Holding the tobacco industry accountable for the ‘vapedemic’

On May 6, in a Senate Health Committee hearing on bills regulating e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs), Baguio Mayor Benjie Magalong, through a statement read by Dr. Celia Flor Brilliantes of the Baguio City Health Office, said: “Our children are still vaping — in school toilets, in stairwells, from vapes ordered online — and no local ordinance can stop a legal product sold through a national, digital marketplace.”

Baguio’s experience with students vaping on campus can be seen all across the country, according to teachers, parents, local government workers, and law enforcement agencies.

This is no surprise, given that the tobacco and vape industry has been aggressively marketing its products to the youth through vape ads disguised as “lifestyle content” on short form video platforms like TikTok — through dance trends, taste tests, flavor reviews, showing off new packaging designs, and vape giveaways.

Simultaneously, the industry has also been positioning vaping as a “healthy and safe alternative” to smoking, arguing that all Filipinos should have freedom of choice and applying this argument to smokers having the choice of quitting through “harm reduction” or through switching to vapes or HTPs.

Harm reduction is the same argument the industry uses to argue that vapes should be taxed lower than cigarettes, as seen in the explanatory notes of House Bills 5207, 5212 and 5364 filed in the 20^th Congress by Reps. Kristine Singson-Meehan, Rufus and Maximo Rodriguez, and Ferdinand Hernandez, along with other legislators, mostly concentrated in Northern Luzon, the country’s largest tobacco-growing region.

Our children being pulled into addiction by aggressive ads while the industry talks about vaping as “freedom” paints an ironic picture — especially when considering the fact that vaping is so heavily marketed to young non-smokers, people who never needed “harm reduction” or “safer alternatives” to cigarette smoking in the first place (an argument that does not hold water, since the evidence is clear: vaping is not safe).

The industry, while touting claims of harm reduction and vaping as a smoking cessation tool for reduced risk, has never applied to register e-cigarettes as cessation tools in the first place. This is because their main market is one that is pulled into nicotine addiction early on in life and remain addicted for a prolonged period — the teenagers with colorful vapes hanging around their necks and attending parties and activations for free pods.

With the way they’re being marketed, it is also only a matter of time before newer nicotine products, like nicotine pouches (Zyn, for example) become more popular among the youth.

Their even more discreet nature compared to vapes (nicotine pouches are placed in between the teeth and the gums) make them even easier to use, and they are very loosely regulated, taxed at an extremely low P3/kg. Nicotine pouches are also flavored the way vapes are, and could very well be the next “harm initiation” — not “harm reduction” — tool getting kids hooked on nicotine.

The end of May is marked by World No Tobacco Day, a global celebration that this year will emphasize the industry tactics to “engineer addiction” among the youth. Policy discussions surrounding vaping have been heated in recent months, with the Senate Health Committee considering bills to reverse the deregulatory provisions found in Republic Act 11900 (raising the age of access, banning flavors, and returning the jurisdiction of regulation to the Food and Drug Administration from the Department of Trade and Industry) and ban vaping in schools.

The Department of Health (DoH) and health advocates have been steadfast in their call for the Philippines to join our Southeast Asian neighbors in enacting a total ban on vapes.

While stronger regulation is being discussed, advocates are also awaiting the continuation of the House Ways and Means discussions on vape taxes chaired by Representative Miro Quimbo. Although the industry will likely push for a tax reduction in the name of “fairness” and “harm reduction,” the data from the 2023 National Nutrition Survey speaks for itself: in just two years from 2021-2023, there was a 1,100% increase in 10- to 19-year-olds using e-cigarettes and HTPs, from 37,513 to 439,407. We clearly cannot afford to be complacent. We need to tax these products at the highest rate to keep young people from gaining access to highly addictive nicotine products.

Our legislators owe our youth a nicotine-free future — and this can only be achieved if we pay serious attention to the industry’s deception and stop letting them get away with their manipulative tactics.

Pia Rodrigo is AER’s strategic communication officer.