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Regulate alternative tobacco products
Consumption of vape products in Indonesia started in 2010, with a growing number of vape stores in some of our biggest cities.
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Consumption of vape products in Indonesia started in 2010, with a growing number of vape stores in some of our biggest cities. (Shutterstock/File)
H
ealth problems caused by cigarette smoking remains a major unresolved issue in Indonesia. However, new technological advances are offering unprecedented opportunities.
Research conducted in 2017 placed Indonesia as the country with the fifth highest number of smokers in the world. Indonesia will soon enter a demographic bonus era in the year 2020-2030. With the increasing pressure demanding effective solutions to resolve the issue of smoking on a large scale, the government could start maximizing the potential of less harmful alternative tobacco and nicotine products. Such new heat-not-burn tobacco products like vaporizers or e-cigarettes, which may contain tobacco or liquid nicotine, are both without combustion and thus do not produce tar, the main cause of disease found in smoked cigarettes.
Consumption of vape products in Indonesia started in 2010, with a growing number of vape stores in some of our biggest cities. The issue of its health safety has become highly debatable. Prior to issuing specific regulations, the government should conduct comprehensive research into the product.
In 2015 more than 50 health researchers wrote to the World Health Organization (WHO), outlining the potential of tobacco harm reduction products to decrease health burden issues created by smoking. Their letter described these new products as “the biggest health-related innovation of the 21st century,” and said they have the potential “to save the lives of millions of people.”
This year, Columbia University and Rutgers University published their research findings involving 15,500 adult smokers in the United States. The research showed that almost more than half of the respondents had successfully quit smoking in the past five years with the help of e-cigarettes.
In July, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a plan to regulate tobacco and nicotine products, based on a pronounced “continuum of risk.” They plan to help cigarettes smokers move to noncombustion products by providing less harmful tobacco and nicotine alternatives.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb sees that nicotine is not only the problem keeping smokers addicted to cigarettes, but also ultimately the solution. From these perspectives, we can conclude that less harmful tobacco and nicotine products have the unprecedented potential to solve Indonesia’s smoking problem. Their use could also be part of efforts to reduce the danger of smoking, especially among addicts who have difficulty dropping the habit.
