Bulgaria Bans Vapes
The World Vapers' Alliance has strongly criticized the Bulgarian Parliament's recent unanimous vote to implement a blanket ban on vaping products
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by Dave Cross
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The World Vapers' Alliance (WVA) has strongly criticized the Bulgarian Parliament's recent unanimous vote to implement a blanket ban on vaping products. The organisation says that this “ill-conceived decision threatens public health and ignores scientific evidence supporting vaping as a less harmful alternative to smoking”.
Members of the Bulgarian parliament voted unanimously to ban the import, trade, marketing and sale of vapes. The law will apply to regular vapes as well as disposable ecig products.
The ridiculous measure has been enacted due to a child falling to their death from a seventh-floor balcony. A group of seven children are reported to have been using illegal cannabis vapes prior to the accident.
So, rather than sensible legislation and enforcing the current ban on cannabis vapes, the Bulgarian government has handed over control of vape products to the black market where no one will know what they contain.
The World Vapers' Alliance says Bulgaria has one of the highest smoking rates in the world, and it has not gone down since the first Eurobarometer survey in 2007. Despite this alarming statistic, the government has chosen to ban all vaping products, including nicotine-free options, both in retail outlets and online.
“This decision was made without proper consultation and is likely to fuel the black market for unsafe products,” the organisation states.
Michael Landl, Director of the World Vapers' Alliance, said: “The Bulgarian government's decision to ban vaping is a massive step backwards in the fight against smoking-related deaths. With one of the highest smoking rates in the EU, Bulgaria should be embracing harm reduction tools, not banning them.”
The World Vapers' Alliance emphasised that vaping has been proven to be an effective smoking cessation aid. This ban will push adult vapers back to smoking or the black market, ignoring the potential of vaping to significantly reduce Bulgaria's alarmingly high smoking rates.
“This ban will have devastating consequences for public health in Bulgaria. It's simply crazy that in a country where smoking kills thousands annually, the government would eliminate a proven harm reduction tool,” Landl concluded.
The World Vapers' Alliance is calling on the Bulgarian government to vote against this bill in the subsequent stages of the parliamentary process and instead implement evidence-based policies that support smokers in quitting, rather than removing their access to less harmful alternatives.
Photo Credit:
Flags photo by Neven Myst on Unsplash
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
