The government is planning to crack down further on e-cigarettes, banning their import and export, following a recommendation by the Health Bureau (SSM).
Secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon, said that while the current version of the Tobacco Prevention and Control Law, which has been in force since January 2018, bans the sale of e-cigarettes in Macao, it does not ban their import and export.
Like traditional tobacco products, e-cigarettes are also harmful to health, particularly for pregnant women, children and teenagers. Cheong said that someone’s use of e-cigarettes will also expose non-smokers to nicotine and other harmful chemicals, because of which, he said, the government has drafted the amendment bill.
According to Cheong, the amendment bill proposes to ban the manufacture, distribution, sale, import and export of e-cigarettes.
Cheong said that according to the amendment bill, travellers will be barred from bringing e-cigarettes into and taking them out of Macao.
The bill proposes that individual offenders will be fined MOP 4,000, while companies and any other private-sector entities violating the ban will face a fine of between MOP 20,000 and 200,000.
The proposed fines are the same as those listed in the current version of the Tobacco Prevention and Control Law, which only covers a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes.
SSM Director Alvis Lo Iek Long underlined that the government has to carry out its tobacco control campaigns gradually, and in a way that measures which kind of implementation would be “easier” to be rolled out first, while those whose implementation would be “more difficult” could be rolled out later, a principle known as “easy first, difficult later” in the Chinese language.
Lo pledged that the government will continue to intensify its tobacco control campaigns with the ultimate aim of “creating a smoke-free Macao”.
Lo noted that while the percentage of teenagers aged between 13 and 15 smoking traditional tobacco decreased from 6.1 per cent in 2015 to 3.8 per cent last year, the percentage of those using e-cigarettes increased from 2.6 per cent to 4 per cent during the same period. The health chief described the situation as a “worrying” increase.
Consequently, Lo said, the government has drafted the amendment bill with the aim of minimising the use of “new kinds of tobacco products while they are still in their embryonic state”, The Macau Post Daily reported.
