Philippines: Aquino Urged to Ban E-cigarettes

Source from:  Business Mirror (ph)  07/15/2013

PRESIDENT Aquino was asked on Saturday to seriously take into consideration the advice of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes.

The appeal was made by the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) in the wake of a warning issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), which said that the so-called nicotine-replacement therapy given by e-cigarettes has been proven unsafe for humans.

E-cigarettes are becoming popular among Filipinos. They sell from as low as P500 to P5,000 per unit, depending on the make and design.

E-cigarette users say that it offers them an alternative to real cigarettes that are widely believed to cause health problems, particularly respiratory diseases that eventually lead to lung cancer.

But health experts believe that e-cigarette usage promotes a habit that could lead to addiction to its use, just like cigarettes. The PMA wants Mr. Aquino to direct concerned authorities, particularly the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), to implement the ban.

In a statement, PMA President Leo Olarte cited the warning issued by Assistant Director General Ala Alwan of the WHO’s Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster that electronic cigarettes are not considered as legitimate therapy to stop smoking addiction.

The FDA advisory against e-cigarette usage, however, was bucked by the Philippine E-Cigarette Industry Association Inc., which cited a study made by physician Konstantinos Farsalinos.

Farsalinos, a cardiologist working as an independent researcher at the Onasis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, Greece, and at Medical Imaging Research Center, University Hospital Gathuisberg in Leuven, Belgium, said the FDA advisory is based on the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Unit Cancer Prevention-Heidelberg publication that he described as “not a new study but a review of other studies.”

“The German Cancer Research Center did not study anything themselves and, in most cases, presented the other studies in a wrong way,” he said.

His latest published study claimed that e-cigarette vapor was at least 795- percent less toxic than cigarette smoke on cultured cells. Farsalinos will present his recent findings on e-cigarette at the European Society of Cardiology annual congress on August 31.

The PMA, however, said the use of e-cigarettes is not an “alternative lifestyle,” as claimed by its proponents and promoters, but is actually a new and an “alternative vice” which should not be taught to the public, in general, and children, in particular.

Alwan earlier said that “e-cigarette marketers and propagandists should immediately remove from their advertisements and web sites any suggestion that the WHO considers e-cigarettes to be safe and an effective smoking cessation aid because this is untrue.”

Olarte, who is both a physician and a practicing lawyer, asked the Aquino administration to act on this crucial issue and ban e-cigarette because e-cigarettes are “contrary to the intent and provisions of Republic Act 9211, which was crafted to protect everybody, most specifically the youth, from nicotine addiction and a myriad of ailments like chronic respiratory and a cardiovascular diseases that can kill.”

Earlier PMA National Treasurer Benito Atienza bared that owing to its very limited resources, the FDA cannot fully enforce its e-cigarette warnings and advisory because it is dependent on the support of other enforcers, like the local governments that are under the supervision of the DILG. Enditem