E-cigarette considerations caused delayed passage of Tobacco Control Bill – Minister Norton

Jan 27, 2017 News

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Yet another Minister within responsibility for the health sector will be tasked with attempting to bring life to the long overdue Tobacco Control legislation. So far three Ministers have tried and essentially failed in this quest.

This, however, was not because of a lack of trying.
Several attempts were made, but the draft Bill has never been tabled in the National Assembly in the quest of making it into law.
Although another date has not yet been identified for it to be read in the National Assembly, the Bill will for the first time be in the hands of a Minister who will hopefully be able to reverse the prevailing trend.
Minister Volda Lawrence earlier this month was entrusted with the portfolio of Senior Minister of Public Health and will hopefully the new pilot tasked with steering the Tobacco Control legislation to fruition.
But former Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton, does not wish to go down in the annals of history as a failure when the Tobacco Control Bill is taken into consideration.
However, in commenting on the matter recently, he reflected that others before him had tried and failed to make the Bill a reality too.
“The Anti-Tobacco legislation came into being before we (A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change) came into Government…From the time we started…things have changed over the months,” Dr. Norton said, as he pointed out that among the challenges faced was the fact that “we did not cater for things like the so-called e-cigarette”.
Based on published information, electronic cigarettes (also called e-cigarettes or electronic nicotine delivery systems) are battery-operated devices designed to deliver nicotine with flavourings and other chemicals to users in vapour instead of smoke.
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Maryland, United States, e-cigarettes can be manufactured to resemble traditional tobacco cigarettes, cigars or pipes, or even everyday items like pens or USB memory sticks; newer devices, such as those with fillable tanks, may look different.
In fact it was revealed that there are more than 250 different e-cigarette brands that are currently on the market.
While e-cigarettes are often promoted as safer alternatives to traditional cigarettes, which deliver nicotine by burning tobacco, little is actually known about the health risks of using these devices.
According to Dr. Norton, who currently holds the portfolio of Minister of Social Cohesion, since the Ministry had not catered for e-cigarettes “we had to make adjustments for that. This was even as we were about to take the Bill to Parliament”.
He recalled that the Public Health Ministry was forced to take e-cigarettes into consideration after it participated in international meetings in Panama and India with regards to the anti-tobacco movement. Given the new and emerging development, and the fact that the Bill was delayed as a result, Minister Norton considered “it might have been in our best interest to wait to take it to Parliament”. He noted too that because of additional information gained at the international forums “we are very much more informed and we are hoping that it would be one of the first issues on the agenda in the next sitting of the National Assembly”.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced. Its impact translates to annual tobacco-related deaths of around six million people. Added to this, WHO has been able to deduce that more than five million of these deaths are the result of direct tobacco use, while more than 600,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Further, WHO has affirmed that nearly 80 percent of the more than one billion smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest.
A Tobacco Control Bill was long in the making and was touted as a crucial need since in 2009, by then Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy. Dr. Ramsammy had not wavered in his call for this Bill to be fast-tracked, given the health implications of tobacco use.
His predecessor, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, had continued the advocacy for the passage of the Bill.
But it was Minister Ramsammy who had made it clear that in order for such a legislation to be introduced, government needs the support of all stakeholders.
“There has to be an overwhelming advocacy in our country for this, because part of it is already there…taxation is there, so we don’t need a law for that,” Dr. Ramsammy had long asserted.
He had disclosed too that if the law is to be, it would restrict the advertisement of any tobacco products in Guyana, whether it is on television, radio, newspapers, billboards and posters.
”No one can encourage or permit the advertisement of a killer. This is a killer and we must not permit it to happen. I find it most appalling that educated people cannot see the ulterior motives of the marketers and the producers when they make beautiful posters with beautiful adults smoking and state that children should not smoke,” Dr. Ramsammy had amplified.

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