MOST people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature. – World War Z

Bans backfire, prohibition pushes back.

They are, quite simply, counterproductive.

“Outlaw guns and only outlaws would have guns” goes a famous bumper sticker.

Time and time again, this has been proven, but authorities and regulators never seem to learn.

Before Manila takes a hint from Kuala Lumpur, Ped Xing would like to advise the Duterte administration to stay the course and write the final chapter on an old scourge that has ravaged generations.

The country stands on the threshold of a life-changing regime of harm-reduction with President Duterte holding the key that could open the door for millions wanting to escape a harmful lifestyle choice.

The congressional bicameral conference committee late last month approved a measure that would regulate the importation, manufacture, sale, packaging, distribution, use, and communication of vaporized nicotine and non-nicotine products, as well as novel tobacco products.

The panel, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate contingents, approved the report reconciling the disagreeing provisions of Senate Bill 2239 or the Vaporized Nicotine Products Regulation Act and House Bill 9007 or the proposed Non-Combustible Nicotine Delivery Systems Regulation Act.

The President can dramatically reduce the smoking problem in the country by making the vape bill his legacy, according to four prominent doctors, tobacco-harm reduction crusaders, and consumer advocates.

The bill, once signed into law, would provide millions of Filipino smokers a less harmful option to move away from cigarettes, regusase these smoke-free products, and keep them off the youth.

But as these stakeholders await its signing into law, disturbing, disruptive winds are blowing in from outside the country.

First, massive and systematic lobby against vaping and aversion to innovation in the market are encouraging the return of smoking in the US, with cigarette sales picking up in 2020 for the first time in two decades.

A likely contributor to the increase in smoking rate is the public health lobby against THR or the use of less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.

Closer to home, the Malaysia Ministry of Health is considering a generational ban for cigarettes and vaping products starting next year.

This proposal would mean that individuals born after 2005 and turning 18 next year will never legally purchase cigarettes or vape products.

Clive Bates, director at Counterfactual Consulting Ltd. in Abuja, Nigeria and London, has raised red flags against such a regulatory backslide.

“First of all, I don’t think a country can just ban something and hope it will disappear, especially not to a specific age group. Just look at illicit drugs around the world: Prohibition does not work. If there is demand, a ban changes how the product is supplied, who supplies it, and at what price. The designer of this legislation can’t just naively believe that no one under 18 will use the products.

They have to consider what will happen in practice,” Bates said

He said: “In this case, people above the moving age threshold will easily supply people below it, so it isn’t even that difficult to build a huge illicit market. If adults in Malaysia are using smoking products, then so will the youth. They will find a way. On top of this, it will be difficult to sustain the measure over time. After 10 years, it would mean an ID check to prove the adult buyer is 29 or over. Ten years later, it would require age-related ID checks on people in their 40s to show they were 30 or over.”

“A final point: How successful are age-related bans already? I think around three percent of Malaysian adolescents are smoking before their 15th birthday, even though the current age limit is 18.”

Bates said if the Malaysian government intends to include vaping products in this measure, it would be making a big mistake.

“The problem is that Malaysia will be setting up a black market for nicotine products that will grow in scale every year as the population ages. The measure is wishful thinking: Ban the supply, and the demand will disappear. Imagine trying this with alcohol. Who seriously thinks the demand would stop because the supply had changed? Of course, it wouldn’t. So, the danger here is the government intervening to stop the demand for nicotine being met by legal and regulated products that are much safer than cigarettes rather than a black market in tobacco and nicotine,” he said.

This policy, he said, is a distraction from more effective ways to address smoking. “A black market in e-cigarettes also risks the proliferation of products with no quality control, which may present chemical, electrical, and thermal safety hazards. A government should take responsibility for consumer protection rather than pretend the consumers don’t exist.”

He said for starters, a far better strategy is to allow much safer nicotine products to take over from cigarettes in the marketplace by whatever means available.

“That will have the greatest and fastest return to public health. It will also suppress demand for cigarettes among younger people, as there will be fewer parents and adult role models as smokers,” he said.

Bates believes Kuala Lumpur’s plan would create more problems than it would solve.

“I think Malaysia would see a bigger black market, more people criminalized, more corruption and bribery, and a slower decline in smoking. Worse still, young people will not just be smokers but will join the illegal supply chain and become participants in criminal activity,” he warned.

He cited Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan country which famously banned all tobacco in 2004 but reversed the ban in 2021 because it found no real impact on demand or use, but a vast black market operated by the same young people it was, in theory, trying to protect.

“It is an illiberal measure that, over time, is progressively targeted at the free choices of an increasing share of the adult population. Regulators have attacked nicotine products because of the harm caused by cigarette smoke, not the nicotine itself. The thousands of toxic chemicals in smoke, not the nicotine, do the damage. For smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes, the case for governments preventing adult use is far weaker,” Bates pointed out’

The right approach is to start with clarity about the goals, he stressed.

“The main reason regulators are interested in cigarettes is the massive burden of disease and death caused by smoking — the inhalation of highly toxic smoke. Smoking should be the number one public health priority for the government of Malaysia and any government.”

Bates said the best way to address this is threefold:

(1) encourage smokers to become abstinent from all nicotine ;

(2) encourage switching to much lower risk nicotine products; and

(3) prevent young people from taking up smoking or nicotine in the first place.

How to achieve all these? By example.

“To quit completely is challenging for many adult smokers and will only work slowly and only for a subset of the smoking population. Switching, however, gives those who are at greatest risk a much easier path to follow and should yield significant health benefits and quickly. Prevention of uptake takes a long time to have a health effect, but most importantly it will not work that well while there are many adult smokers. The most important way to affect what young people do is to change what adults do.”

He said the right way to approach the smoking problem is to “manage down” the risks of using nicotine. This can be done through smart regulation that is proportionate to risk, imposing the toughest measures on cigarettes, with proportionate consumer-protection measures on e-cigs and other smoke-free products like HTPs.

“For example, have high taxes on cigarettes but low or no taxes on smoke-free products. Ban cigarette advertising, but control advertising for vaping products to restrict themes and placement that appeal to younger people. Cigarette packaging and warning should convey significant risk, but the packaging of smoke-free products should encourage switching from smoking, “ Bates said.

He said it is possible to get this right, but regulators need a clear goal, a good sense of what would work in reality, and avoid naive and simplistic measures that would not work and probably do more harm than good.

Behold God’s glory and seek His mercy.

Pause, ponder, act, and pray, people