Thailand firm on vaping

Thailand’s Public Health Ministry’s Disease Control Department has insisted that electronic cigarettes are hazardous to health and should not be used as a means to quit smoking, according to a story on chiangraitimes.com quoting Dr. Assadang Ruay-archin, deputy director-general of the department.

Assadang, who is also the department’s spokesman, described as untrue a report that the Public Health Ministry had distorted the findings of an analysis of the safety risks of e-cigarette use associated with toxic substances and heavy metals.

The Disease Control Department insists that e-cigarettes are hazardous to health because people who use them can still be exposed to nicotine, the addictive substance contained in combustible cigarettes.

Therefore, said Assadang, people who used e-cigarettes could be addicted to nicotine in the same way as they would be if they smoked combustible cigarettes.

A foreign-based report that e-cigarettes were 95 percent safer than were combustible cigarettes was only an assessment by some research groups, he said. The World Health Organization had not yet recognized the report. So far, there had been no academic conclusions about the safety of e-cigarettes.

Meanwhile, Assadang said that though some reports indicated that e-cigarettes were less hazardous than were combustible cigarettes, ‘they still risk being the cause of lung, heart and cardiovascular diseases’.

Moreover, he said, many reports indicated that youths who started vaping were more likely than those who didn’t to become addicted to combustible cigarettes.

Assadang said the Disease Control Department urged those who wanted to quit smoking to use medically-recognized methods. They should not use any other products that claimed to be effective in helping them quit smoking, he said.

Earlier this month, a network of electronic-cigarette users pressed Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly to consider lifting the country’s ban on the import, production, sale and possession of these products.