By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
The Alliance on Obligatory Education yesterday urged the Legislative Yuan to pass an amendment to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) that would provide a legal basis for issuing penalties for possessing e-cigarettes.
The act already prohibits the manufacture, importation, sale, supply, display, advertising and use of e-cigarettes.
The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) this year proposed to amend the act to add possession to that list, which was approved by the Executive Yuan and submitted to the legislature for review.
Members of the Alliance on Obligatory Education hold placards at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
“The number of disposed e-cigarette devices cannot be used to directly infer the actual circulation volume of e-cigarettes, nor does it mean the problem has been solved,” alliance president Wang Han-yang (王瀚陽) said yesterday, referring to the HPA’s e-cigarette disposal bins set up across the country.
The agency last week said it had collected about 633kg of e-cigarettes since the collection scheme began on Sept. 8.
If the HPA-proposed amendment is approved, e-cigarettes would be confiscated, but no fines would be issued within a one-month grace period, after which people found possessing them would face a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$100,000, Wang said.
An HPA survey from last year found that more than 40,000 adolescents use e-cigarettes, with 2.1 percent of junior-high school students and 5.1 percent of high-school and vocational school students saying them used them.
E-cigarettes can be used as delivery systems for illicit substances, such as etomidate, classified as a Category 1 narcotic in Taiwan, Wang said.
Tobacco use among young people is often driven by factors such as family influence, peer pressure and marketing, Taiwan Medical Alliance for the Control of Tobacco secretary-general Guo Fei-ran (郭斐然) said.
Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said the ministry hopes the legislature would pass the amendments as soon as possible.
As for opposition parties’ concern about not having enough law enforcement personnel to inspect and seize e-cigarettes, he said the ministry has discussed the issue with the Ministry of Education and local governments, and that funding would be allocated to address the shortage.