e-Cigarettes poses new danger to public health

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STEADILY becoming popular e-Cigarettes are replacing normal ones by providing different flavoured vapours among the trendy youths in the country following the West. Scientists are still divided in the line of this addictive device’s pros and cons but as a trendy fashion across the world, the consumption of flavours is increasing alarmingly. A vernacular daily reported that the different fashioned and price tagged e-Cigarettes have flooded the country’s posh shopping malls while most of the customers are non-smoking youths. In the device the consumers have full control to customize nicotine levels as well as to puff thousands of flavours that pose a serious public health danger as a bordering country of the “golden triangle”. The Narcotics Control Department and law enforcers are overanxious about the growing popularity of the new techno addiction but guardians are still in the dark.

Reports said that Dhaka Metropolitan Police have examined some specimens of e-Cigarettes and found high levels of drugs and narcotics like liquid Yaba, heroin, liquid nicotine and other poisonous drugs. Some smokers argue that smoking e-Cigarettes are helpful to quit smoking but available data do not support the notion. Different brands of e-Cigarettes contain different chemical concentrations. There is also a fear that the widespread use of e-Cigarettes will normalize the consumption of nicotine, undoing the social changes which resulted from the smoking ban and making smoking socially acceptable once more. The British Medical Association is calling for a ban in public places, while the World Federation of Public Health Associations considers that all governments should apply the precautionary principle and should implement an appropriate regulatory regime for e-Cigarettes as products that have the potential to cause considerable harm to the public’s health.

Many evidences point to the fact that e-Cigarettes are likely to be much less harmful but we need really robust monitoring, surveillance and of course we really welcome a lot of research into these products. As scientists are divided as to whether the inhalation of vapours is more harmful than traditional smoking, the government should be more vigilant and cautious to allow or negate the use of such inhalation devices. New brands of drugs in the fashionable e-Cigarette containers might trap the youths into regular smoking, so that all should come up to ostracize such addictions.

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