At the request of Deputy Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman and as recommended by the Ministry of Health's professional staff, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday signed an order banning the import and marketing of JUUL e-cigarettes.
The decision to ban the e-cigarettes, which contain a nicotine concentration higher than 20 milligrams per milliliter, was taken "due to the grave risk to public health," the Ministry of Health announced.
The ban puts Israel in conformity with regulations in Europe, which bans marketing of the e-cigarettes. The ban is being issued under the Pharmacists Ordinance (New Version - 1981).
JUUL e-cigarettes contain nicotine with no other tobacco products. Companies marketing e-cigarettes containing nicotine portray them as a substitute for regular cigarettes and assert that the risk of consuming them is significantly less than for ordinary cigarettes, in which nicotine burns and which contain additional materials with tobacco even more hazardous than nicotine.
Medical consensus holds that e-cigarettes are probably preferable to consumption of regular cigarettes, but are not healthy. Nicotine is addictive and has side effects. Not enough is known about the effects of the additional materials added to the nicotine compound in e-cigarettes in order to enable them to produce vapor.
Opponents of e-cigarettes claim that the product could have a negative impact on efforts to stop smoking by addicts capable of stopping completely without any halfway products. They explain that the product tempts young people to consume nicotine and is liable to lead them to take up smoking later. Smoking rates are now going down in most Western countries; it is feared that if e-cigarettes are perceived as not harmful, even people who do not consume ordinary cigarettes will smoke them and damage their health.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 22, 2018
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