Almost 100 people die every week from illnesses caused by tobacco products, according to a report from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
The RCPI position paper says tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in Ireland, with smoking leading to more harm than alcohol, drugs, and accidents combined.
Chair of the RCPI's clinical advisory group on smoking and e-cigarettes, Dr Paul Kavanagh, said despite being a front-runner in instigating a workplace smoking ban, Ireland has not seen a reduction in smoking since 2019.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Kavanagh said the goal should be to have a tobacco-free generation and a phasing out of the product.
"There's a huge burden of devastating harm caused by smoking here in Ireland and that burden continues despite the fact that we've made good progress in the past and indeed we've led the world in terms of our workplace smoking ban.
"But as doctors on the frontline of our health services picking up the pieces of this harm every day, we're saying to Government that we think there's unfinished business."
Dr Kavanagh said that there is an opportunity for the Government to "double down and to set a new goal of bringing this harm to an end by 2035", and the first step would be "taking children and young people out of harm's way".
He said: "If we go back maybe 25-30 years, we would have seen that there was about one in three people in the population here in Ireland that smoked tobacco products.
"In recent years, that situation has improved and that's down to a number of measures that the Government has implemented.
"But still, in the most recent surveys, we're finding that there's just under one in five people that smoke, 17% or 18%."
He said that critically those rates have stalled in recent years and there have been no reductions in smoking rates since 2019.
Dr Kavanagh said the advisory group is providing a blueprint for the Government "to deliver a tobacco-free future by 2035," which would involve measures such as taxation.
"While taxation has increased year-on-year on tobacco products, if you look at this from 2020, what you'll find is that the price has increased by 24%. But then if we look at the Central Statistics Office, they'll tell us that weekly incomes have increased by 28%," explained Dr Kavanagh.
"I think traditionally when we think about the problem of smoking, we tend to focus in on people who use the product and we think about trying to manage the problem.
"But what we're asking now is for our Government to really get to the heart of the issue, which is the fact that we have an industry that's valued at over a trillion dollars each year that's producing a product that it knows kills at least one in two people who use it on an ongoing basis," he added.
