Suri­name has been named among eight coun­tries that are adopt­ing mea­sures in line with the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (WHO) Frame­work Con­ven­tion on To­bac­co Con­trol (FCTC) to pro­tect the health of their pop­u­la­tions from nov­el to­bac­co prod­ucts.

The WHO said Fri­day that with the re­cent ban on the use and mar­ket­ing of elec­tron­ic cig­a­rettes in Venezuela, cur­rent­ly, 21 coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as reg­u­late elec­tron­ic nico­tine de­liv­ery sys­tems (ENDS), such as e-cig­a­rettes and vapes.

“The res­o­lu­tion that reg­u­lates new and emerg­ing nico­tine and to­bac­co prod­ucts in Venezuela is an im­por­tant step for­ward for the coun­try and for the re­gion,” said Dr. Anselm Hen­nis, Di­rec­tor of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases Men­tal Health at the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO/WHO).

“We hope that this mea­sure mo­ti­vates oth­er coun­tries to take ac­tion on these prod­ucts, which are ad­dic­tive, harm­ful and ag­gres­sive­ly ad­ver­tised to­wards the youngest,” he added.

The eight new coun­tries to join the ini­tia­tive are Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Pana­ma, Suri­name, Uruguay and Venezuela and PA­HO said these coun­tries pro­hib­it their sale al­to­geth­er, and the oth­er 13 coun­tries have par­tial­ly or to­tal­ly adopt­ed one or more reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures.

It said 14 coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, lack any reg­u­la­tion of these prod­ucts.

Last June, a pre­vi­ous res­o­lu­tion of the Venezue­lan Min­istry of Pop­u­lar Pow­er for Health banned the sale of vapes to mi­nors.

Now, the Au­gust 1 res­o­lu­tion pro­hibits “the man­u­fac­ture, stor­age, dis­tri­b­u­tion, cir­cu­la­tion, com­mer­cial­iza­tion, im­por­ta­tion, ex­por­ta­tion, use, con­sump­tion, ad­ver­tis­ing, pro­mo­tion and spon­sor­ship of ENDS and elec­tron­ic non-nico­tine de­liv­ery sys­tems (EN­NDS)”, as well as their “con­sum­ables”, “ac­ces­sories”, and “heat­ed to­bac­co prod­ucts”.

PA­HO said e-cig­a­rettes are the most com­mon form of elec­tron­ic nico­tine de­liv­ery sys­tems. When used, they heat a liq­uid to cre­ate aerosols that are in­haled by the user.

It said these “e-liq­uids” con­tain nico­tine, a high­ly ad­dic­tive sub­stance found in to­bac­co, and oth­er ad­di­tives, fla­vor­ings and chem­i­cals, some of which are tox­ic to the health of both the user and those ex­posed to them.

PA­HO/WHO rec­om­mends that gov­ern­ments im­ple­ment reg­u­la­tions in line with the pro­vi­sions of the FCTC and its de­ci­sions, such as pro­hibit­ing the mar­ket­ing of ENDS, in­clud­ing their im­por­ta­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion or sale, as well as reg­u­la­tions on their use in pub­lic places, pro­hibit­ing their ad­ver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tion, tax­ing them, and oth­er reg­u­la­tions sim­i­lar to those ap­plied to to­bac­co prod­ucts.

To­bac­co kills one mil­lion peo­ple in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as an­nu­al­ly and while mea­sures tak­en since the FCTC came in­to force in 2005 ha per cent in 2020, these achieve­ments are threat­ened by nov­el to­bac­co and nico­tine prod­ucts.

Cur­rent­ly, 11.3 per cent of ado­les­cents be­tween 13 and 15 years of age in the re­gion use to­bac­co, com­pared to the world av­er­age of 10.3 per cent.