Tobacco health bill at €1bn, says Reilly

Annual health service costs for treating tobacco-related illnesses are the same, at €1 billion, as the cuts being sought in the public sector wage bill, the Dáil has heard.

“It would be better if we could reduce our health bill by €1 billion,” Minister for Health James Reilly said as the Dáil passed the Public Health (Tobacco) (Amendment) Bill which obliges manufacturers to put graphic images on cigarette packets of the illnesses caused by smoking.

Dr Reilly held up a number of cigarette packets in the chamber to highlight the “new tactics being used by the tobacco industry to promote new products and ensnare young people, including those under 18”.

One of the packs was “slim and nicely presented, and has the name of a high-end fashion magazine attached to it”, he said. He said 78 per cent of smokers started smoking before they were 18.

“No parent wants their children to smoke, regardless of whether they are a smoker or non-smoker,” he said, and the Government’s aim was to “denormalise tobacco and make it socially unacceptable for our children and young people to smoke”.

Independent TD and publican Michael Healy-Rae said the high prices in Ireland compared to the rest of the EU had left a big opening for the illegal tobacco trade.

“There is no reason in the world that a person in Ireland should be paying €10 for a pack of cigarettes when a person in another part of Europe can pay €1.80 or €2 for the same thing. That is leaving the illegal trade wide open.”

Smoking habits

Mr Healy-Rae, who had been “selling cigarettes for over 20 years”, said he had seen and studied people’s smoking habits.

“I have every sympathy for hardened addicted smokers who find it terribly difficult to give up smoking and who probably in many cases will never give up smoking. They will leave this world continuing their habit.”

However, he agreed it was “terribly important to do everything we possibly can to stop the younger generation starting smoking”.

Dr Reilly had highlighted that 5,200 people died in Ireland prematurely from smoking-related diseases, with a figure of 700,000 annually across the EU. There was a productivity loss of €8.3 billion in Europe because of “deaths, absenteeism and early retirement” from smoking.

With the graphic images on cigarette packs the Minister said “we want people to understand the consequences of smoking include peripheral vascular disease, amputation of legs, rotten lungs and cancer”.

Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary said that while the intention was for the images to “shock those who open the box” of cigarettes, the fact they bought the box in the first place “shows they are gone beyond that stage”. They should focus on the areas that “assist people in tackling that addiction, in the same way we do this with regard to other drugs”.

The final stages of the Bill were discussed in the Dáil while the health committee was meeting separately and not all health spokespersons could attend, which Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh described as “a bit bizarre”.