‘Crazy, absolute madness’: Vaping companies in Ireland cash in as legislation struggles to keep up

“It is a profitable business if your rent is not too high and you are in a good area,” says Alexandru Pescar.

He opened Ireland’s first “bricks and mortar” e-cigarette shop in Dublin in July 2011. Now has three shops – two in Dublin and one in Mullingar, Co Westmeath – as well as a distribution business.

The prevalence of vape shops in Ireland’s cities and towns supports the contention that the e-cigarette business is a profitable one, as does what has been described as the “explosion” in the sale of disposable vapes in supermarkets, petrol stations and telephone repair shops in recent years.

This week Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said a tax on e-cigarettes and vaping products would be introduced in next year’s budget, something that already exists in most European countries.

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For Pescar, a tax of 10 cent per millilitre of e-liquid, which he says is common elsewhere, “would not be the end of the world”.

Financial accounts filed in the Companies Registration Office show that his retail company, Ecirette Solutions Ltd, recorded a profit of €73,989 in the year to the end of April 2022, up from €26,869 the previous year.

[ ‘It’s the biggest spread of addiction this country has ever seen’: Regulatory noose tightens on vaping ]

His other company, Ecirette Wholesale, recorded a profit of €327,845 during the same period, up from €125,793 the year before. Between them they employed 11 people.

Kevin Ryan, who works behind the counter in the Ecirette shop on Talbot Street, says the purpose of e-cigarettes is to help people stop smoking.

“It can be tough to stop. Before I tried vaping, I’d smoked for 10 years. I haven’t had a cigarette in five years. Not one.” But he vapes.

The shop sells vapes with rechargeable batteries that cost €20-€80 and can be refilled with e-liquids, and disposable vapes that cost about €9. While talking on a wet Wednesday morning, two middle-aged male customers visit the shop. One spends €20 and the other €35. Legally, the shop’s products can be sold to people under 18, but Ryan says its policy is not to.

“The Government is only making it illegal in December of this year. So up to now it hasn’t been illegal to sell to an under 18, which is crazy, absolute madness,” he says.

Pescar says e-cigarettes are sold in four ways: online, in dedicated shops, in shops that also sell products such as mobile phones (these shops tend to concentrate on disposable vapes, he says) and through supermarket and petrol stations.

Sales of disposable devices in supermarkets and petrol stations have increased significantly in recent years. If their sale were to be banned, “I wouldn’t have a problem”, he says.

Mark Curran, the owner of Vintage Vape Room and DRS Distro, is involved in the retail sale of e-cigarette products, their distribution, and the manufacture in Ireland of e-liquid.

He has two shops, in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, and Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, but had four before the Covid pandemic. The business is not incorporated and does not produce accounts.

“After Covid, consumer behaviour changed. Now it’s supermarkets and gas stations, that sort of stuff. The disposable vape has killed the vape industry over the past number of years,” he says.

They are coming in here in their school uniforms. It’s not right. Some of them, when you ask, have you ever smoked a cigarette, they tell you no. So why smoke a vape?

—  James O’Toole, who works in the DC Vapes shop on Talbot Street

A company called E-Smoke Store Ltd, with an address at Ballinrea, Carrigaline, Co Cork, recorded a profit of €412,336 in the year to the end of October 2022, up from €115,873 the previous year, according to its latest accounts. The business, which is involved in the retail and online sale of e-cigarette products, is owned by Gordon and Sally Treacy, also of Ballinrea. According to its website, it has 13 outlets in Cork and three in Kerry.

Ecig Store Ltd, owned by Gerard Devaney, of Bohermore, Co Galway, made a profit of €259,478 last year, up from €198,988 the previous year. Based in Townpark Centre, Tuam Road, Galway city, the company sells vapes and vape products online as well as in 12 retail outlets. Four are in Galway city, with others in Athlone, Roscommon, Oranmore, Ballinasloe, Athenry, Claremorris, Castlebar and Westport.

The largest Irish vaping business is the Hale Vaping group, which is involved in wholesale and retail sales as well as the manufacture in Ireland of e-liquids.

The group had a turnover of €18.7 million in 2021, up from €13.2 million the previous year, and produced an after-tax profit of €3.2 million, up from €1.2 million the previous year. The directors, according to the accounts, proposed a dividend to the shareholders of €500,000.

The group has 69 outlets, both on a directly owned and franchise basis, with most in the Dublin area and the southeast, and also supplies product to the Supervalu, Centra and XL retail chains. It has been in business since 2016 and is owned by Irish businessmen Aaron Hutchinson, Stuart and Declan Fagan, Vincent Lynch and Joe Dunne.

“For me, vaping products should not be on sale everywhere,” says Dunne. “They should only be sold in [registered] vaping shops and outlets that are licensed to sell tobacco.

“At the moment they’re being sold in barber shops, butchers, phone shops. You go down Parnell Street [in Dublin] and you will see disposable vapes [being sold in phone shops] that are being imported from the UK and you don’t know what’s in them,” he says, referring to the fact that the UK is not subject to EU regulation.

Dunne says the vape business is profitable but “what irks me is that it is our goal to get more people away from cigarettes and, if you want to see a profitable business, go look at tobacco”.

It is not true, he says, that “vaping is the revenge of the tobacco industry”, as Tánaiste Micheál Martin put it. The vaping sector in Ireland is owned by Irish entrepreneurs, not the tobacco industry.

A large proportion of vape devices sold here are produced in China, including the popular disposable devices Lost Mary and Elf Bar. Since 2022, China has banned the sale of fruit-flavoured e-liquids, the sale of e-cigarette products near certain educational facilities, the sale of e-cigarettes over the internet and the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s, all measures that are not in place in this jurisdiction. China still allows the export of fruit-flavoured e-liquids.

The big western tobacco corporations, such as Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, are also hugely involved in the global vape business, including the disposable vape market. These companies began investing in e-cigarette products some years ago in an effort to secure their long-term future and are now heavily involved in the disposable vape market, says Mark Murphy of the Irish Heart Foundation.

The emergence of disposable vapes in recent years has fuelled an “explosion” in youth vaping, he says. The main factors behind this are the widespread availability of disposable vapes, their price, the use of “child-appealing” flavours and relentless marketing by social media influencers.

James O’Toole, who works in the DC Vapes shop on Talbot Street, says fruit-flavoured vapes are hugely popular with children.

“I refuse them a hundred times a day. They are coming in here in their school uniforms. It’s not right. Some of them, when you ask, have you ever smoked a cigarette, they tell you no. So why smoke a vape if you don’t know what a cigarette tastes like? It doesn’t make sense. I think they only smoke them for the flavour,” he says.

When it introduces the ban in December, Ireland will be one of the last countries in Europe to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s, says Murphy. Ireland, which was to the fore internationally in combating cigarette smoking, “has let the horse bolt when it comes to e-cigarette measures”.

“What we would like to see is a complete ban on disposables,” he says. “All disposable e-cigarettes should be banned completely.”