of this. Therefore, we have to put the supports in.

Sentiment score: 0.16