The anti-smoking John Tung Foundation said it is deeply worried about the refusal of health authorities to put e-cigarettes under the control of the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法), saying it “amounts to legalizing the product and allowing its abuse.”
The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said on Thursday that it “objects to the liberalization and abuse of any addictive substance.”
The HPA said placing e-cigarettes under the supervision of the Act would amount to opening the market for the devices and giving free support to the industry’s false advertising, which describes therapeutic effects for people who wish to quit smoking and relatively low toxicity when compared with cigarettes.
The agency said the existing regulation of e-cigarettes as pharmaceutical products that need to be examined and registered before entering the market, in accordance with the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法), is a supervision measure of “the highest level.”
The foundation on Friday said that the hazards caused by electronic cigarettes are “hurting teenagers and encouraging smoking relapse,” as the product can be easily obtained through the Internet, at street stands and in small shops.
The group said that if the present regulation is truly the strictest and “of the highest level,” health authorities should immediately issue fines and penalties for the 900 violations reported by various non-governmental organizations over the past five years, to stem the illegal sale and use of e-cigarettes.
The foundation also criticized the claim made by the HPA that the US’ recognition of e-cigarettes as cigarettes, under the pressure from the tobacco industry, has resulted in the abuse of the product among young Americans, adding that the US lacks a comprehensive law governing e-cigarettes and is — along with European countries — in the process of determining an effective response.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching