NEW DELHI: India announced on Wednesday a ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes, as a backlash gathers pace worldwide about a technology promoted as less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The announcement by India came a day after New York became the second US state to ban flavoured e-cigarettes following a string of vaping-linked deaths.
“The decision was made keeping in mind the impact that e-cigarettes have on the youth of today,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters in New Delhi.
E-cigarettes heat up a liquid — tasting of anything from bourbon to bubble gum or just tobacco, and which usually contains nicotine — into vapor which is inhaled.
The vapor is missing the estimated 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke but does contain a number of substances that could potentially be harmful.
They have been pushed by producers, and also by some governments including in Europe as a safer alternative — and as a way to kick the habit.
However critics say that apart from being potentially harmful in themselves, the flavours of some liquids have turned millions of children into vapers — and potential future smokers.
The emergency legislation in New York, the second US state to ban flavoured e-cigarettes, followed a mysterious outbreak of severe pulmonary disease that has killed seven people and sickened hundreds.
President Donald Trump’s administration announced last week that it would soon ban flavoured e-cigarette products to stem a rising tide of youth users.
Legislation is also being tightened elsewhere, and in Singapore e-cigarettes are already outlawed. In Japan, vaping and alternatives like “heat not burn” tobacco vaporizers are allowed but e-juices with nicotine are not.
China, home to almost a third of the world’s smokers, indicated in July that it wants the “supervision of electronic cigarettes” to be “severely strengthened.”
The Indian ban covers the production, manufacture, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, storage of e-cigarettes, as well as advertisements.
The government said it would “advance tobacco control efforts” and “contribute to a reduction in tobacco usage.” Punishments include up to a year in prison.
Although few Indians vape at present, the Indian ban also cuts off a vast potential market of 1.3 billion consumers for makers of e-cigarettes.
“Big Tobacco” has been investing heavily in the technology to compensate for falling demand for cigarettes due to high taxes and smoking bans, particularly in the West.
In 2018 Altria, the US maker of Marlboro and Chesterfield, splashed out almost $13 billion on a stake in one of the biggest e-cigarette makers, Juul.
According to the World Health Organization, India is the world’s second-largest consumer of traditional tobacco products, which are not covered by the new ban, killing nearly 900,000 people every year.
Some 35 percent of adults are users, although chewing tobacco — which can also have flavours like chocolate and which also causes cancer — is more prevalent than smoking.
India is also the world’s third-largest producer of tobacco, the WHO says, and tobacco farmers are an important vote bank for political parties.
According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an estimated 45.7 million people depend on the tobacco sector in India for their livelihood.
India also exports around a billion dollars worth of tobacco annually, and the government holds stakes in tobacco firms including ITC, one of India’s biggest companies.
“I feel it’s absolutely absurd,” Aronjoy, 22, a student and occasional vaper, told AFP in a shop selling e-cigarettes.
“The government believes from my perspective that it’s alight to smoke cigarettes... which is much more injurious for our health that vaping would be.”
The Association of Vapers India said the government’s move “indicates it is more concerned about protecting the cigarette industry than improving public health.”
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India bans e-cigarettes as vaping backlash grows
India bans e-cigarettes as vaping backlash grows
- The Indian ban covers the production, manufacture, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, storage of e-cigarettes, as well as advertisements
New Zealand mosque shooter seeks to discard his guilty pleas, saying prison made him irrational
WELLINGTON: The man who killed 51 Muslim worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand’s deadliest mass shooting told an appeals court Monday that he felt forced to admit to the crimes because of “irrationality” due to harsh prison conditions, as he sought to have his guilty pleas discarded.
A panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in Wellington will hear five days of evidence about Brenton Tarrant’s claim that he was not fit to plead to the terrorism, murder and attempted murder charges he faced after the 2019 attack in the city of Christchurch. If his bid is successful, his case would return to court for a trial, which was averted in March 2020 when he admitted to the hate-fueled shooting.
He is also seeking to appeal his sentence of life without the chance of parole, which had never been imposed in New Zealand before. Tarrant’s evidence Monday about his mental state when he pleaded guilty was the first time he had spoken substantively in a public setting since he livestreamed the 2019 massacre on Facebook.
Shooter says he suffered “nervous exhaustion”
The Australian man, a self-declared white supremacist, migrated to New Zealand with a view to committing the massacre, which he planned in detail. He amassed a cache of semiautomatic weapons, took steps to avoid detection and wrote a lengthy manifesto before he drove from Dunedin to Christchurch in March 2019 and opened fire at two mosques.
Along with 51 people killed, the youngest a 3-year-old boy, dozens of others were severely wounded. The attack was considered one of New Zealand’s darkest days and institutions have sought to curb the spread of Tarrant’s message through legal orders and a ban on possession of his manifesto or video of the attack.
Monday’s hearing took place under tight security constraints that severely limited who could view Tarrant’s evidence, which included some reporters and those hurt or bereaved in the massacre. Tarrant, who wore a white button-down shirt and black-rimmed glasses and had a shaved head, spoke on video from a white-walled room at Auckland Prison.
