THAT nicotine is deadly isn't news any more. Yet, Malaysia sees smoking cigarettes and vaping e-cigarettes differently. At least as far as reduction targets are concerned. A distinction without difference, we say.
Vaping is safer is a clever smokescreen created by tobacco companies as medical evidence mounted against cigarettes. For at least 50 years, big tobacco has been denying science even as people dropped dead from failed lungs and hearts.
Now that the tide against tobacco has grown insurmountable, tobacco companies' clever commerce is promoting vape products as safer alternatives. Sure, there isn't tobacco as we know it in the vape products, but the addictive devil of nicotine is there. And so are other devils in disguise.
As this newspaper's commissioned Universiti Teknologi Mara expert revealed, several e-cigarette liquids found on the market had noxious chemicals, which puts paid to the notion that vaping is less harmful than tobacco use.
Here is the bad news: vape product users are at risk of developing cancer and other life-threatening health complications.
Malaysians may be moving away from tobacco use, but where does this shift take them? Granted, not all are shifting to e-cigarettes. Some, seeing the debilitating diseases and deaths caused by nicotine, are genuinely calling it quits.
Perhaps this is why cigarette smokers have dropped to about five million, though a scare-inducing number this is. But some, falling prey to manipulative marketing tactics, are heading for the noxious fumes laced with fruity flavours.
These aren't fruit juices, but carcinogens and toxins mimicking apples, strawberries and what have you. If this isn't bad enough, some vape products come in the shape of toys to entice children and teenagers. Greed for money must not be allowed to come at the cost of young lives.
We applaud the Health Ministry for banning them effective Oct 1. But banning is one thing and making the ban work is another. Laws prohibiting smoking in public places are robust, compelling owners of businesses to display notices warning of pecuniary pain.
But with enforcement being near zero in some places, such notices of legal threats have become mere plastic lies. Call it a Malaysian malaise.
We know the Health Ministry has a recipe to make people quit smoking and vaping. But if we read this recipe right, the ministry appears to be treating the two differently. Now that we know for sure that vaping is as dangerous as smoking, both must be given the same treatment.
Different strokes for different products is the wrong smoke signal to send. Already there are some who puff on both, cigarettes outside and e-cigarettes inside. This is bringing on diseases and deaths on the double. We suggest that the Health Ministry aim for a smoking and vaping rate of five per cent by 2035.
It is the only way to make Malaysians kick both bad habits. We concede addiction is hard to get rid of. The best is to prevent people from starting. For those who have started, it must be made difficult to continue.
Punitive taxes will help. Tobacco and vape manufacturers will say high taxes will encourage smuggling. There is a way out of this. Keep taxes high and go after smuggling simultaneously.