Claims vaping is alternative to smoking pernicious health risk

THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION has banned the smoking of electronic cigarettes in public areas. Guangming Daily comments:

E-cigarette promoters claim that the “high-tech” gadgets do not contain tar or produce particulate matter, as if smoking e-cigarettes does no harm to health. And many people, including nonsmokers, buy the idea. Some smokers even use e-cigarettes as an aid to give up smoking.

In fact, plenty of studies have proved that e-cigarettes are no different from traditional cigarettes when it comes to perniciousness, as both contain nicotine, the addictive and noxious chemical that develops smokers’ dependence on tobacco.

The main components of e-cigarettes include nicotine, synthetic perfumes and volatile compounds, most of which are harmful to health. Inhaling such a noxious mix is not only addictive but dangerous.

But few advertisements for e-cigarettes point out these potential dangers. In other words, only depicting them as a more healthy substitute for conventional cigarettes is itself pernicious.

The World Health Organization has organized special research into the effects of e-cigarette and concluded that they harm public health. It has called for them to be strictly controlled and for nonsmokers, particularly adolescents, to be protected from the negative influence of e-cigarettes.

There are still not specific national standards for the production and selling of e-cigarettes. The market supervisory and administrative authorities in China banned selling e-cigarettes to juveniles in August. China has more than 300 million smokers, and about 750 million second-hand smokers. It is estimated that diseases caused by smoking is responsible for at least 1 million deaths in the country each year.

Now is the time for e-cigarettes to be put in their cross hairs of the national anti-smoking efforts.

The Donald Trump administration is playing the “Taiwan” card so as to divert domestic attention overseas and relieve some of the pressure on it before the midterm elections.

But it is also part of its so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy. The US has transformed its “engagement-containment” approach toward China to a more aggressive one featuring political counterbalancing, regulatory restrictions, diplomatic containment, high economic pressure and military coercion.

Yet, the tensions have not escalated the confrontation between the US and China, because Washington is using a series of provocations to test Beijing’s bottom line and force China to make a response under stress, which can expand its space in negotiations with China on other issues.

The US regards Taiwan as a strategic chess piece on the board of East Asia. It is no guardian angel for others, which Tsai knows. But she still has to play up the US card, exaggerating the US’ role. The Trump administration is merely interested in extracting a “protection fee” from Taiwan in terms of arms deals and trade.

The Trump administration presses Taiwan to provide material returns and “political coordination” as payment for a seemingly “favorable” policy supporting Taiwan separatists. In fact, Taiwan people’s attitude to the US’ interference in the Straits is mixed and filled with ambivalence. Taiwan’s overreliance on the US makes it simply a policy tool of the White House.

Once the Trump administration reaches an agreement with the Chinese mainland, which is not impossible, the US will abandon Taiwan immediately.