Smoking in any shape or form will impact health
The government’s decision to regulate e-cigarettes for minors under 18 is very welcome. According to some retailers e-cigarettes have been unregulated since 2016 with doubts about age restriction. Until last year, no health warnings were on packets like ordinary cigarettes. The current warnings are only in relation to the addictive side of nicotine and do not go far enough like cigarette packets for young smokers in warning them of the cancer causing effects of nicotine.
Some believe that the electronic pipe is completely different from the ordinary cigarette in terms of health. The primary active ingredient is nicotine and derived from tobacco which is a proven carcinogen — so there are very real health risks. The current propaganda being given out is that e-cigarettes are a safer alternative to ordinary cancer causing cigarettes. How safer? Nicotine by definition is a poison and long term use is bound to have detrimental effects such as cancer or other bad health effects. The game being played at the moment by the government and the tobacco industry is a wait and see policy to see if e-cigarettes are less harmful than ordinary cigarettes. It’s a dangerous game to play and is taking a big gamble with people’s health, especially young people with many of them now pipe smokers of popular nicotine laced vapours on a daily basis. It is hard to believe, though welcome, that advertising control will have any effect, given that e-cigarettes shops are now in many retail locations and stocked by nearly all chain stores.
If we want to bring down our soaring health costs and prevent disease, it all begins with lifestyle and bad habits.
Smoking in any shape or form will undoubtedly have ill-health effects at some stage, but at least minors will now have greater difficulty getting hold of something their friends might want to get them on to, so they too will increase the risk of having debilitating or grave medical difficulties later in life, or sooner than that.
Source: Southern Star
