Hong Kong is set to ban electronic cigarettes and other ‘new tobacco products’, according to a story in the South China Morning Post.
The territory’s chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, was expected to announce the ban during a policy address today setting out about 250 initiatives.
The ban represents a U-turn by the government, which had previously proposed only to restrict the sale of such products to minors.
The Post reported that it had been told by ‘sources’ that the ban would cover e-cigarettes and other alternative products, such as heat-not-burn and herbal cigarettes.
Until now, the government had committed only to regulating e-cigarettes in the same way as conventional tobacco products are regulated, but health minister Sophia Chan Siu-chee left the door open for “more stringent measures”, depending on what medical evidence had to say about the health implications of these products.
However, a source familiar with the Food and Health Bureau expressed shock at the move, saying the previous administration had listed many technical problems with implementing a full ban.
Former health chief Dr. Ko Wing-man had intended to introduce a total ban in 2016, but studies by related departments suggested that such a move would be “quite problematic”.
Christine Hu, spokeswoman for the Coalition on Tobacco Affairs, an umbrella group of tobacco producers, said last night that she was upset by the proposal because it would boost the underground market for these products and fail to protect those under 18.
She said the Coalition was disappointed by the government’s “selective and blind adoption of views expressed by certain groups”, and disappointed that it had ignored opinions from the industry and scientific data from overseas.
Tag: Hong Kong
Hong Kong to ban e-cigs
Government urged to act
The Hong Kong-based consumer advocate factasia.org is urging the Government to allow the sale of regulated vaping products. It says that consumers have the right to choose what they buy and use, according to a story at harbourtimes.com.
Factasia backed its call on Tuesday with the results of a survey conducted by market researcher Ipsos. The survey showed that out of 1,000 smoking and non-smoking participants in Hong Kong, 65 percent said there should be tax and regulatory policies to help people switch from combustible cigarettes to alternative products, while ensuring those products were kept away from the young people.
Vaping devices seem to occupy a gray regulatory area in Hong Kong where the Government is considering its position in respect of these devices.
Heneage Mitchell, co-founder of Factasia, was quoted as saying that alternative products were less harmful than were combustible cigarettes.
“It should be a personal choice for people to use these products to improve their quality of life,” he said. “These products mimic smoking without causing the harmful effects.”
The survey found also that 60 percent of participants believed that if the consumption of a new product were scientifically proven to be potential less risky than smoking, adult smokers should have the right to access this information.Vapor pressure building
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council has begun to debate a proposal to regulate vaping and heat-not-burn (HNB) products because of a push by pro-liberalization members including Helena Wong, according to a story by Alex Frew McMillan for Nikkei Inc.
Vaping and HNB products occupy a gray regulatory region in Hong Kong, which means that they are not readily available to people without access to overseas sources.
Despite this, they seem to have a big following.
As Council discussions began in June on the proposal, supporters presented Wong with a petition bearing 10,000 signatures. And Peter Shiu, who represents the retail and wholesale trade in the legislature, was quoted as saying that 10 percent of Hong Kong’s 600,000 smokers had switched to alternatives.
The government however is guarded about the legalization proposal. The secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said in June that her department was “very concerned about the existence of e-cigarettes … [because] there are many unknown constituents or components,” some of which had been shown to be harmful. There had been little to no third-party research in Asia on their health effects.
McMillan reported that in much of Asia-Pacific, the sale of vaping and/or HNB devices was either illegal or, as in Hong Kong, occupied a regulatory gray area that kept them off store shelves. Now with users on the rise, consumers were joining together to pressure the authorities for explicit legalization on what they felt were healthier alternatives to traditional cigarettes. And they were starting to have some political impact.
In the past three years, consumers had formed vape-advocacy organizations in Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand. And the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations, an umbrella group, was lobbying for change in places including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan. Its Asian members had gathered last December in Bangkok to plan a concerted lobbying effort.
“There was an unprecedented feeling among delegates that they are no longer alone, that they are part of a regional and even global movement for change,” said Nancy Sutthoff, the president of INNCO’s board.
And help might come from an unlikely place – Australia, where laws differ from state to state but where, in effect, the sale of e-liquids containing nicotine is either banned or heavily restricted.
