Smoke, vapour and mirrors

First Uber, then e-cigarettes. It would appear that while accused of being slow in many areas, popular culture does not seem to escape the vigilant eyes of our government.

Before something even hits the mainstream culture, we already have concerns, overnight studies and a plethora of academic opinions by people who often, just as recent as the day before, were experts in some other field.

Is the government truly concerned about Malaysians’ safety, health and wellbeing, or are there other underlying concerns?

As recent as last week, popular opinion was that vaping was to be banned.

The Health Ministry had gone to town with statements of the dangers of vaping and how it was untested. This, of course, led to much public outcry because of the increasing popularity of vape, and the amount of money invested by many young entrepreneurs to build businesses around this new, largely untapped market.

A simple Google search would have provided the ministry with multiple sources supporting the vapers’ case, as well as the few which don’t.

Many health authorities, including the ministry’s British counterpart, and the American FDA have done extensive studies on vaping, as well as many independent bodies.

General consensus of these literature circle around three things – that in the short to medium term, vaping is less harmful than conventional smoking, that vaping has not been around long enough to study its long-term effects on the body, and that because of the prior fact, vaping should closely be monitored by health authorities.

The first point is most commonly used by vape enthusiasts to support their cause. It makes, after all, perfect sense.

Four to five chemicals in an average puff of vape as opposed to almost 7,000 chemicals in the same puff of a cigarette. There is no flame, meaning less carbon and, therefore, arguably less carcinogenic. Some vapes come with electronic controls and, therefore, vapers are able to control the amount of chemicals, such as nicotine, which is inhaled.

The counter argument against vaping on the other hand – addictive properties of nicotine, inconvenience to people around them, dangers to health – seem to pale in comparison with its positive properties.

After all, as vapers rightly argue, almost every single argument used against vaping, can easily be applied against cigarette, cigar or shisha smokers, often to greater detrimental effect.

On the one hand, some government officials argue that nicotine is dangerous, and on the other, dispenses nicotine patches to people who try to give up smoking (which arguably makes up a sizeable proportion of vape users).

Some detractors of vaping go so far as to suggest that it be placed under the Poisons Act , because of its addictive nature (which even cigarettes, which comes under the Tobacco Control Act, isn’t) which would make it obtainable only via medical prescription.

That’s great but perhaps they should also suggest the same for other substances open to abuse, such as beer or glue.

While its easily conceded that vaping has only been around for slightly more than 10 years, and as such, long-term effects would be difficult to study, what studies have we undertook in these 10 years? It was not hard to foresee that the craze of e-cigarettes would eventually hit Malaysian shores – even tobacco giants themselves have begun investing in vape and vape technology from as early as 2005.

It makes economic sense, it’s a US$7 billion industry that’s growing rapidly.

Still an infant compared with the conventional tobacco industry, of course. And while cigarette sales contribute billions in government revenue, vaping does not nearly contribute that much, other than regular import duties and GST. Still, we have had ample time to study it.

On the other hand, while study after study has been done on cigarettes, what effect has these studies done to improve the wellbeing of cigarette smokers?

Does reducing the amount of tar by X mg been effective in reducing the number of smokers who suffer from lung cancer? Has the number of patients drop drastically after putting pictures of miscarried babies on the cover of cigarette boxes?

Or more importantly, the people around them who are forced to inhale second-hand smoke? Sure, we have enacted laws against public smoking but is there a single LRT station in KL where people do not light up at the entrance?

How about cigar smokers? What about shisha users? While it was quite common to hear religious edicts about shisha, has extensive studies been done on the long-term effects of it to health?

Will shisha distributors or cigar rooms be distributing similar posters as we do with cigarettes to their patrons? While we’re at it, let’s also address alcohol abuse, and fast food and sugary carbonated drinks.

Surely these dangers to health should concern the government as much as vaping. Perhaps the Cabinet should discuss these, too. – November 3, 2015.