The anti-tobacco federal law, which will come into force next year,
will ban smoking in private vehicles if a child younger than 12 years is
present in the car.
The Ministry of Health has announced the executive regulations of the
anti-tobacco flaw, which were approved by His Highness Shaikh Mohammed
bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and
Ruler of Dubai, in the Cabinet’s Resolution No. 24 issued on July 21,
2013. The said resolution will come into effect six months from the
date of its issuance.
The regulations are part of the government’s efforts to establish an
effective national anti-tobacco strategy to protect public health. Parliament cigarettes.
The ban on the vehicles aims to protect children from being exposed
to cigarette smoke. The law also aims to reduce smoking among youth. A
study carried out in Abu Dhabi showed that 28 per cent of children aged
15 years and younger, are smokers, while 30 per cent of people aged 18
and above are smokers.
The law bans any content that advertises tobacco products, such as
newspaper advertisements, TV commercials and animations. It also bans
importing tobacco products that are not in line with technical standards
set by the UAE, and any violations regarding such imports can lead to a
one year prison sentence and a fine ranging from Dh 100,000 to Dh 1
million, in addition to the confiscation of products.
The law also provides specifications on the packaging of tobacco
products. All products must now display a large warning label on the
front to raise awareness on the dangers of tobacco, and not to mislead
them. Violators will be fined Dh100,000 to Dh1 million, and the fines
can be doubled if the offence is repeated.
Tobacco products cannot be displayed near items marketed for
children, or sportswear, health, food and electronic products. Tobacco
products are also forbidden to be sold in locations that are 100 metres
away from places of worship, and 15 metres away from kindergartens,
schools, universities and colleges.
Shisha cafes will also have to be at least 150 metres away from
residential areas. The regulations also specify that these cafes’
working hours will be from 10am to 12pm. Shishas will not be served to
customers younger than 18 years of age, and the cafes will be forbidden
from delivering shishas to apartments.
Growing or producing tobacco for commercial purposes will also be
forbidden, and current manufacturing plants have been given a grace
period of 10 years to sort out their situation, and tobacco farms have
been given a two-year grace period.
The UAE ratified the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention
on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the first international treaty
negotiated under the auspices of WHO, in November 2005. The UAE
anti-tobacco law was drafted by the Ministry of Health in 2006. In
December 2009, the UAE issued its own federal anti-tobacco law.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
New route to smoking addiction for adolescents: electronic cigarettes
E-cigarettes have been widely promoted as a way for people to quit smoking
conventional cigarettes. Now, in the first study of its kind, UC San
Francisco researchers are reporting that, at the point in time they
studied, youth using e-cigarettes were more likely to be trying to quit,
but also were less likely to have stopped smoking and were smoking
more, not less.Parliament Cigarettes .
"We are witnessing the beginning of a new phase of the nicotine epidemic and a new route to nicotine addiction for kids," according to senior author Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that look like cigarettes and deliver an aerosol of nicotine and other chemicals. Promoted as safer alternatives to cigarettes and smoking cessation aids, e-cigarettes are rapidly gaining popularity among adults and youth in the United States and around the world. The devices are largely unregulated, with no effective controls on marketing them to minors.
In the UCSF study, the researchers assessed e-cigarette use among youth in Korea, where the devices are marketed much the way they are in the U.S. The study analyzed smoking among some 75,000 Korean youth.
The study appears online in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
"Our paper raises serious concern about the effects of the Wild West marketing of e-cigarettes on youth," said Glantz.
Despite industry claims that it markets only to adults, e-cigarettes have achieved substantial penetration into the youth market. In the U.S., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that the majority of adolescent e-cigarette users also smoke regular cigarettes, and that the percentage of middle and high school students who use e-cigarettes more than doubled from 2011 to 2012. An estimated 1.78 million U.S. students had used the devices as of 2012, said the CDC.
In the UCSF study, the researchers report that four out of five Korean adolescent e-cigarette users are "dual" smokers who use both tobacco and e-cigarettes.
