BRUSSELS: Widely popular among young people for their dizzying array of flavours, including apple, watermelon and cola, time is up for disposable e-cigarettes in Belgium, the first EU country to ban them.
From January 1, the sale of single-use vaporizers will be banned in Belgium, in a bid to protect the health of young people under a national anti-tobacco plan.
The European Union aims to achieve a tobacco-free generation by 2040, reducing the 27-nation bloc’s smoking population from around 25 percent today to less than five percent of the total. Some EU countries plan to bring that deadline forward.
Vaporizers are often promoted as less harmful than smoking traditional tobacco products.
They attract younger users with their colorful packaging and the promise of delicious flavors, plus the advantage of avoiding that unpleasant smell of smoke on your fingers.
But because e-cigarettes still contain nicotine, which is highly addictive, critics fear they could be a potential stepping stone to more traditional tobacco products.
Belgium boasts of having reacted quickly to the dangers posed by disposable e-cigarettes, which hit the market more than five years ago. In 2021, the federal government submitted a proposal to the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, to ban single-use vaporizers.
The commission, which must give its approval to any sales ban, gave the green light to Belgium in March 2024, paving the way for a national law to come into force.
France has won EU acceptance for a similar ban. Once enacted, the French law will prohibit the production, sale and free offering of vaporizers, with a fine of 100,000 euros ($104,000) for any violation.
Health authorities in France and Belgium say chronic nicotine use is especially harmful to the teenage brain and could encourage the use of other drugs.
Published in Dawn, December 31, 2024
