Ireland has become the next European country moving towards a ban on disposable e-cigarettes or vapes. Last Tuesday, the country's Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, announced that cabinet approval had been secured for legislation that would introduce new restrictions on the sale of nicotine inhaling products, including the prohibition of single-use vapes. The ban would apply to the import, manufacture and sale of disposable e-cigarettes.
Other provisions of the forthcoming legislation are intended to make refillable vapes less attractive to young people. They include limits on the use of colours and imagery on packaging and devices and limiting the available flavours and the marketing language used to describe flavours. Point-of-sale display and advertising will be permitted only in specialist shops.
Irish environment minister Ossian Smyth welcomed the government's decision to proceed with the legislation, which he said would achieve the dual policy objectives of health and environmental protection. He noted that he had been working with the health minister for some time on the proposal. "Single-use vapes are a challenge in the context of waste management and are a wasteful use of critical raw materials. They are also very damaging to the environment when discarded as litter," he said.
Health minister Donnelly said that even though the sale of nicotine inhaling products to under 18s was already prohibited, "we must go further and this legislation will tackle the rise in the use of 'vapes' among children and young people by reducing their attractiveness and availability."
At this stage, only the heads of the forthcoming Nicotine Inhaling Products Bill have been agreed. Once the legislative proposal has been drafted, it will have to pass through both Houses of the Irish Parliament before it can be enacted. It was still too early to estimate the timeline for completion of the drafting and passage of the Bill through Parliament, a spokesperson for the Department of Health told EUWID. A separate order prohibiting self-service sales of tobacco and nicotine inhaling products as of 29 September 2025 was signed in May of this year.
In the United Kingdom, the new Labour government is reportedly weighing which of the tobacco product restrictions proposed under the previous Conservative government it wished to carry forward. The reintroduction of a Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which would impose limits on the sale and marketing of vapes, was announced the King's Speech in July as part of the new government's agenda. However, the details of the planned legislative proposal have not yet been made public.
Similar legislative initiatives have been announced in France and Belgium.
