E-cigarettes were outlawed yesterday by Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, the national legislature after the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act's third reading of several changes was approved. The nation's government, or Executive Yuan, first proposed the new laws last year.
Vaping items, which are categorized as "tobacco-like products," are not allowed to be manufactured, sold, imported, or even used for personal use. The government will publish the amendments, and they will go into force one month later.
According to the Taipei Times, the new rule imposes severe fines for illicit sales, ranging from 10 to 50 million New Taiwan Dollars (NT). (Roughly equivalent to $330,000 to $1.65 million in US dollars.) Fines for those found vaping range from NT2,000 to NT10,000 ($66 to 330 USD).
The lawmakers tightened laws on heated tobacco products (HTPs), making it more challenging for manufacturers to receive certification for sale, but did not outright ban them. In addition to raising taxes on non-combustible tobacco products, the legislature outlawed flavored tobacco products, including cigarettes, and raised the legal age of tobacco purchase from 18 to 20.
In Asia, where governments frequently blindly adhere to the advice of the World Health Organization and its supporters financed by Bloomberg Philanthropies, outright bans on vaping are prevalent.
Located 100 miles off the east coast of the People's Republic of China (PRC) mainland, Taiwan is an island nation formally known as the Republic of China (ROC). There are roughly 24 million people living in Taiwan, and 19% of them adults are thought to smoke. Finding accurate and up-to-date figures of smoking and tobacco usage is challenging, though, given the majority of organizations that collect this statistics do not acknowledge Taiwan as a separate nation. Taiwan is included in the PRC's health statistics by the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations. (The UN and the majority of other countries do not recognize Taiwan, which the PRC argues is a renegade province rather than a sovereign republic.)
