Aug 27, 2014
UN agency seeks curbs on indoor use, advertising, sales to minors
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday called on governments to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, warning that they pose a “serious threat” to foetuses and youth.
This recommendation that also said the devices should be banned from public indoor spaces, comes ahead of a global meeting on tobacco control.
The devices, which have surged in popularity among the young, function by heating flavoured nicotine liquid into a vapour that is inhaled like traditional cigarettes, minus the smoke.
“The existing evidence shows that (e-cigarette) aerosol is not ‘merely vapour’ as is often claimed in the marketing of these products,” a WHO official said.
The UN agency said there was enough evidence “to caution children and adolescents, pregnant women, and women of reproductive age” about e-cigarette use, due to the “ potential for foetal and adolescent nicotine exposure (having) long-term consequences for brain development”.
It said retailers should be prohibited from selling e-cigarettes to minors, and called for the scrapping of vending machines in almost all current locations.
So far, users have been permitted to freely vape in places where traditional smoking is strictly off limits.
Sales have risen sharply since e-cigarettes were first introduced in 2005.
Since then, the sector has ballooned from a single manufacturer in China to an estimated $3.0-billion global industry with one or more of 466 brands available in 62 countries, WHO said in a statement.
While the WHO acknowledged that the devices, marleted in 8,000 flavours were “likely to be less toxic” for the smoker than conventional cigarettes, it said util manufacturers provide “convincing supporting scientific evidence and obtain regulatory approval,” they should be particularly banned from making any health claims, including that e-cigarettes can help stop smoking.
It also warned of the “renormalisation effect” of e-cigarettes, meaning they can make smoking itself more attractive and “perpetuate the smoking epidemic”.
According to WHO e-cigarette use had at least doubled among both adults and teens from 2008 to 2012. In 2012, seven percent of EU citizens over the age of 15 had given vaping a shot. However, only one percent of the population in the bloc, which governs e-cigarette use in a fragmented fashion, indulged in the practice regularly, WHO said.
In the United States, where e-cigarettes are completely unregulated, they appear more popular, with 47 per cent of smokers and former smokers saying in 2013 that they had tried the devices. US health authorities also said that the number of US youths who had tried e-cigarettes had tripled from 2011 to 2013
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