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  • 11 months ago
Vaping is a growing trend, one that has attracted the teenage population.


Unlike tobacco cigarettes, health officials say, E-cigarettes are not at this time linked to cancer and data collection is underway.

Alicia Boucher has more in this report.
Transcript
00:00Vaping is advertised as an alternative to cigarettes. However, some non-smokers have
00:06adopted a trend. Minister of Health, Terence Dielsing, notes that the main group using
00:11the electronic cigarettes is the youth.
00:14The issue of vaping is primarily amongst our teenage population. So, with the executive
00:21secretariat of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, the Organization of American
00:27States, we conducted a regional training of trainers in the Universal Prevention Curriculum
00:33Practitioner Series Prevention in the Caribbean region. The UPC school-based prevention course,
00:43we are rolling that out to all the schools.
00:46Dielsing says in 2023, a preventative approach was taken to vaping amongst children and other
00:53key groups in the population, where 12 schools were sensitized, exposing around 1,200 to
00:591,500 students to information concerning the harmful effects of vaping. While cigarette
01:05smoking is linked to various types of cancer, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Roshan Parashram
01:10says preliminary data on vaping do not point to that, but it's still early in the information
01:16gathering process.
01:18In terms of vaping, the medical side effects is emerging because it's a relatively new
01:24phenomenon in terms of, it's not like tobacco that has been around for quite a long time.
01:28So in terms of effects, you're seeing the acute effects generally in terms of the respiratory
01:34system and the cardiovascular system are the main concerns at this point. In terms of longer
01:39term effects for longer lasting use, there hasn't been any, as far as I'm aware, any
01:45research linking with that linkage to cancer, which of course in the past has been strong
01:50as it relates to tobacco use. So there is a link to tobacco. So yeah, more or less that
01:57is the health effects, but it is a new phenomenon. Research is ongoing and it is being, well
02:02basically the health effects are being elaborated as we go on, as more and more research comes
02:07to us.
02:08Minister Dielsing underscores the Health Ministry's approach to the problem at this time.
02:14Basically what we are doing at this stage is collecting the baseline data. We are doing
02:20the interventions and actions and that will be the precursor to any legislative change
02:25which is being suggested to the Tobacco Act.
02:29While there are countries which have banned vaping, Dielsing states that the issue is
02:34being looked at actively and he isn't ruling out future changes to legislation.
02:40Legislative change is something we are looking at, but we don't have a policy position now
02:47to say, yes we are banning vaping. It is something that will come in the future as we look at
02:52it.
02:53Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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