This is because Australian lawmakers are themselves under pressure now that New Zealand and Canada have both legalized vaping. “These are countries we compare ourselves with,” said Colin Mendelsohn, associate professor of public health and community medicine at the University of New South Wales and chairman of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association. “If Australia does make progress in this area, it will be very influential to other Asian countries. Drug policy in Australia has been very instrumental in Asia.”
Mendelsohn went on to say that allowing smoking and banning vaping was costing lives. “The government just needs to get out of the way and let people get on with leading their lives, as long as they are not harming anyone else,” he said.Another day, another panic
Hong Kong needs to strengthen its regulatory and legislative framework quickly to control and regulate electronic cigarettes better, according to a story in The China Daily quoting the health secretary of the Hong Kong government.
“We are very concerned about the existence of e-cigarettes,” the Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan was said to have told media representatives after a meeting at the Legislative Council (LegCo).
“According to international studies and some of the testing of e-cigarette samples in Hong Kong, we have discovered that many of these constituents in electronic cigarettes are harmful to health.
“So, we need to quickly strengthen our regulatory framework and legislative framework in order to better control and also regulate e-cigarettes.”
Chan said the government had submitted to the LegCo a proposal about strengthening e-cigarette regulation and that a tax on these products would be considered.Vapers face jail
Hong Kong will put forward ‘very soon’ an amendment to an existing bill that will tighten controls on electronic cigarettes, according to a story in the Hong Kong Standard quoting the Food and Health Secretary Sophia Chan.
Currently, it is not against the law to sell or possess e-cigarettes, though possessing those that contain nicotine can lead to a two-year prison term or a HK$100,000 fine.
Chan was quoted as saying that tobacco companies often claimed that e-cigarettes were less harmful than was “tobacco”, but that the “opposite may be true”.
“Evidence that we have collected globally [shows] that e-cigarettes are harmful and many of the substances in the e-cigarette cartridge are actually carcinogenic and harmful to health,” Chan said.
“So therefore there is a need for the government to strengthen the regulatory framework for e-cigarettes in Hong Kong.”
It was clear from the story what form the new restrictions or bans would take.
Chan was speaking to reporters at a tobacco control conference in Wan Chai, where she was also asked if the government would raise tobacco duty next year after a three-year freeze.
She said the government would look at World Health Organization recommendations, but added that there was more to consider than just tax when it came to tobacco control.
Hong Kong’s Council on Smoking and Health has urged the government to double the tax on combustible cigarettes, claiming that such a move could reduce the number of smokers in Hong Kong to five percent of the population in 10 years’ time.
For reasons that aren’t clear, many people believe that a country that reduces its cigarette-consuming population to five percent would have eliminated tobacco smoking.
Double or quit
The Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health has recommended that a tax hike should be used to push the price of cigarettes from about HK$57 a pack to HK$100 a pack, according to a story by Riley Chan for the Hong Kong Standard.
The Council, described as a policy advisory body, called for the hike after it saw the results of a survey it commissioned from the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong (HKU): The Tobacco Control Policy-related Survey 2017.
The survey researchers interviewed by telephone 2,002 people aged 15 and older from April to October this year.
They were said to have found that more than 80 percent, 5.7 percent of them smokers, supported an increase in tobacco tax next year.
More than 70 percent suggested that the tax should be increased annually.
Of the 298 smokers, 47.3 percent agreed that an increase in the retail price would encourage them to quit smoking.
The average increase in price suggested would take the price of a pack of cigarettes to HK$100.
Currently, leading brand cigarettes are sold for HK$57 a pack, where tax accounts for 67 percent, or HK$38, of the price.
To drive the price of cigarettes higher, the Council called on the government to double the tax, which is lower than the 75 percent recommended by the World Health Organization.
Lam Tai-hing, chair professor of community medicine at HKU, said the current price was much lower than that in other developed regions.
In Singapore, a pack of cigarettes was priced at the equivalent of HK$75, while in Britain and Australia, prices were HK$94 and HK$154 respectively.
“Looking at the retail price in other countries and the tobacco tax increase in recent years, we don’t think doubling the tax is too much to ask for,” Lam said.
Numbers game in Hong Kong
Photo by lydia_shiningbrightly A Hong Kong government proposal is seeking to amend health warnings on tobacco packs to comply with World Health Organization standards and international practices, but one aspect of the proposal has the government setting its own course, according to a comment piece by Grace Chan at scmp.com.
A proposal to increase the size of warnings is in line with international practice, but the government’s plan to retain the display of tar and nicotine yields runs contrary to international guidelines.