Answering questions from a Crown lawyer and from lawyers representing him, Tarrant, 35, said his mental health had deteriorated due to conditions in prison, where he was held in solitary confinement with limited reading material or contact with other prisoners.
By the time he pleaded guilty, Tarrant said he was suffering from “nervous exhaustion” and uncertainty about his identity and beliefs. He had admitted to the crimes a few months before his trial was due to begin because there was “little else I could do,” he told the court.
Crown lawyers say no evidence of serious mental illness
Crown lawyer Barnaby Hawes suggested to Tarrant during questioning that the Australian man had other options. He could have requested a delay in his trial date on mental health grounds or could have proceeded to trial and defended himself, Hawes said.
Hawes also put to Tarrant that there was little evidence in the documentation of his behavior by mental health experts and prison staff that he was in any kind of serious mental crisis. Tarrant suggested that signs of mental illness he displayed hadn’t been recorded and that at times he had sought to mask them.
“I was definitely doing everything possible to come across as confident, assured, mentally well,” he told the court. Tarrant’s behavior “reflected the political movement I’m a part of,” he added. “So I always wanted to put on the best front possible.”
He agreed that he had had access to legal advice throughout the court process. Tarrant’s current lawyers have been granted name suppression because they feared representing him would make them unsafe.
The appeal outcome is due later
Bids to appeal convictions or sentences in New Zealand must be made within 20 working days. Tarrant was about two years late in seeking an appeal, filing documents with the court in September 2022.
He told the court Monday that his bid had been late because he hadn’t had access to the information required to make it.
The hearing is due to run for the rest of the week but the judges are expected to release their decision at a later date. If they reject Tarrant’s attempt to have his guilty pleas discarded, a later hearing will focus on his bid to appeal his sentence.
A panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in Wellington will hear five days of evidence about Brenton Tarrant’s claim that he was not fit to plead to the terrorism, murder and attempted murder charges he faced after the 2019 attack in the city of Christchurch. If his bid is successful, his case would return to court for a trial, which was averted in March 2020 when he admitted to the hate-fueled shooting.
He is also seeking to appeal his sentence of life without the chance of parole, which had never been imposed in New Zealand before. Tarrant’s evidence Monday about his mental state when he pleaded guilty was the first time he had spoken substantively in a public setting since he livestreamed the 2019 massacre on Facebook.
Shooter says he suffered “nervous exhaustion”
The Australian man, a self-declared white supremacist, migrated to New Zealand with a view to committing the massacre, which he planned in detail. He amassed a cache of semiautomatic weapons, took steps to avoid detection and wrote a lengthy manifesto before he drove from Dunedin to Christchurch in March 2019 and opened fire at two mosques.
Along with 51 people killed, the youngest a 3-year-old boy, dozens of others were severely wounded. The attack was considered one of New Zealand’s darkest days and institutions have sought to curb the spread of Tarrant’s message through legal orders and a ban on possession of his manifesto or video of the attack.
Monday’s hearing took place under tight security constraints that severely limited who could view Tarrant’s evidence, which included some reporters and those hurt or bereaved in the massacre. Tarrant, who wore a white button-down shirt and black-rimmed glasses and had a shaved head, spoke on video from a white-walled room at Auckland Prison.
Answering questions from a Crown lawyer and from lawyers representing him, Tarrant, 35, said his mental health had deteriorated due to conditions in prison, where he was held in solitary confinement with limited reading material or contact with other prisoners.
By the time he pleaded guilty, Tarrant said he was suffering from “nervous exhaustion” and uncertainty about his identity and beliefs. He had admitted to the crimes a few months before his trial was due to begin because there was “little else I could do,” he told the court.
Crown lawyers say no evidence of serious mental illness
Crown lawyer Barnaby Hawes suggested to Tarrant during questioning that the Australian man had other options. He could have requested a delay in his trial date on mental health grounds or could have proceeded to trial and defended himself, Hawes said.
Hawes also put to Tarrant that there was little evidence in the documentation of his behavior by mental health experts and prison staff that he was in any kind of serious mental crisis. Tarrant suggested that signs of mental illness he displayed hadn’t been recorded and that at times he had sought to mask them.
“I was definitely doing everything possible to come across as confident, assured, mentally well,” he told the court. Tarrant’s behavior “reflected the political movement I’m a part of,” he added. “So I always wanted to put on the best front possible.”
He agreed that he had had access to legal advice throughout the court process. Tarrant’s current lawyers have been granted name suppression because they feared representing him would make them unsafe.
The appeal outcome is due later
Bids to appeal convictions or sentences in New Zealand must be made within 20 working days. Tarrant was about two years late in seeking an appeal, filing documents with the court in September 2022.
He told the court Monday that his bid had been late because he hadn’t had access to the information required to make it.
The hearing is due to run for the rest of the week but the judges are expected to release their decision at a later date. If they reject Tarrant’s attempt to have his guilty pleas discarded, a later hearing will focus on his bid to appeal his sentence.
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