ABU DHABI // If it does not contain tobacco, should it still be prohibited under the UAE's new anti-tobacco laws? That is what local proponents of so-called "electronic cigarettes" are asking as they wait for the haze to lift over the forthcoming federal anti-smoking policy.
Dr Wedad al Maidour, the head of the country's Tobacco Control Committee, said the answer should come in March, though she doubted e-cigarette users would be immune from the rules that ban people from lighting up in public. "There is nicotine in these e-cigarettes still," she said of the battery-powered devices, which resemble the real thing but deliver a hit of liquid nicotine without burning tar, carbon monoxide or other cigarette additives.
"The device is new to the market and there is not enough study that proves it is safe. We'll sit together with the different authorities and I think in two months a decision can be submitted." Dr Maidour said a recent ruling in the US allowing imports should have no bearing in the UAE, which stopped e-cigarette shipments several months ago. She said she was aware that pharmacies and local vendors were still selling the products illegally.
The provisions of the federal tobacco ban will require restaurants, hotels, cafes, malls and other public places to provide ventilated smoking areas. Deb Myrtle, from Dubai, worried that as a user of e-cigarettes she, too, would be relegated to those smoking zones and risk exposure to the very chemicals she wants to avoid. "Why would I want to be lumped together with smokers in some awful, disgusting, smelly area with people blowing tobacco at us?" said the British housewife, aged 50.
"We're not smoking. The stuff that comes out, that vapour has none of the 4,000 chemicals, 69 of which are carcinogenic and found in [real] cigarettes." Before ordering her £50 (Dh300) electronic cigarette kit from the UK last year, Mrs Myrtle smoked a packet a day for more than 30 years. She described herself now as "a social smoker", lighting up only a few times a month, and believes her health has improved. She has also reduced her use of the e-cigarette.
"I'm sleeping better, I have more energy, I don't cough as much," she said, adding that she has openly used the device in cafes and restaurants. "I had a couple of waiters come up to me, saying it's no smoking and I bang it on the table [to show there is no ash] and put the end on my hand to demonstrate it doesn't burn." Still, e-cigarettes have come under fire not just by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has cited safety concerns, but also by the World Health Organisation, which clarified in April that it did not support the product as a smoking cessation aid.
Both agencies called for more testing. Mohammed Elwan, who sells the Cigarti brand of e-cigarettes in Dubai, has seen incoming shipments held up by Dubai Customs for several months. He said he had stopped selling the products to UAE consumers after the ban started being enforced. He hopes the Government will reverse its decision, however, so he can continue supplying kits to clients in the GCC. He previously sold about 500 units every two months in the UAE, but if the new tobacco law treats his customers as regular smokers, it could kill his business. He estimated that he also exported about 10,000 units a month, mostly to western countries.
"The point is not to look at e-cigarettes as a 100 per cent solution or promote it as a medicine, but we say this is a much better alternative for you and even the environment," Mr Elwan said. Redha Salman, the director of public health and safety at Dubai Municipality, said that anyone caught selling the products within the Emirates should recognise they are breaking the law. "This is settled. It's a banned item and we don't allow this to be sold commercially," he said yesterday.
"Tobacco is one thing, and then you have the other thing, which is the emitted pollutants and the emissions from it. We don't have proof that it's harmless." A French physician practising in the capital said he smoked up to three packs of Marlboro Reds every day for more than 20 years. The 43-year-old said he had not touched tobacco after buying an e-cigarette kit in the UAE a year ago. "I began with a high level of nicotine and after two months, I went down and now the nicotine [in the cartridge] is very low," he said.
A previous effort 10 years ago to quit smoking with a nicotine patch failed, he said, because the patch could not satisfy the psychological "ritual" of holding and puffing on a cigarette. "I can say it worked for me because I don't consider myself a smoker anymore," he said. @Email:mkwong@thenational.ae