At last week’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to raise the le­gal age for the con­sump­tion of al­co­hol and use of mar­i­jua­na to 21 and 25. Since this an­nounce­ment, the print me­dia has car­ried count­less sto­ries, ed­i­to­ri­als and opin­ions ar­gu­ing the pros and cons of such an ap­proach.

While I do un­der­stand the po­si­tion of sev­er­al per­sons that rais­ing the age lim­it for the con­sump­tion of al­co­hol with­out con­sid­er­ing the age lim­it in oth­er ar­eas seems un­rea­son­able, I do sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to raise the lim­it from 18. I do have one sug­ges­tion though.

Much de­bate and con­sid­er­a­tion have been giv­en to the use of al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na. I read with in­ter­est Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh’s ar­ti­cle last week en­ti­tled “Youth pro­tec­tion and sub­stance use,” where­by he sup­port­ed the in­crease in age re­quire­ment.

Dr Deyals­ingh, in sup­port­ing this po­si­tion, not­ed that when sub­stances are used by per­sons who are not yet 25, that “In­tro­duc­ing psy­choac­tive sub­stances like al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na dur­ing this crit­i­cal win­dow im­pairs neu­rode­vel­op­ment, in­creas­es sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to ad­dic­tion, and per­ma­nent­ly al­ters life tra­jec­to­ries.’” This is an im­por­tant fac­tor to con­sid­er. I have not­ed, how­ev­er, that the dis­cus­sions have kept them­selves cen­tred around the age re­quire­ment on­ly for al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na.

Our Gov­ern­ment, in fur­ther dis­cussing and con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion and/or amend­ments to ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, should al­so con­sid­er in­creas­ing the age lim­it for the use of to­bac­co prod­ucts and fur­ther, the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion for va­p­ing, to­geth­er with an age re­quire­ment that mir­rors that of al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na use.

The Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety has stat­ed that to­bac­co use con­tin­ues to be one of the lead­ing pre­ventable caus­es of dis­ease and death in the Unit­ed States.

Smok­ing does not on­ly cause can­cer, but can cause a num­ber of dis­eases and can dam­age near­ly every or­gan in the body. Smok­ing can cause dam­age to the heart, lungs, mouth, skin etc, and stud­ies have in­di­cat­ed that the sec­ond-hand smoke al­so pos­es health con­cerns.

Nico­tine, which is used in to­bac­co prod­ucts and va­p­ing, is high­ly ad­dic­tive. Imag­ine the ef­fect this will have on 18-year-olds who are still de­vel­op­ing and have found them­selves ad­dict­ed to such prod­ucts.

While we have the ben­e­fit of the To­bac­co Con­trol Act 2009, which out­lines the man­u­fac­tur­ing of to­bac­co prod­ucts, the sale, the li­cence need­ed and the re­stric­tions placed on mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing, this act al­lows ac­cess start­ing at the age of 18. The To­bac­co Con­trol Act be­came nec­es­sary to en­sure that chil­dren did not have ac­cess to such prod­ucts; it was al­so a means of en­hanc­ing the pub­lic’s aware­ness of the haz­ards of to­bac­co so that more in­formed de­ci­sions on its use could be made.

De­spite health warn­ings on to­bac­co prod­ucts, the to­bac­co in­dus­try still ap­pears to be a thriv­ing one. At the age of 18, young per­sons are more per­suad­ed to­wards in­flu­ence by friends and are more will­ing to ex­per­i­ment. This ex­per­i­men­tal stage can re­sult in de­vel­op­ing an ad­dic­tion to these prod­ucts.

To­bac­co prod­ucts still have the ben­e­fit of leg­is­la­tion. Va­p­ing prod­ucts are still with­in the range of no-man’s land. We have no leg­is­la­tion or reg­u­la­tion di­rect­ing its sale and us­age.

In its ini­tial stages, it was be­lieved that va­p­ing had less harm­ful ef­fects than its to­bac­co coun­ter­parts. Re­search now is show­ing that in­gre­di­ents used for va­p­ing may con­tain harm­ful chem­i­cals. There has al­so been re­search link­ing va­p­ing to lung and heart dis­ease. It has been not­ed that some of the flavours used in va­p­ing ap­pa­ra­tus­es do not have the ben­e­fit of FDA ap­provals and are still find­ing their way in­to the mar­kets. Per­sons in the pub­lic do­main treat va­p­ing as sep­a­rate and apart from smok­ing cig­a­rettes.

Sec­tion 12 of the To­bac­co Con­trol Act states as fol­lows-:

12. (1) No per­son shall smoke or hold a light­ed to­bac­co prod­uct in any en­closed pub­lic place, en­closed work­place, or pub­lic con­veyance in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to any place list­ed in the Sec­ond Sched­ule.

This word­ing of this sec­tion would not have con­sid­ered va­p­ing at the time of its as­sent and the de­scrip­tion of which spec­i­fies “shall smoke or hold a light­ed to­bac­co prod­uct”, does not cap­ture the use of a va­p­ing ap­pa­ra­tus. Ow­ing to there be­ing no re­stric­tions, per­sons can be seen va­p­ing al­most any­where. There are young peo­ple who open­ly vape in our malls, in stores or busi­ness places, and as such, un­will­ing­ly sub­ject oth­er per­sons to their use of the var­i­ous va­p­ing prod­ucts.

Oth­er coun­tries are ahead of us in con­sid­er­ing va­p­ing. Aus­tralia has banned the use of va­p­ing, un­less, a pre­scrip­tion can be pre­sent­ed. This was done to stem the in­crease of chil­dren us­ing the prod­uct. There are sev­er­al states with­in the Unit­ed States that have elect­ed to ban va­p­ing, while oth­ers have passed leg­is­la­tion to re­strict its use.

The Unit­ed King­dom has al­so voiced their con­cerns about the in­crease in chil­dren va­p­ing in their schools and have now as­sent­ed to their own leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern same.

As our Gov­ern­ment is now in the process of re­con­sid­er­ing the use, ac­cess and age re­stric­tions for al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na, we should al­so con­sid­er the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion reg­u­lat­ing va­p­ing.

Sim­i­lar to the To­bac­co Con­trol Act, there should be age re­stric­tions, sales and mar­ket­ing re­stric­tions, to­geth­er with pub­li­ca­tion of health risks. Fur­ther, the va­p­ing sec­tor and prod­ucts be­ing im­port­ed for sale should be re­strict­ed to prod­ucts whose chem­i­cal com­po­nents are known and ap­proved. It is time we ad­dress va­p­ing.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com