India Bans e-Cigarette Sales and Says There’s an ‘Epidemic’ of Kids Vaping
India has banned e-cigarettes as US health inspectors investigate a series of deaths linked to vaping. Reuters reports that an executive order restricts selling, creating, bringing in, or advertising e-cigarettes. First offenders could receive as long as one year in jail and a 100,000 rupee ($1,400) fine; later infringement could cost as long as three years and 500,000 rupees. The boycott doesn't matter to really utilizing e-cigarettes — yet it means users can't legally purchase refills for their vapes.
Conventional cigarettes are legal in India, despite the fact that they're profoundly taxed. E-cigarettes, however, have held a less certain position. The government has been weighing a boycott for quite a long time, despite concerns over the legality of halting imports, and Reuters reported on a draft of the current week's order back in August. "These novel items come with attractive appearances and multiple flavors and their use has increased exponentially and acquired epidemic extents in developed countries, especially among youth and children," said a spokesperson from India's health service.
This echoes long-standing concerns about e-cigarettes worldwide, especially the fear that flavored vapes are encouraging youngsters to attempt tobacco. These fears intensified in August after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the principal death due to an obscure lung illness. The CDC has confirmed six more deaths since then, and regulators have pushed forward with designs to confine e-cigarette use. Michigan became the main US state to boycott flavored e-cigarettes in early September, and New York followed up with its own boycott this week.
Singapore had already banned e-cigarettes, and Japan permits some vaping items however bans the sale of nicotine e-cigarette juice.
Reuters reports that India's health service expects its boycott to be challenged in court, and supporters of vaping in the nation have warned that a boycott will deprive smokers of a potentially less dangerous alternative. Research has suggested that vaping is indeed safer than smoking cigarettes, however, the full dangers remain obscure — and regulators are being forced to decide whether the device's benefits for existing smokers outweigh the danger of e-cigarettes becoming a gateway medication to tobacco use.
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