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HomeTalking PointsCape Town wants clarity on e-cigarettes

Cape Town wants clarity on e-cigarettes

The City of Cape Town says it will escalate its efforts this year for legislative clarity on the wide range of alternative smoking devices and habits that have become commonplace in SA, including the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), reports Business Day.

City Health recently solicited legal opinion from the Department of Health about the use of e-cigarettes. Cape Town says this continues to be a grey area, not only in SA but around the globe. The use of e-cigarettes is not provided for in the Tobacco Products Control Amendment Act.

Last year, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, reportedly said e-cigarettes should be outlawed. "If it were up to me, I would outright ban electronic cigarettes and I will fight for it," the minister reportedly said. "If there is one industry I don’t sympathise with at all it’s the tobacco industry, for the simple reason there is nothing they have contributed to humanity except great damage".

Cape Town mayoral committee member for health Benedicta van Minnen said the city would engage with Motsoaledi on the use of e-cigarettes and hookah pipes (or hubbly bubblies as the devices are commonly known) to push for legal clarity.

Meanwhile in the US, Sally Satel, scholar at the America Enterprise Institute, writes in The New York Times that initial public enthusiasm for e-cigarettes is waning among health and quality concerns. She says that ‘'instead of waiting years to develop burdensome regulations, the US Food and Drug Administration should act now by setting interim safety guidelines.'

[link url="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/health/2015/01/13/cape-town-pushes-for-legal-clarity-on-e-cigarettes"]Full Business Day report[/link]
[link url="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/will-the-fda-kill-off-e-cigs.html?_r=0"]Full report in The New York Times[/link]

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