Editorial | Hong Kong lawmakers must act on e-cigarettes bill

As global leader of the fight against the coronavirus the World Health Organization has had to tiptoe around nations’ political sensitivities in its public pronouncements.

Such tact goes out the window when it attacks the tobacco industry’s “criminal” tactics to “get young people hooked on nicotine” by targeting them with toxic and poisonous tobacco substitutes, and demands that governments ban or tightly regulate them.

In its latest report on tobacco control, the WHO could justifiably include in its condemnation lawmakers who resist government attempts to legally ban the sale of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products.

A case in point, sadly, is to be found in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The Smoking (Public Health) Amendment Bill 2019, which would ban sales, still languishes in Legco in 2021.

When lawmakers in the bills committee ceased work on it last year the government put on the record disappointment and regret that it could not take early action to protect public health.