Septuagenarian's Notes (4)

 By Ba Ipe (April 12, 2024)

 ON SMOKING E-CIGARETTES, VAPING

 In the April 11 youth roundtable discussions on tobacco regulation policies in the country, I came to understand that smoking and vaping are one dog with two different collars. From the discussions of three resource persons in a forum attended by young people, smoking and vaping are being promoted and nurtured by tobacco companies to give the same deleterious effects to smokers and vapers alike.

One of the discussants, Dr. Riz Gonzalez, chair of the Tobacco Control Advocacy Group of the Philippine Pediatric Society, likened by analogy that smoking and vaping is no different from jumping off from the same building. “What difference will it make if you jump off from the 40^th floor of a building or the 10^th floor of the same building?” she mused before a crowd of young journalists, students, and public servants. “You’ll end up dead anyway with your body mangled beyond recognition.”

The other discussants were Dr. Maricar Limpin, chair of the steering committee of the Philippine Coalition on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases, and Au Quilala, advocacy and partnerships manager of the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development. The roundtable forum was hosted by Vital Strategies, an NGO.

The forum tackled the pressing issues on the promotion of vapes and e-cigarettes among young people. Just a personal note: Despite my advanced age of 70, I was fortunate to be invited to participate. It gave me a pleasure to interact with young people. “Anyway, I was once a young person like you,” I said. It was my way to lighten the situation and squeeze in the discussions.

The discussants noted that with the vape and e-cigarette industry targeting Filipino youth, turning the country into a manufacturing hub for e-cigarettes puts the nation at risk of an epidemic of EVALI, or e-cigarette or vape-associated lung injury. “According to the latest Global Youth Tobacco Survey, one out of every seven Filipino youth aged 13-15 is now using vapes. This alarming trend is not a coincidence but a result of the tobacco industry’s calculated marketing tactics targeting the youth,” said Limpin.

“We’ll not sit idly by and turn a blind eye to the predatory practices of this industry. By allowing the Philippines to position itself as a manufacturing hub, we are essentially paving the way for an EVALI epidemic,” Limpin said According to her, the PHL has at least seven recorded EVALI cases, but the number could go up suddenly as many young people develop addiction to the substances and chemicals used in vaping products.

EVALI is a medical condition that causes lung damage from the substances and other chemicals contained in vaping products. It is different from lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the two diseases associated with smoking. But the discussants said EVALI patients tend to be younger people. While cancer and CPD usually develop to smokers in their 40s, EVALI strikes even those, who are in their 20s or younger.

There are no available data on deaths and injuries arising from use of vaping products herer, but the discussants feared an equally sudden rise of EVALI cases here because of increased vape activity. Shortly before the outbreak of the global pandemic, or sometime in Nov., 2019, the Department of Health (DoH) reported the first EVALI case in the country – a 16-year old girl from the Visayas, who was using both cigarettes and vape. In 2020, or shortly the pandemic, the U.S. has more than 3,000 reported EVALI cases with 66 deaths.

For her part, Quilala spoke on the necessity to revisit the existing public policies on vaping, which the possible return to 21 years from the current 18 years the legal age to vape and the mandate for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI, to regulate vaping in the country. She also called for stricter implementation of the vaping laws and regulations.

Gonzales, meanwhile, debunked what manufacturers claimed that vaping is risk free and that it could be a good alternative to smoking. That was the line being propagated by e-cigarette and vape product manufacturers, she said. It was because data were limited during the pre-pandemic days, she said.

But when further researches were made and data have tickled it, using e-cigarettes and vaping could be equally as dangerous as smoking, she said. Manufacturers have been using substances and chemicals that could cause addition and lead to debilitating effects to the user’s health, she said. This was something that was not exactly considered by policymakers.

The three discussants agreed on the perceived existence of a strong pro-vaping lobby to favor the use of e-cigarettes and vaping products. They also agreed to the perception that they have been employing “trickery” to influence the policymakers. #