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Investigatesillegal vapesIRELAND’S HEALTH SERVICE is clamping down on illegal vapes by inspecting retailers and importers selling them to consumers.
But is this strategy working and is there enough enforcement being taken?
Yesterday, The Journal Investigates revealed that over 3,500 vapes have been seized by the HSE for breaching regulations since 2024.
As part of this, a total of 33 prohibition orders were issued by the HSE’s National Tobacco Control Office to shops across the country.
Our team visited retailers across Cork, Dublin and Donegal that had received prohibition orders from the HSE.
We were told that the vapes that had been seized were no longer for sale in each of the shops we visited.
Enforcement against these products may be working in these shops but this isn’t the end of the story.
Our investigation reveals that illegal vapes are still readily available, sometimes in shops run by different businesses close to where the HSE had seized the very same vapes.
We also found some instances of the same vapes seized being sold online by the shops that had received a prohibition order.
The HSE said that “the prohibition orders served to date by the HSE do not extend to online sales”, but when asked if the shops selling the vapes online would then not be in breach of the prohibition order, they conversely said that it would be inaccurate to say that.
A spokesperson added that they view “such online selling as a serious matter” and that it “would constitute a further breach of the legislation”.
In Cork, our team visited a retailer that had a number of vape products seized following a HSE inspection.
Our team did not find the same products for sale from this shop, but just a few doors down from it, we found it prominently displayed in the shop window of a different vape shop.
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This vape was seized from two retailers, including the shop in Cork, for containing more than the legal limit of e-liquid. Testing at the state lab confirmed this.
And yet, it is available for sale just down the street at another vape shop.
Confusingly, the packaging features a health and safety sticker – in both Irish and English – that warns about how tobacco damages your health. But according to the list of ingredients on the back, the vape doesn’t contain any tobacco.
It was a similar story at a retailer in Dublin.
Our team found a different vape shop selling an illegal vape roughly 50 metres from where the same product had been seized by the HSE.
The AT-b@rs 7k vape contains 12ml of e-liquid – six times the legal limit – according to the packaging. It also does not contain the required health warnings on the front of the box.
One of the retailers that had received a prohibition order from the HSE was also selling a different illegal vape when our team visited the shop.
The Crystal Bling 12000 was seized from another retailer for containing more than five times the legal limit of e-liquid.
The prevalence of these vapes shows that while the inspections and prohibition orders issued by the HSE are working to some extent, the number of vape shops that have popped up around the country is presenting other issues with enforcement.
A retailer in Longford, Candy Cloud, had almost 400 units of the Hayati Pro Max vape seized by the HSE in June 2024. A prohibition order was later issued to the retailer.
However, last week, its website still showed 51 variations of the Hayati Pro Max available for sale.
A spokesperson for the shop said that while the vape was still listed online, they don’t have any stock since the HSE seized the product.
But it was still possible to place an order for this seemingly out-of-stock product. When questioned on this, the spokesperson said they would remove the listings from the website.
The listings have now been taken down from the site.
Our team contacted Hayati’s Chinese manufacturer, PAX International Limited about the product being sold in Ireland and how it ended up here.
However, the company did not respond by the time of publication. It is unclear what company was responsible for supplying the product into the Irish market.
It was the same story with two other outlets in Dublin – Ecirette and Silver Smoke – who, despite receiving prohibition orders against selling specific vapes, had them for sale on their websites.
Our team reached out to both retailers about this, but we did not receive a response before publication.
A HSE spokesperson said, “The National Environmental Health Service has to date focused on proactively regulating the sale and supply of nicotine inhaling products in the physical marketplace.”
“It is clear that the HSE is not doing enough to tackle the sale of illegal vaping products,” Lorraine Carolan, a spokesperson for Responsible Vaping Ireland, told our team.
“There is a need for a major increase in the number of compliance checks to ensure that only safe and legal vapes are available on the market,” she continued, adding that the increase in non-compliant vapes on the market is “worrying”.
Carolan called on the HSE to allocate further resources to inspections and increase checks at the manufacturing stage.
Responsible Vaping Ireland, formerly known as Vape Business Ireland, represents a number of players in the Irish vape industry, including retailers and manufacturers such as Vuse, owned by tobacco giant PJ Carroll.
Part of the problem the HSE faces is that the sheer volume of shops selling vapes is potentially in the tens of thousands, if not higher.
The proliferation of mobile phone accessory and laptop repair shops around the country selling vaping products is only adding to these demands.
From February next year, retailers will have to pay an annual fee of €800 to sell electronic cigarettes and €1,000 to sell tobacco as part of a new licensing system.
Shops that sell vapes will have to join this new register and will be subject to inspections by the HSE to ensure compliance with the law.
This licensing system will help create a list of retailers that will be subject to inspection, Carolan said, but added that for it to work, it must be enforced properly.
“The licensing provision will also bring with it additional enforcement powers,” a spokesperson for the HSE told The Journal Investigates, “as it will be an offence for any retailer to sell tobacco or nicotine inhaling products without a valid licence”.
They added that the database will allow them “to better target its inspection and sampling resources locally”.
New legislation on vapes is also in the pipeline, with a ban on disposables receiving cabinet approval in September 2024. Since then, however, there has been little movement on it.
“It is not yet possible to provide a timeline” on when a bill might be introduced in the Dáil, or enacted, a spokesperson for the Department of Health told The Journal Investigates.
It may be some time before this legislation is ready, with proposals currently being “drafted in collaboration with the Office of the Attorney General”.
Once this is completed, the draft bill will have to be assessed at EU level, further elongating the process.
All the while, the vape market continues to grow and evolve, with new products aimed at circumventing any disposable ban already in shops across the country.
Reporter: Conor O’Carroll • Editor & Additional Research: Maria Delaney • Social Media: Cliodhna Travers • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
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