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The government has cited preventing young people from smoking as a primary rationale for its e-cigarette ban. Photo: Winson Wong
Opinion
Alice Wu
Alice Wu

Hong Kong’s bizarre e-cigarettes ban will boost traditional tobacco products rather than reduce smoking

  • Alice Wu says a ban on the sale, but not use, of e-cigarettes will only push young people to black markets, or perhaps to traditional tobacco products that may well be even less healthy
Alice Wu
Alice Wu
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The government’s war on e-cigarettes is simply bizarre – and that’s putting it nicely. Of all the unhealthy lifestyle choices available to – or forced upon – Hongkongers, why are e-cigarettes the only item being targeted? The biggest beneficiaries of the ban, traditional tobacco companies that have not invested in researching and developing new alternatives, can now laugh all the way to the bank.

The kicker, of course, is that the government says the ban is needed and justified so that people, especially minors, are not encouraged and misled into smoking. So, obviously, the greater evil is traditional tobacco products, yet the government sees banning the lesser evil as sufficient. We don’t want you to smoke, and since e-cigarettes may encourage that, we are banning e-cigarettes but not traditional cigarettes. That is the reasoning behind the ban; how absurd.

And our policymakers must have forgotten what adolescence is all about: usually, the more that adults “ban” something, the greater the incentive to do what is not allowed.

Even more convoluted is that the government’s ban doesn’t prohibit the use of e-cigarettes. The reasoning is that it isn’t trying to punish users. Yet, in fact, it is: the ban will just encourage people to buy from the black market that will flourish. And, ultimately, the government’s goal of discouraging the habit won’t see vapers stop smoking. Rather, they may well turn to traditional cigarettes.

It’s a wonder that government officials can keep a straight face explaining it all. And, I can’t help but wonder what policymakers had been smoking when they came up with this logic- and sense-defying non-ban ban.

Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan talks about the ban on e-cigarette sales during a show at RTHK in Kowloon Tong on February 14. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
So what does the ban actually ban? Any import, sale and promotion of new smoking products, including e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn products and herbal cigarettes. So the ban protects any importer, seller and promotor of traditional smoking products by removing their competition.
In defence of this policy, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said on a recent radio programme that “these products are usually portrayed as less harmful and helpful for those wanting to quit smoking, but a lot of research suggests they are still harmful to health”. She cited an American study suggesting that e-cigarette use has become an epidemic. This raises the question of how a ban that doesn’t include banning use is helpful in fighting the trend that has become an “epidemic”?
Why Hong Kong ban on e-cigarettes is wrong – they helped me quit tobacco
And, of course, Chan forgot to mention the recently published article in the New England Journal of Medicine that found, after a year-long study of almost 900 smokers, that e-cigarettes were nearly twice as effective for quitting smoking as conventional nicotine replacement products like patches and gum. Dr Neal L. Benowitz, an expert on the pharmacology of nicotine and tobacco addiction and chief of clinical pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, called it “a seminal study” and “so important to the field”.

And why didn’t Chan talk about the toxic tar and carcinogens from burning tobacco, but not found in e-cigarettes? I guess the government would rather that vapers and members of the public forced to endure second-hand smoke breathe in the toxic tar and carcinogens instead. The argument that this is all for the good of public health just went up in flames.

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What is most mind-boggling is how the government is obviously showcasing its strong political will with this ban while there are no more than 150 inspectors in total at the Tobacco and Alcohol Control Office. One would think that if the government is so hell-bent on watching out for our health, there would be more inspectors than traffic wardens.

I guess we should find consolation in knowing that our elitist government hasn’t caught wind of the “sitting is the new smoking” nonsense. Otherwise, we would all be left standing.

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Smoking out the logic of bizarre war on vaping
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