Taking action on vaping

W

hat began years ago as a technological promise, a tool for smoking cessation, has become a serious cause for concern across the region. E-cigarettes and vaping devices are no longer just nicotine delivery systems for adults trying to quit cigarettes. They are becoming covert drug-delivery systems.

Reports indicate that innocent-looking, candy-flavored vape pods are bought openly online or near schools. But inside, the liquid has been laced with illegal drugs that users can inhale through any vape device. What began as a smoking alternative has become a new way to use illegal drugs.

In my view, the risk is too great to ignore, despite the regulations already in place. Vaping has all the makings of a drug-delivery device disguised as a lifestyle product, and it has become accessible to the youth. Reports claim that drug-laced vape pods can be ordered online with ease.

I concede that I have no data to cite, and no studies or compelling evidence to offer, other than anecdotal reports of illegal drug use via vape devices. Even so, I will support any initiative to ban all commercial vape sales and imports before this problem spirals out of control.

The promise of “harm reduction” falls short. E-cigarettes may offer a less toxic alternative to combustible tobacco, but that does not make them safe. People have gotten sick from vaping. In the Philippine context, vaping has not simply replaced smoking among adults. It has led to nicotine use among the youth.

A product originally intended to help 50-year-olds quit smoking is now consumed by 15-year-olds for a nicotine kick. Worse, the same product can deliver illegal drugs to both young and old. Harm reduction is becoming harm multiplication, and we do not have enough safeguards to prevent abuse.

In 2022, I wrote about how Juul Labs faced a marketing denial order from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which initially moved to ban its e-cigarettes from the US market. After further scientific review and a prolonged legal battle, the FDA eventually authorized some Juul products in 2025.

But Juul did not walk away unscathed. To reach that point, the company paid over $2 billion to settle lawsuits and investigations over youth marketing, and it now operates under some of the strictest marketing restrictions imposed on any nicotine product in recent history.

In contrast, in July 2022, just as the US FDA was trying to push Juul off the market, here Republic Act No. 11900, the Vaporized Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Act, lapsed into law. And with it, the floodgates for vape products were opened.

This law lowered the access age for vapes from 21 to 18. It transferred primary regulatory jurisdiction from health experts at the Food and Drug Administration to trade regulators at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It also allowed flavored products that appeal to the youth to remain on the market.

I fear we are now seeing the consequences. The DTI has tried to plug the gaps through inspections, seizures, and certification rules, but these measures are not enough. A House bill has since been filed to raise the access age back to 21 and return regulatory leadership to the FDA.

Cigarette smoking kills; there is no debate about that. But vaping has become a technological threat because people can manipulate the same technology to covertly deliver illegal drugs. No one can realistically inject liquid drugs into a conventional cigarette made of dried leaves wrapped in paper.

A drug dealer, however, can dissolve synthetic substances into a vape pod and sell it to a teenager who thinks he is just buying “mint” vape pods online. Vape devices can become Trojan horses for illegal drugs. And reports indicate the threat is real, not just imagined.

In banning vaping, we are not just rejecting another nicotine product. We are prohibiting a technology that offers relatively undetectable camouflage for illicit substances. In contrast, cigarettes produce smoke and stink. People cannot hide cigarette smoking in a classroom or a jeepney.

Vapes, on the other hand, produce no ash, are a far subtler aerosol, and have a much less lingering smell. Many are designed to look like USB drives or highlighters. It is far more difficult to regulate what you cannot easily detect. Vape devices make addiction easier to hide.

Singapore bans vaping because it follows a simple Precautionary Principle: do not add a new epidemic while you are still fighting the old one involving cigarettes. Its government decided early on that e-cigarettes bring addi-tional risks such as new youth users, unknown contents, and now drug-laced vapes.

In our case, it is bad enough that we are still dealing with combustible tobacco. Why should we knowingly add another problem by letting a stealthier, more programmable form of nicotine and drug delivery continue to spread, especially among our youth?

Cigarettes are an entrenched historical mistake. Banning them overnight would create a massive black market and spark unrest among millions of existing users. The wiser policy for cigarettes is strangulation: tax them to death, severely restrict where people can smoke or sell them, and wait for the demographic to age out. For vaping, urgency is greater because of the illegal drug threat to the youth.

Locally, a ban needs to be executed through legislation rather than executive action because of the existing Vape Law. We need an Anti-Vape Act that explicitly repeals the Vape Law; creates a Vape Industry Transition Fund financed by vape and tobacco taxes to provide grants, retraining, and capital for vape shop owners to shift to legitimate businesses; and, possibly allows the limited sale of vape devices in pharmacies, by prescription, as a smoking cessation tool.

Personally, I would prefer a world without cigarettes too. But while we are still fighting the old war against tobacco, let us not further complicate things for ourselves by opening a new battlefront with vaping. Let us get rid of vaping, while we still can. And if we can eventually do the same with cigarettes, then so be it. After all, one should not benefit from the death of the other.

Marvin Tort is a former managing editor of BusinessWorld, and a former chairman of the Philippine Press Council matort@yahoo.com