Expert recommended a total ban on alternative smoking products in Hong Kong

The Bills Committee on Smoking (Public Health) (Amendment) Bill 2019 invited public for oral representation at the meeting today, to give views on banning the import, manufacture, sale, distribution and advertisement of alternative smoking products, including electronic cigarettes, heat-not-burn products and herbal cigarettes.

Prof Judith MACKAY, Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control and Senior Policy Advisor of World Health Organization, expressed her support on a total ban on alternative smoking products at the meeting. She remarked that Hong Kong should take this opportunity to apply the precautionary principle by World Health Organization (“WHO”) to ban these products before they become popular, in order to safeguard public health. Prof Judith MACKAY’s presentation is excerpted as follows:

1. Regulatory authorities around the world have rightly applied the precautionary principle in the interests of public health and life while the cause of Boeing 737 Max crashes are still uncertain. No Hong Kong Legislator would take risk travelling personally in one of these aircrafts or authorize these aircrafts to operate from Hong Kong and bear the responsibility of another possible crash.
    
2. Meanwhile, smoking hazards were uncovered after tobacco products have been introduced in the market for over a century. Strict scientific data on these alternative smoking products is only beginning to emerge. Hong Kong should apply the precautionary principle of WHO to impose a total ban to safeguard public health.
    
3. We don’t know what is in the hundreds of different alternative smoking products and we don’t yet know if they help smokers quit, or the opposite, encourage them to keep smoking with dual use.
    
4. There is already a substantial body of evidence shown that e-cigarettes increase risk of ever using combustible tobacco cigarettes among youth and young adults. The first report in Asia was published only this month, Taiwan’s teen vaping doubled the odds of youth taking up cigarette smoking two years later.
    
5. E-cigarettes and Heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products are trendy and electronic products with great appeal to youth. They both offer a real risk of “renormalizing” smoking, just as HK has so successfully reduced smoking rates.
    
6. The tobacco industry has told us twice before they have a safe product, included filters and low tar tobacco, which both turned out not to be safe at all.
    
7. That is a global trend that growing number of high, middle and low-income countries have imposed a complete ban on alternative smoking products.
    
8. Parents in Hong Kong do not want these alternative smoking products appear in the market, especially once they are allowed to enter the market, there is no turning back.
    
9. I suggest to ban all these new smoking products and review the law in 2-3 years, when there may be greater evidence on all the uncertainties outlined above.
    
10. At last, the issue is not whether alternative smoking products are “safer” than cigarettes, it’s whether they are actually safe.
     

Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (“COSH”) emphasizes that there is no safe and harmless tobacco product in the world, therefore, COSH urges the Legislative Council to pass the Bill for a total ban on alternative smoking products promptly in order to protect the public health, especially the next generations.