The authors conclude that young e-cigarette smokers "are more likely to have tried quitting smoking, which suggests that, consistent with cigarette marketing messages, some youth may be using e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid...Use of e-cigarettes is associated with heavier use of conventional cigarettes, which raises the likelihood that actual use of e-cigarettes may increase harm by creating a new pathway for youth to become addicted to nicotine and by reducing the odds that an adolescent will stop smoking conventional cigarettes."
The data for the study came from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey, an annual, nationally-representative survey conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control in 2011. The sample included 75,643 youth in grades 7 through 12.
Sungkyu Lee, PhD, lead author of the paper and a UCSF postdoctoral fellow at the time that he conducted the study, noted that e-cigarette use has skyrocketed in Korea: less than one percent of youths had tried the product in 2008 when the device was first introduced, compared to more than nine percent in 2011. Lee is now on the staff of the National Evidence-Based Healthcare Collaborating Agency in Seoul, Korea.
Among students who used e-cigarettes, eight percent were concurrently smoking conventional cigarettes. After adjusting for demographics, current cigarette smokers in the study were found to be much more likely to use e-cigarettes than non-smokers.
The researchers also found that the odds of using e-cigarettes were considerably higher among students who had made an attempt to quit smoking than those who had not. Students no longer using cigarettes were rare among current e-cigarette users, the researchers said.
"We are witnessing the beginning of a new phase of the nicotine epidemic and a new route to nicotine addiction for kids," according to senior author Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that look like cigarettes and deliver an aerosol of nicotine and other chemicals. Promoted as safer alternatives to cigarettes and smoking cessation aids, e-cigarettes are rapidly gaining popularity among adults and youth in the United States and around the world. The devices are largely unregulated, with no effective controls on marketing them to minors.
In the UCSF study, the researchers assessed e-cigarette use among youth in Korea, where the devices are marketed much the way they are in the U.S. The study analyzed smoking among some 75,000 Korean youth.
The study appears online in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
"Our paper raises serious concern about the effects of the Wild West marketing of e-cigarettes on youth," said Glantz.
Despite industry claims that it markets only to adults, e-cigarettes have achieved substantial penetration into the youth market. In the U.S., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that the majority of adolescent e-cigarette users also smoke regular cigarettes, and that the percentage of middle and high school students who use e-cigarettes more than doubled from 2011 to 2012. An estimated 1.78 million U.S. students had used the devices as of 2012, said the CDC.
In the UCSF study, the researchers report that four out of five Korean adolescent e-cigarette users are "dual" smokers who use both tobacco and e-cigarettes.
The authors conclude that young e-cigarette smokers "are more likely to have tried quitting smoking, which suggests that, consistent with cigarette marketing messages, some youth may be using e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid...Use of e-cigarettes is associated with heavier use of conventional cigarettes, which raises the likelihood that actual use of e-cigarettes may increase harm by creating a new pathway for youth to become addicted to nicotine and by reducing the odds that an adolescent will stop smoking conventional cigarettes."
The data for the study came from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey, an annual, nationally-representative survey conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control in 2011. The sample included 75,643 youth in grades 7 through 12.
Sungkyu Lee, PhD, lead author of the paper and a UCSF postdoctoral fellow at the time that he conducted the study, noted that e-cigarette use has skyrocketed in Korea: less than one percent of youths had tried the product in 2008 when the device was first introduced, compared to more than nine percent in 2011. Lee is now on the staff of the National Evidence-Based Healthcare Collaborating Agency in Seoul, Korea.
Among students who used e-cigarettes, eight percent were concurrently smoking conventional cigarettes. After adjusting for demographics, current cigarette smokers in the study were found to be much more likely to use e-cigarettes than non-smokers.
The researchers also found that the odds of using e-cigarettes were considerably higher among students who had made an attempt to quit smoking than those who had not. Students no longer using cigarettes were rare among current e-cigarette users, the researchers said.
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