Business Desk :
Despite warnings from experts that a ban on e-cigarette (vaping) will push people back toward much more harmful tobacco usage, different government and non-government organizations, still advocate for banning vaping.
E-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes, according to a “landmark review” by Public Health of England, an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom. The study also concluded that cancer potencies of e-cigarettes were largely under 0.5 percent of the risk of cigarette smoking.
After the vape-related lung illnesses in the United States sent a wave of panic across the world, experts and most notably the FDA pointed out that the real culprit behind the outbreak wasn’t vaping, but illicit products used by the victims.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US agency responsible for protecting and promoting public health found that “most of the patients impacted by these illnesses reported using THC-containing products, suggesting THC vaping products play a role in the outbreak.”
FDA also explicitly urges the public to not quit vaping in order to go back to cigarette smoking. “If you are an adult who uses e-cigarettes instead of cigarette smoking, do not return to smoking cigarettes,” information released on FDA website earlier this month says.
But advocates of banning vaping in Bangladesh seem to disregard these findings, pushing for a complete prohibition of vaping products.
Dr Mithun Alamgir, professor and head of the department of community medicine at Enam Medical College, says any form of regulations or banning must be based on established scientific evidence.
“The government has the right to ban anything it deems necessary. But there must be a legal framework for that and there must be justification as to why something is being banned,” said Dr Mithun who advocates using vaping as a far less harmful product than tobacco products.
“If the government has the scientific evidence that shows it is more harmful than other tobacco product, only then a ban should be considered,” he said.
“But if there is no scientific evidence to that effect, then it is meaningless to simply follow another country blindly and ban something for which there is no scientific justification.”
“Currently, the scientific evidence shows that vaping is much less harmful than regular cigarettes. Whereas, there has long been clear evidence that tobacco usage kills. There is currently no scientific evidence that proves vaping to be equally harmful to other tobacco products.”
Industry experts similarly warn that banning will not stop use of vaping products, but is likely to be counterproductive, not only pushing people back to tobacco usage, but also forcing a growing number of vapers to buy unsafe and low-quality products, potentially giving rise to a public health risk.
