Israel Updates Plan to Tackle Smoking

Israel’s health ministry has issued a request for public comments on an “action plan for all tobacco and smoking products,” reports The Jerusalem Post. The plan includes eventually raising the legal smoking age to 21 from 18.

“The phenomenon of smoking is very worrying, and under my leadership, we are determined to promote measures to reduce it and increase awareness of the harm smoking causes,” said Health Minister Moshe Arbel. “This demands a complex and joint effort, and we are committed to implementing the policy in a variety of areas of prevention and encouraging quitting to promote public health and protect youngsters and adults alike from this serious damage to health.”

“Given the dimensions of the spread of smoking, we have examined all possible measures and continue to act in many ways in order to raise awareness of the dangers of using these products,” said Moshe Bar Siman Tov, health ministry director-general. “We recommend adopting a strict policy and dramatic measures required by the necessity of reality, but it’s clear to all of us that the best way to stop smoking is not to start smoking.”

The action plan includes decisions on the prohibition of flavors, giving the ministry powers to enforce the nicotine concentration limit, limiting the volume of the filling liquid allowed for import, marketing and sale, requiring graphic warnings on all tobacco and smoking products and visual uniformity to the smoking and vaping products, a ban on the sale of disposable electronic cigarettes, selling tobacco and smoking products in designated stores only and reducing the number of points of sale, raising the selling age to 21, giving authority to the ministry to enforce a ban on advertising on the internet, equalizing taxation on e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, and applying taxation to nicotine intended for nonmedical use.  

The ministry’s statement said that “e-cigs are the gateway to smoking for young people who start experimenting with them at a young age; there is not strong evidence that e-cig use helps smokers kick the habit compared to the proven safety of other means of withdrawal, such as smoking cessation workshops, nicotine gums and patches and medical treatment. The scientific evidence on the health damage of e-cigs in the short[-term] and medium-term is known and described in the literature as affecting the respiratory system, cardiovascular system, trauma and burns, the developing brain in children and the creation of addiction.”