Nicotine Pouches Under Attack in Ireland

Despite the somewhat damming admission that it’s “hard to know how widespread the practice is”, Paul Crone, Director of The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals in Ireland, has been on something of a media tour about nicotine pouches.

Strikingly similar articles have appeared in The Independent, Euro Weekly News, The Irish Examiner, and The Journal. When you consider that many media outlets have essentially been reduced to press release distribution vehicles, that’s not entirely surprising.

However, Crone has also appeared on the popular Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk while the state broadcaster, RTE, also ran a segment that questioned whether the harm reduction product should be banned on its Drivetime show.

What’s going on in Ireland?

The discourse around tobacco, vapes, and nicotine pouches in Ireland is positively deranged. The country has an 18% smoking prevalence rate. They want to bring that number down to 5%. Apparently, they think the best way to do this is by demonising far safer harm reduction products like vapes and pouches. As someone who used to smoke it baffles me how it sometimes feels like people are pushed back towards cigarettes and not pulled away.

As ever, there are multiple lines of attack. Misinformation campaigns, unbalanced media treatment, and the promotion of speculative or misleading scientific findings are a big part of their approach.

Naturally, “won’t someone think of the children” is never far behind. This is where Crone comes in.

Legal loophole

Much has been made of the legal loophole or regulatory grey area that pouches occupy. This situation is not unique to Ireland, of course. Many countries’ product regulations are focused on tobacco, which is something that nicotine pouches do not contain, and therefore, they are exempt from this legislation.

The Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore has been one of the most vocal and misinformed voices about vaping in recent years, and she’s carried that form into nicotine pouches. Last year, she urged the government to include nicotine pouch regulation with the bill to ban disposable vapes.

I’m not sure that many people would oppose age restrictions on nicotine pouches. However, whether this loophole is translating into school kids being able to freely purchase pouches is not clear. While it may be technically legal for a retail outlet to sell pouches to people under 18, it would be a disastrous policy considering the hostile environment for harm-reduction products in Ireland.

I’m sure there is an odd exception, but I doubt cashiers are handing out pouches to schoolchildren en masse. What’s more, from looking at data from other countries, it’s not the most common way that people under 18 get their hands on vapes and pouches. Buying from friends or social media is a more typical route, so regulating pouches won’t do much to change either supply or demand.

Loss of control

One of the most striking aspects of Crone’s campaign is his concern that pouches are easier for students to conceal. The Journal’s article shares this passage:

For school administrators, pouches represent a unique problem. It’s hard to argue it’s about health because each nicotine pouch user might well be a cigarette smoker in the absence of these products. Instead, it seems that one of the major objections to pouches is their discretion, which makes it hard to monitor and catch students.

Crone is not wrong when he speaks of pouches as a “growing threat”. It’s just that it’s a threat to teachers’ ability to control and punish students, which could just push people towards cigarettes.

There are larger issues to deal with

There are a lot of problems that affect school-age youth in Ireland, including a surge of post-pandemic mental health cases, large socio-economic educational gaps, overcrowded classrooms, and even teacher shortages.

There is limited bandwidth to address actual problems, so taking up resources with scaremongering about a “problem” that affects a tiny percentage of people is foolish.

Ireland still has a high smoking prevalence. Getting that down requires support, not stigmatisation, of harm-reduction products that are conclusively far healthier than smoking.