Following a joint discussion held Wednesday morning, the Special Committee for the Rights of the Child and the Special Committee for Combatting Drug and Alcohol Abuse will recommend administrative punishment for those who sell or market electronic cigarettes and tobacco products to children, youth, and young people up to age 21, Israel Hayom reported.
The discussion follows the death of Medan Keller, whose lungs collapsed after he smoked an electronic cigarette.
The committees will also demand a ban on marketing flavored electronic cigarettes, and will request that the tax on electronic cigarettes be raised. This tax raise was approved by then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) but was canceled in the current government by current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism).
At the same time, it was mentioned that there is also problem with the enforcement of the existing ban on selling smoking products to minors. The police representative present at the discussion admitted to the problem, and requested “to fix the guidelines” and ensure that they will be enforced by designated supervisors, instead of by the police.
Israel Hayom quoted MK Eli Dallal (Likud), chairman of the children’s rights committee, as saying, “I had a thought to completely ban use, but there’s a sort of problem here, because I would not like to see a child with a criminal offense. The one marketing the cigarettes is the criminal and the sinner. This is an issue of life and death. There is addiction and endless harm. The point needs to be in the administrative enforcement, until age 21, and for everyone else it is a criminal act. Just like it is forbidden to market alcohol to minors and at certain hours, this needs to be part of our recommendations.”
“[There needs to be] a complete ban on marketing. The issue of taxation and the issue of flavors has come up and we will ban it. The issue of quitting [smoking] by using electronic cigarettes needs to be by prescription only. If a child up to age 21 and an adult that has a problem, then it should be by doctor’s prescription and through the pharmacy.”
Israel Hayom noted that the option of selling electronic cigarettes through pharmacies has come up in the past, but in order for it to happen, each electronic cigarette would have to be registered as a medication which has been thoroughly researched.
Liel Sarusi, spokeswoman for the National Council of Students, said, “I am sitting here, as a 16-year-old student who receives notices to her phone, every day, ‘I have drugs to sell you.’ And no one enforces it.”
“There are young boys who sell electronic cigarettes on social media, and it’s scary and horrific to live this way. The bathrooms in the schools have become chimneys, and no one intervenes. There are plans and processes, but it doesn’t reach us, the students on the ground.”
Shira Kislev, CEO of Smoke Free Israel, responded to the popular claim that electronic cigarettes are products which help smokers quit smoking.
“In the past few years, there has been a drop in the number of adults quitting smoking – because of electronic cigarettes. What needs to happen in order to stop this plague is a complete ban on marketing and selling electronic cigarettes – just like they did in 47 other countries in the world.”