Propose that the National Assembly urgently ban the production and circulation of electronic cigarettes

As a medical professional who directly treats patients poisoned by e-cigarettes every day, Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen - Director of the Poison Control Center, Bach Mai Hospital, recommends that Vietnam urgently bans the production and circulation of e-cigarettes, only then can it prevent a series of huge and serious health problems for the people.

Doctor Nguyen said that every day the Poison Control Center has patients poisoned by e-cigarettes being treated at the unit, including many cases of students and teenagers who have to be treated in the emergency room due to poisoning from drugs mixed with e-cigarettes.

Propose that the National Assembly urgently control the production and circulation of electronic cigarettes, image 1 — Electronic cigarettes destroy users' health (photo TL).

All cases of e-cigarette poisoning were hospitalized with symptoms of convulsions, agitation, agitation, hallucinations, psychosis, coma, brain damage and many other organs, leaving serious health consequences.

The Poison Control Center is currently treating two young patients (a 23-year-old patient and a 29-year-old patient) who are both severely poisoned after using e-cigarettes.

Patient TQT (23 years old, in Thuong Tin, Hanoi ) has a history of smoking e-cigarettes for 2 years. According to the family, on the evening of December 1, the patient used an e-cigarette and was given a new flavor (introduced by the shipper) to "try". At 5 am the next day, the patient had a seizure, foaming at the mouth, and convulsions all over the body.

The patient was taken to the emergency room at a hospital but did not improve, then transferred to the Poison Control Center on December 9. Testing of the patient's e-cigarette sample detected the synthetic marijuana drug ADB-Butinaca.

The second case is patient LHH (29 years old, in Dong Anh, Hanoi) who was hospitalized due to stiffness in limbs and movement disorders. The patient has also used cigarettes and e-cigarettes for many years. Recently, the patient has shown signs of movement disorders, tremors, sweating, and inability to control movements.

According to Dr. Nguyen, most people think that e-cigarettes are very simple and do not contain addictive nicotine. This is completely wrong.

Electronic cigarettes are essentially electrical devices that heat a mixture of ingredients containing many artificial chemicals inside, vaporizing them for the user's entertainment.

Propose that the National Assembly urgently control the production and circulation of electronic cigarettes, image 2 — Electronic cigarettes contain many addictive substances and are harmful to health (photo TL).

In electronic cigarettes, there are 3 groups of health risks: nicotine, artificial flavors and drugs.

Nicotine is a very toxic chemical, previously used in pesticides and plant protection products, but due to its high toxicity, it has been banned in many countries and Vietnam has also banned its use.

“So it is clear that nicotine is so toxic that we cannot use it as a pesticide, but we put this substance into electronic cigarettes to use for smoking and absorption into the body? That is completely absurd! If we let electronic cigarettes exist, then we do not know how to consider humans as subjects?”, Dr. Nguyen emphasized.

The toxicity of nicotine in humans is similar to that of organophosphorus pesticides.

When using tobacco many times, nicotine is toxic to the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, reduces immunity, reduces memory, concentration, learning ability, increases early optic nerve degeneration, glomerular damage, renal artery stenosis, kidney failure...

Doctor Nguyen also said: The nicotine content in electronic cigarettes is even many times higher than that of traditional cigarettes. This is nicotine in a synthetic chemical form, in the form of nicotine powder with almost pure content, prepared in a form that makes it gentle when inhaled, so users will easily inhale large amounts, quickly become poisoned and soon addicted.

According to the World Health Organization, nicotine is a drug in the full sense of the word. There have been thousands of studies around the world that prove that e-cigarettes aggravate the problem of using conventional cigarettes.

According to Dr. Nguyen, electronic cigarettes have thousands of flavors, up to now there are at least about 20 thousand flavoring chemicals, and other additives, these are the original substances, at the same time when heated at different temperatures, each substance will create combustion products which are different chemicals that we cannot predict.

Many chemicals in e-cigarette vapor are proven to be harmful to health, causing cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cough, asthma, myocardial infarction, vascular damage, reduced immunity, DNA damage, genetic molecules, increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.

These chemicals cause diseases that are much more complex than those caused by conventional cigarettes, and most of them are new diseases.

It didn't take long for e-cigarettes to be discovered to be the cause of a new acute disease known to humans for the first time, which is e-cigarette-induced acute lung injury.

Currently, e-cigarettes are a favorable environment for new generation drugs and cannabis to be mixed in. There are hundreds of new generation cannabis and drug chemicals mixed in, making it very difficult to detect…

The above analysis shows that e-cigarettes are many times more toxic and have more health effects than traditional cigarettes due to the combination of three factors: nicotine, chemical additives and drugs.

To date, 32 countries have banned e-cigarettes, 79 countries have strict regulations on e-cigarettes, and 16 countries have banned heated tobacco products.

“It would be extremely dangerous, disastrous and a huge crime if someone allowed e-cigarettes to be circulated, even just for trial use, and then caused addiction to the whole society! These consequences are not only immediate but also long-lasting like regular cigarettes, leaving behind consequences much greater than the recent COVID19 pandemic,” Dr. Nguyen affirmed.

Therefore, this expert shared: "The Poison Control Center urgently recommends that the National Assembly urgently ban the production and circulation of electronic cigarettes in Vietnam before it is too late and things become uncontrollable."

It can be seen, through the analysis of Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen, that electronic cigarettes are extremely toxic and need to be strictly banned to avoid bad consequences for society.

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