Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 4 October 2022.
Well, Llywydd, Jenny Rathbone is absolutely right—one of the primary motivations for the public health Bill that failed to pass in 2016 was the desire to protect children from the gateway to nicotine addiction that is represented by the threat of e-cigarettes to children and young people. And, very sadly, the latest evidence on that is very discouraging. At a UK level, the number of children and young people reporting that they are using an e-cigarette rose from 4 per cent in 2020 to 7 per cent in 2022, and that was amongst 11 to 17-year-olds. And there is a tide across the world that is flowing even faster than that. Members here will have seen, no doubt, the advice of the US Surgeon General, providing public health advice to states across America that we must take aggressive steps—aggressive steps—to protect our children from these highly potent products. E-cigarettes contain nicotine; nicotine is highly addictive. Nicotine is particularly damaging to the developing brains of adolescents; indeed, it continues to cause harm to the brain up to the age of 25. So, whatever steps we might take to derive the public health benefits from adults who genuinely use e-cigarettes to quit conventional cigarettes, we must do everything we can to protect children from the way in which using an e-cigarette becomes an addictive tool, which then leads on to even worse consequences.