Anti-smokers dismiss vaping call

Anti-smoking advocates on Wednesday shrugged off a call by a pro-vaping group for e-cigarettes to be provided by the state as an option for smoking cessation treatment, as being offered in Britain.

They said Thailand will first have to achieve a good standard of tobacco use control that is of a similar standard to Britain. Britain was given a full score out of 10 whereas Thailand received only 5 for its achievements in tobacco control policy, said Roengrudee Patanavanich, a doctor and academic with Ramathibodi Hospital’s Department of Community Medicine.

She cited the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2019 Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic. Thailand’s tobacco control success was rated that low despite the fact the country has enforced a law prohibiting smoking in public places, as urged by the WHO, for over a decade now, she said.

France and Italy were examples of countries where smoking rates were falling slowly, even slower than Thailand because they had legalized electronic cigarettes while still lacking effective tobacco control measures, said Prakit Vathesatogkit, president of Action on Smoking and Health Foundation Thailand. The pro-vaping group had gone too far in its call for the provision of free e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation option here in Thailand.