Home Politics Europe “Vaping Is Nearly Worse Than Cigarettes,” Says Ireland’s Prime Minister

“Vaping Is Nearly Worse Than Cigarettes,” Says Ireland’s Prime Minister

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin says e-cigarettes are “nearly worse than cigarettes” because “we don’t know what’s in them.” A claim contradicted both by European regulation and by scientific evidence, and which appears to stem from confusion with CBD liquids or synthetic cannabinoid products recently analyzed by Ireland’s health service.

Author - Alistair Servet September 30, 2026

Vaping Wrongly Blamed

While European discussions on vaping taxation continue, misinformation is spreading in Ireland, a country that also holds the presidency of the Council of the EU until December 31, 2026. On September 8, Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach, said that e-cigarettes were “nearly worse than cigarettes,” justifying his position by saying that “we don’t know what’s in them” and that they “damage the lungs.”

Yet since the introduction of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), every nicotine-containing e-liquid sold in the European Union must be notified to the authorities six months before being placed on the market. That notification includes, among other things, the full list of ingredients in the e-liquid and their quantities.

At the same time, e-cigarette emissions have been studied by scientists for more than a decade, and most research agrees that e-cigarette aerosol contains far fewer harmful substances than tobacco smoke.

So how can the Irish Prime Minister’s comments be explained?

The answer may lie in what appears to be Martin’s conflation of legal and illegal products, nicotine e-liquids and CBD liquids. On August 19, 2026, the Health Service Executive (HSE), Ireland’s public health service, published laboratory results from analyses of 76 vapes and e-liquids obtained from shops and the black market since the beginning of the year.

According to the laboratory that carried out the analyses, among those 76 products, some of which contained multiple substances:

28 contained HHC, a semi-synthetic cannabinoid, or related compounds;
8 contained potent synthetic cannabinoids;
10 contained compounds with an acetate group *“that may be linked to lung disease,”* although the exact nature of these compounds was not specified;
12 contained cannabis or related compounds;
and 41 contained CBD.

The laboratory findings show that products may be incorrectly labelled as CBD or other cannabinoids, but in fact contain HHC or synthetic cannabinoids, the laboratory said.

While this situation is indeed concerning, it has nothing to do with compliant nicotine e-liquids, whose composition is declared to the authorities and whose use is recognized as substantially less harmful than smoking.