Under the WHO guidelines for implementing Article 11 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, contracting parties, which include Hong Kong, should not require quantitative statements on product packaging and labelling about tobacco constituents and emissions that might imply that one brand is less harmful than another, such as tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide figures.
The Legislative Council’s panel on health services has discussed the government’s proposals since December, and held a public hearing in January for stakeholders and members of the public to express their views.
On one occasion when legislators questioned Food and Health Bureau officials about why the government had not adopted WHO’s suggestion of removing displays of tar and nicotine yields on cigarette packaging, a bureau official said that, given the government’s “progressive approach”, it was necessary to retain the indication of tar and nicotine yields to make the public aware of the existence of such substances that are harmful to health.
Warnings on illegal trade
Photo by Jonathan Kos-Read A Hong Kong-based advocacy group has urged the government to step up enforcement against the illegal tobacco trade and warned it not to introduce measures that might jeopardize inroads that have been made into the trade, according to a story by Alex Fok for the Harbour Times.
Pollster Ipsos Hong Kong released this month a report on a survey into the public perception of the black-market cigarette trade. Commissioned by the organization, Hong Kong United Against Illicit Trade (HKUAIT), the researchers interviewed about a thousand Hong Kong adults in December.
The results show that 84 percent of the respondents considered illicit cigarettes to be a serious issue in Hong Kong.
Ipsos director Mick Gordon said that about three out of four respondents attribute the problem to sophisticated criminal networks, insufficient penalties and drastic excessive tax increases on cigarettes.
According to the latest Asia Illicit Tobacco Indicator 2015 report by Oxford Economics, Hong Kong’s illicit cigarette incidence has fallen by 6.7 percent since 2012, but remains at 29.1 percent, which is said to translate into an estimated HK$2.9 billion tax loss in the fiscal year 2015/16.
HKUAIT advisor Jeff Herbert warned that the tax loss could, in turn, fund criminal organizations and generate even greater indirect losses in terms of extra enforcement actions and prosecutions.
Herbert called for increased penalties, greater enforcement, public education and sensible tax rises amid negative factors such as ever rising costs of living and proximity to the mainland counterfeit market from where about 60 percent of these cigarettes were transported through land routes.
Meanwhile, Patrick Wong, executive director of HKUAIT, expressed concerns over a recent legislative proposal by the government to enlarge the size of health warnings on tobacco products from 50 percent to 85 percent, arguing that such a move would further reduce available space for tobacco manufacturers to print security and authentication features, resulting in a less secure supply chain that could facilitate the illegal trade.
Less-risky rewards on offer
Photo by Colin Tsoi The government of Hong Kong has been urged to regulate electronic cigarettes rather than ban them, according to a story by Alex Fok for the Harbour Times.
On December 24, the acting Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, said that the government would step up measures on electronic cigarette control because of ‘worries over possible cancer-causing substances and e-cigarettes being a potential gateway to smoking’.
But on a visit to Hong Kong, Dr. Stephen Jenkins, director of regulatory and medical affairs for Nicoventures’ [British American Tobacco] Asia-Pacific region, renewed his call for electronic cigarettes to be regulated instead of banned.
He said that electronic cigarettes had undergone significant public health scrutiny.
“Canada and New Zealand are moving towards regulating e-cigarettes, and Vietnam is considering it,” Jenkins said. “These are governments that have had a very strong position [on electronic cigarettes] for many years. But the evidence is compelling and they are considering it.”
Meanwhile, Fok reported that David Sweanor, an adjunct law professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada, had compared fear of vapor products to the demonization of immunization techniques.
Speaking at TEDxHongKong earlier this month, Sweanor said that science was indicating that the real problem was the smoke. And given that some people would not be able to quit their habit soon, the question arose as to what would happen if encouragement were given through regulatory interventions to make less harmful products more readily available.
Companies were trying to move into this area because they had to, Sweanor was quoted as saying. Companies either innovated when faced with disruptive technology or they got blown away by it, unless they were protected by regulators or by, in this case, anti-smoking groups that prevented the alternative products coming out and, by doing so, protected traditional tobacco cigarettes.
“The first jurisdictions that get it right have the potential of creating an enormous business by being able to then export that technology worldwide,” Sweanor said. “So this is an opportunity where some people can make billions of dollars saving billions of lives.”
