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More and more electronic cigarettes are being used although they are outlawed in Singapore. A better approach is to follow the British example of controlling them as medicinal products.
Between January and May, 2,428 e-cigarettes were seized compared with 1,464 units in all of last year. On the international market for some five years, an e-cigarette is a battery-powered gadget resembling the real thing that creates a mist by heating and atomising liquid nicotine kept in a small replaceable cartridge.
This mist is inhaled instead of tobacco smoke. A plume is exhaled that looks like real cigarette smoke but is merely water vapour. So there is neither first- nor second-hand smoke involved.
Nicotine replacement can help some smokers cut down and even quit. As a form of nicotine replacement, e-cigarettes are better than tobacco; while it is nicotine that makes cigarettes addictive, it is tobacco smoke - not nicotine - that carries the toxins responsible for many smoking-related illnesses.
As a drug, nicotine is probably only as hazardous as caffeine. As Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has noted in its June 2013 report on nicotine replacement, "although nicotine is addictive... licensed nicotine products are much less addictive than smoked tobacco".
Thus, e-cigarettes ought to be legalised. Right now, however, they are prohibited by the Tobacco Act, under which offenders may be fined up to $5,000 for the first offence and up to $10,000 subsequently.
Banning e-cigarettes is, in effect, telling smokers that if they can't quit on their own or with nicotine gum or a nicotine patch, say, they are better off smoking real tobacco. Outlawing e-cigarettes as Singapore has done along with only three other countries - Turkey, Brazil and Argentina - is bad health policy.
Instead, smokers should be encouraged to use properly regulated e-cigarettes.
Between January and May, 2,428 e-cigarettes were seized compared with 1,464 units in all of last year. On the international market for some five years, an e-cigarette is a battery-powered gadget resembling the real thing that creates a mist by heating and atomising liquid nicotine kept in a small replaceable cartridge.
This mist is inhaled instead of tobacco smoke. A plume is exhaled that looks like real cigarette smoke but is merely water vapour. So there is neither first- nor second-hand smoke involved.
Nicotine replacement can help some smokers cut down and even quit. As a form of nicotine replacement, e-cigarettes are better than tobacco; while it is nicotine that makes cigarettes addictive, it is tobacco smoke - not nicotine - that carries the toxins responsible for many smoking-related illnesses.
As a drug, nicotine is probably only as hazardous as caffeine. As Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has noted in its June 2013 report on nicotine replacement, "although nicotine is addictive... licensed nicotine products are much less addictive than smoked tobacco".
Thus, e-cigarettes ought to be legalised. Right now, however, they are prohibited by the Tobacco Act, under which offenders may be fined up to $5,000 for the first offence and up to $10,000 subsequently.
Banning e-cigarettes is, in effect, telling smokers that if they can't quit on their own or with nicotine gum or a nicotine patch, say, they are better off smoking real tobacco. Outlawing e-cigarettes as Singapore has done along with only three other countries - Turkey, Brazil and Argentina - is bad health policy.
Instead, smokers should be encouraged to use properly regulated e-cigarettes.
