The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) yesterday announced draft amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) that would ban the local sale and manufacture of vaping devices and novel tobacco products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.
The agency said that it drafted the amendments to provide a legal basis for the regulation of products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products — also known as non-combusted cigarettes — which are not included in the act.
One amendment would raise the legal age for smoking and the minimum age for buying tobacco products from 18 to 20, it said.
Photo: Lin Ching-lun, Taipei Times
Due to an increasing variety of tobacco and vaping products now available, the agency said that it created a new category called “semi-cigarettes,” with the amendments to make all novel products in the category illegal to import, manufacture or sell locally.
To increase protection from secondhand smoke in public indoor spaces, the amendments would ban smoking in previously excluded venues, such as half-open restaurants and cigar stores, it said.
Smoking inside a bar or nightclub would also be banned, unless the venue has a smoking room equipped with an independent air-conditioning system, it added.
The agency said that it hopes the Legislative Yuan would soon pass the proposed amendments.
A survey released on Thursday by the agency found that smoking among young people and vaping rates increased last year.
The smoking of cigarettes and e-cigarettes by junior-high and high-school students last year increased for the first time since the act took effect in 2009, HPA Tobacco Control Division Director Chen Miao-hsin (陳妙心) said.
The smoking of cigarettes among junior-high and high-school students last year increased from 2.8 to 3 percent and from 8 to 8.4 percent respectively, Chen said, adding that most smokers were male.
Four out of 10 respondents said that they smoked flavored cigarettes, with girls showing a higher preference than boys.
The use of e-cigarettes among junior-high and high-school students last year increased from 1.9 to 2.4 percent and from 3.4 to 5.6 percent respectively, Chen said, adding that most were also male.
The combined use of traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes increases with age, with 3.4 percent of high school students smoking both, compared with 1.1 percent among junior-high school students, she said.
More than half of the respondents who smoked cigarettes did so out of curiosity, followed by those who smoked due to peer pressure, who have parents who smoke and those who wanted to relieve stress, Chen said.
Most of the respondents who vaped did so because of peer pressure, followed by those who felt e-cigarettes taste better and those who believed that e-cigarettes pose less of a health risk, she said.
Physician Chen Mu-jung (陳木榮) said that teenagers are less cautious when it comes to addictive substances, and that flavors added to cigarettes could overpower the pungent taste of tobacco, making them more curious and even leading some to believe that flavored cigarettes are somehow healthier.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led