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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Medical Association calls for stronger policies to discourage smoking/vaping

by

Ryan Bachoo
747 days ago
20230531

RYAN BA­CHOO

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says that on­ly by com­bin­ing pub­lic health ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns with strong pol­i­cy de­ci­sions and law en­force­ment of the ex­ist­ing Act, that the harm­ful ef­fects of smok­ing and va­p­ing in T&T can be stopped.

The as­so­ci­a­tion re­leased a two-page state­ment on World No To­bac­co Day be­ing marked on Wednes­day May 31.

Cit­ing sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports in­clud­ing one from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na which says even though e-cig­a­rettes con­tain less tox­ins than reg­u­lar to­bac­co cig­a­rettes, stud­ies have proven sig­nif­i­cant health risk to users.

A state­ment read, "The T&TMA echoes the sen­ti­ments of these re­ports and the ev­i­dence there­in and calls for the pol­i­cy­mak­ers to pro­vide na­tion­wide pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on the health risks as­so­ci­at­ed with va­p­ing, ad­ver­tise­ment and mar­ket­ing of the e-cig­a­rettes and its re­lat­ed prod­ucts and use of e-cig­a­rettes in pub­lic spaces."

The body says it en­dors­es the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (WHO) Frame­work Con­ven­tion on To­bac­co Con­trol (FCTC) rec­om­men­da­tions for lo­cal to­bac­co con­trol poli­cies to “reg­u­late the con­tents of to­bac­co prod­ucts (in­clud­ing e-cig­a­rettes) and pro­hib­it the sale of flavoured to­bac­co prod­ucts.”

The TTMA stat­ed, "We fur­ther sug­gest mea­sures to re­duce the use of e-cig­a­rettes by the younger pop­u­la­tion by ban­ning the im­por­ta­tion and sale of to­bac­co, flavoured to­bac­co prod­ucts, e-cig­a­rettes and can­dies, snacks, toys, etc. that re­sem­ble to­bac­co prod­ucts as pro­vid­ed for in Ar­ti­cle 16 of the To­bac­co Con­trol Act."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion has sug­gest­ed mar­ket­ing re­view pro­ce­dures while re­strict­ing e-cig­a­rette mar­ket­ing to adults on­ly, curb­ing in­ter­net/so­cial me­dia sales of all to­bac­co prod­ucts and set­ting tax­es on e-cig­a­rettes at a lev­el high enough to strong­ly dis­cour­age use.

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