Health ministry works on ban for disposable e-cigarettes

- It is disposable e-cigarettes that are the biggest threat today, especially to young people who, despite the fact that they cannot legally buy such devices, nevertheless acquire them," pointed out Izabela Leszczyna.

The topic of disposable e-cigarettes was recently devoted to a joint meeting of the Senate Health and Climate and Environment Committees. SKZ Chairwoman Beata Małecka-Libera stressed that these devices represent young people's first contact with tobacco and are a simple path to addiction. The new stimulants, like regular cigarettes, cause serious health effects, including changes in the lungs and bronchi, cardiovascular diseases, and have been proven to be carcinogenic. They also have a negative impact on the environment, causing plastic pollution, and heavy metals such as lithium are found in heaters.

- We don't quite know what's in those disposable containers. In addition to the disastrous effects on health, they also bring disastrous effects on the environment, the Health Minister admitted at Thursday's conference.

According to the head of the ministry's announcement, the legislation by which the topic of disposable e-cigarettes should be resolved is expected to be ready in April. Meanwhile, as Senator Beata Małecka-Libera stressed earlier, for these products to disappear from store shelves it is not even necessary to create new regulations, but it is enough to enforce the existing ones. This is because it turns out that a significant number of them are marketed illegally. This includes exceeding the permitted capacity of tanks and nicotine content of liquids.