Mexico Health Authorities Fight E-Cigarettes as Their Sales Increase Agencia EFE
go to original January 20, 2015

Electronic cigarettes and health - the basics (Risk Bites)

Health authorities have seized the biggest shipment of electronic cigarettes in Mexico's history, more than 9,000 units of a product whose use is banned in this country but which, according to experts, is increasing due to the unproved belief that they help people quit smoking.

"They are products that have not been confirmed anywhere in the world to have the necessary safety, quality and effectiveness to replace the use of tobacco, but unfortunately people believe they are a viable means to stop smoking when no evidence for that exists," Alvaro Perez Vega, commissioner of the Cofrepis Health Operation, told Efe.

Last week the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks, or Cofrepis, closed two establishments in the Mexican capital for selling such products, which are banned by health legislation, and seized 9,455 e-cigarettes and accessories.

Counting these, over the past two years a total of 11,700 e-cigarettes and accessories have been confiscated, Perez Vega said, adding that most of those items are "smuggled" into Mexico from China.

The General Tobacco Control Law bans importing, selling, distributing, displaying, promoting or producing any object that is not a tobacco product but which displays some elements of a tobacco brand or some design or audio effect that identifies it with tobacco products.

And since e-cigarettes have the same shape as traditional cigarettes, they are subject to that prohibition.

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