TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Multiple educational and tobacco control groups on Monday (Sept. 26) called on Taiwan’s legislature to quickly pass an amendment bill aimed at keeping the youth from using electronic cigarettes.
The bill was introduced many years ago to amend the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act, which has not been amended for 15 years, Radio Taiwan International (RTI) reported.
However, the bill has not been finalized yet as the government and the opposition still have different opinions on whether to ban e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products altogether or to ban one and not the other.
Thirty-four educational groups and the John Tung Foundation held a press conference on Monday to say that 79,000 junior and senior high school students in Taiwan are e-cigarette users and call for an immediate amendment to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act to ban vaping and save young people.
Lin Shan-ju (林珊如), who is both a parent and a student, said when she enrolled in college in 2018, only two classmates used e-cigarettes, but when she graduated in June of this year, 25 of her 30 classmates, or 80% of them, were users, per RTI.
Taipei President of the Parents Association Chairman Chou Chi-ping (周季平) said that as the semester began, many parents of senior and junior high school students asked the association for help to save their kids, saying that their kids told them the whole class was vaping, and senior schoolmates were the suppliers of e-cigarettes and that the government should amend the law to stop the illegal sales of e-cigarettes, according to the RTI report. Chou added, “There are no legal channels for importing e-cigarettes, but we see vaping is extremely popular among senior high school students. When I asked how they got their hands on the product, they wouldn’t tell me. They got it from underground dealing, which should be stopped.”
Lin Ching-li (林清麗), chief of John Tung Foundation’s tobacco control division, said that the opening of e-cigarette use for adults in the U.S. and U.K. has resulted in 5.3 million young people becoming vapers in the U.S. and an outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) in 2019. As a result, nearly 3,000 youths were sent to the hospital for treatment and 68 of them died. The number of vapers among British youths multiplied in a short time, and 10% of students are regular vapers, Li added, according to the report.
Chen Hsi-chou (陳錫洲), director of the Department of Pediatrics at Tri-Service General Hospital, said that all tobacco products contain nicotine, and various flavors are added to e-cigarettes to attract youths to the product. However, many e-liquids contain highly-concentrated nicotine salt formulations to make e-cigarettes stronger, more easily absorbed, and more addictive, he said. Vaping can hamper young users’ brain development and even cause permanent harm to their brain, he said, adding that withdrawal symptoms will appear once vaping is stopped, making users trying to quit more anxious, irritable, and unable to concentrate, per RTI.
