Mexico banned the use of vapers and electronic cigarettes as of Tuesday “for the damage they cause to health”through a decree signed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, local authorities reported.
“It is a lie that vapers are an alternative to cigarettes. There is a propaganda that indicates that what is harmful is burning the tobacco, the smoke, but that is false. The vapors are also harmful to health,” the president said in his morning press conference.
Mexico had already banned last October the import and export of vapers, electronic cigarettes and their cartridges, But the companies continued to market the products they had in reserve, the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, explained in the presentation of the decree, the AFP agency reported.
Vapers work by heating a liquid cartridge containing aerosolized nicotine and other toxins, and users inhale the resulting vapor, mimicking the consumption of conventional cigarettes.
This new measure, presented this Tuesday when World No Tobacco Day is commemorated, also prohibits “the circulation and marketing of these new products”detailed the official.
The chemicals contained in #Electronic Cigarettes Y #vapers cause great damage to #Healthamong which stand out #COPDAsthma, cardiovascular and cerebral infarcts, #Cancerabortions and erectile dysfunction, among others. pic.twitter.com/Kr7SffcVXh
– HEALTH Mexico (@SSalud_mx) May 31, 2022
In Congress, the discussion of an initiative to expand the places where smoking is prohibited to include beaches, stadiums and open-air entertainment centers was also anticipated.
Mexico launched two alerts, in 2021 and this year, about the risks of these new types of tobacco.
In addition, the authorities carried out 158 verification operations and 9,582 units and vending machines for these products were seized, according to figures presented at the conference.
In April in the United States, the vaping firm Juul agreed to pay $22.5 million in a lawsuit that accused it of targeting its advertising at teenagers and lying about how addictive its products are.
For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in a report released on Monday that the tobacco industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world and responsible for the loss of some 600 million trees each year, given that it uses 200,000 hectares of land and 22,000 million tons of water annually, for cultivation.
