Debate contribution: Vaping: Dangers to Children
Debate contribution by Ms Kellie Armstrong on .
- MLA
- Ms Kellie Armstrong
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 22 October 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Vaping: Dangers to Children
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4608572
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I will be honest: I am not on the Education Committee, and I am not on the Health Committee. I speak as someone whose child went through the education system and as a member of a couple of boards of governors. Vaping is a pandemic that is sweeping through every school in Northern Ireland, including, unfortunately, some primary schools. The Education Minister is not the only person responsible for getting rid of what is, as others have called it, an absolute plague. There are things that need to be done. That is why the amendment that Alliance has tabled, which mentions councils, is vital. The reason I say that is that one of the main bus stops in a rural village in my constituency is right beside an ice-cream parlour. The ice-cream parlour advertises in its window honeycomb ice cream and chocolate ice cream and then goes on to list fruit vapes. That is a shop that is targeted completely at children and families. It is beside a bus stop; it is across from a primary school; it is around the corner from another primary school; and it openly displays the sale of vapes. The shop is targeted at children, but it sells vapes. They are not hidden behind a screen, and the flavours are all wonderfully exciting and brightly coloured. It is an absolute disgrace. We need our councils to step forward and, as part of their role in stopping the sale of cigarettes to under-18s, look at what is happening with vaping. There also has to be a question asked of the Department for the Economy about such shops that sell confectionery. We need to tell the Department to change this, get the licensing sorted out and stop the promotion and sale of vapes to children. It is not just vapes: other shops sell sunbeds and sweets to children at the same time, and they all target areas near schools. From the Education Minister's point of view, there needs to be cross-departmental consideration of how we can end the problem, because vaping is not good. While many say that people vape in order to get off cigarettes, vaping is not good for a child when vapes are full of synthetic rubbish such as spice, which has been such a terrible blight on some of our schools across Northern Ireland. Children in those schools have had to be taken to hospital because they have used spice in vapes. I am aware that some schools have had to take drastic action to control the amount of vaping. They are applying for things such as additional smoke detectors: vape smoke detectors to identify where vaping happens in school buildings or outside. I would love the Department of Education to invest in those smoke detectors to assist our teachers, classroom assistants and boards of governors in finding out where children use the vapes. Some schools have invested in glass panels in the access doors to toilets — not in the toilets — so that they can watch those private spaces to make sure that nobody is vaping, because it is dangerous not just for the person who is vaping but for the other young people who are around it. I would love the Department to put out a clear communication to all schools to ban parents from vaping at school gates. Far too many parents or people who collect children vape at school gates. We do not want smoking or vaping there. We do not want children to think that vaping is a normal habit. The risks of vaping to our young people are far too high. As my colleague Michelle Guy said, children are also turning to cigarettes. Vaping is not having the effect of stopping cigarette smoking; it is encouraging smoking in all forms.
634 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.94).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.03 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.02 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.04 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.03 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.94 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.03 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.74 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.12 |
| Education structures, integration and community division | 0.10 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.03 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:28 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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