South Africa’s Health Department to crack down on e-cigarettes

[daveza]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/gener...department-to-crack-down-on-e-cigarettes.html

South Africa’s Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi plans to target e-cigarettes as part of a move to ensure the tobacco industry is properly regulated in the country.

Motsoaledi said there is a drive to categorise e-cigarettes as “any other kind of cigarette”, as some e-cigarettes contained nicotine.

Others do not contain nicotine, he said, but it was not his department’s job to determine which variants did or did not.

He said e-cigarettes that did not contain nicotine were still harmful, as they introduced youngsters to smoking.

Motsoaledi said health ministers around the world agree that smoking – with traditional cigarettes or e-cigarettes – needs to be stopped.

Firstly what does the vape industry have to do with the tobacco industry ?

And is there actually a single health minister on the planet anywhere who has said e-cigs must be stopped ?

Seems you can just make up whatever nonsense you like and present it as fact.

 

[KimVapeDashian]

Well nicotine, comes from the tobacco plant.

Not the same plant, but the same family - or something.

 

[The_Ice]

Oh no, just not the SA Health Department clamping down on vaping with their usual ruthless efficiency! Run vapers, RUUUUUNNNN

 

[Lord Vetinari]

Its election time smoke out the butt. Time to start our own campaign. I happen to know a former MEC for health personally. He is still involved politically. Lives in my home town. Just not certain if moving this into the real political agenda is a good thing at all. Majority rule and all. You will just piss the rulers off and go backwards. IDK. It sucks.

 

[RichJB]

All countries are lumping smoking and vaping together. They both deliver nicotine, and vaping is seen as an alternative only to smoking, not as an alternative to anything else. The two are intuitively related so they are bundled together in legislative/administrative/governance terms. Even ISO, who is now starting to develop international standards for vaping, has its vaping sub-committee under the "Tobacco and tobacco products" main committee. Also, tobacco companies are becoming major players in the vaping industry. Having one tobacco company dealing with two different administrative branches of government - one for smoking, another for vaping - would just complicate things hugely and add to the already cumbersome bureaucratic overhead.

The Minister is technically correct. If you asked any Health Minister whether he would rather that people:
1) Smoked
2) Vaped, or
3) Neither of the above

he/she will always answer "Number 3." When he says "it needs to be stopped", he means "people need to quit", not "we need to ban it". I don't think any country is trying to tackle smoking by banning it. Prohibition was a disastrous failure in the US and, increasingly, countries are admitting that the war on drugs has been a similar failure. Outright bans just force the industry underground where it is outside the domain of regulation.

A couple of countries, including Brazil and Argentina, initially banned vaping products. But that was a hasty and reactionary move which, I suspect, will be revised soon. Brazil has already volunteered to contribute to development of international vaping standards, and Argentina has "observer" status in the process. So they both seem keen to learn more. I'd warrant that both will change their vaping legislation to allow vaping in due course. It's the only sensible way forward.