By Xavier Kong
The Health Ministry has announced that they are looking to ban vaping, with concerns over health. However, there has been research stating that vaping is less harmful. Of course, the local vaping community is smoking with anger. Tiger wonders, just what is the ministry thinking?
When Tiger heard that the Health Ministry is looking to ban vaping, Tiger did not know whether to feel disgusted, or disappointed. Actually, Tiger thinks it is actually a mixture of both.
However, what looms the most in Tiger’s mind at the mention of the ban can be summed up in one question: what is the Health Ministry thinking?
From what Tiger has seen and read on the stance of the Health Ministry, the potential ban on vaping seems to stem from a concern about the health of Malaysians. Well, Tiger would like to also point out that the Health Ministry has not said anything about cigarettes, which actually have been proven to be harmful to human beings.
Apparently, the move to ban vaping is a preemptive measure, taken “before vaping becomes a major issue”. Well, in Tiger’s opinion, what they are doing now is very much like closing the barn door after a tiger’s gone in, eaten the prize cow, and left.
With vaping now already considered an upcoming subculture of Malaysia, with a global industry value of about US$6 billion (RM26 billion) by the end of 2014 and still seeing growth, Tiger is of the opinion that the reason given by the Health Ministry, that a potential ban on vaping would be a preemptive move before it becomes a major issue, just does not makes sense.
On the other hand, the ministry’s reasoning that vaping is more harmful than cigarettes does not really fly, either. While the ministry cited internal studies, the vaping community, through the Malaysian Organisation of Vape Entity, cited a Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos, a cardiologist who is also a researcher on vape safety, who stated that vaping is actually 95% healthier than smoking cigarettes.
On the international scene, the most recent show of support for vaping came from the government of the UK, where a government-backed report acknowledged that vaping is 20 times less harmful than smoking. The report, by Public Health England, Kings College London and Queen Mary London, estimates that, should every smoker in Britain convert to vaping, around 75,000 lives would be saved per annum!
Of course, as in just about any course of study, conflicting results would surely arise. This simply means that we need to be really sure on whether the potential ban is really necessary and whether the justification holds water.
In that sense the Health Ministry’s pronouncement that the ministry is looking into ways to ban vaping seems a tad like putting the cart before the horse, no?
In discussing vaping it helps to revisit the entire basis of the e-cigarette concept, which is the predecessor to the vape – it was built with the intent of making a healthier cigarette. Logically the next stage of its evolution, the vape, would likely be even healthier, yet the fact that it is now being debated as more dangerous than cigarettes somehow seems counterintuitive to this Tiger.
Seriously, why?
In any case, vaping has already dug itself into Malaysia, and the ministry’s move to ban it, as Tiger sees it, is doomed to failure.
With parts readily available and vape juice easily procured, Tiger just does not see how the government is going to enforce the ban on vaping. It is just not feasible.
The money that will be spent putting together a task force to run whatever operations they will run would, in Tiger’s opinion, be better spent on bringing down other crimes such as, oh, maybe snatch theft? How about cracking a kidnapping ring? Drugs? There really are plenty of other options out there.
What this all boils down to, is that Tiger believes the move to ban vaping is neither well thought-out, nor is it going to do any good. The vaping industry will just move underground in the face of the ban.
Still, there has to be a reason that the ministry made the decision, which Tiger does not know. Maybe that is why Tiger is not the health minister? So much smoke still over this entire matter.
GRRRRR!!!
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