The Nofumadores platform considered this Monday “alarming” the viral video in which a girl appears vaping in her communion and receiving a dozen electronic cigarettes as a gift and which has already accumulated more than 325,000 views on social networks. In addition, he urged the Minister of Health, José Manuel Miñones, to prohibit the sale of these devices.
This was claimed in a statement in which he warned that the video “provoked debate about the lack of protection of minors and the null perception of risk by parents” and warned about the “normalization” of the use of devices capable of releasing nicotine among tweens.
Regarding the audiovisual piece, in which a minor appears who, in her opinion, “does not appear to be more than 10 years old”, the president of the platform, Raquel Fernández Megina, stressed that the communion took place in Torreblanca (Seville). and that the girl “not only appears with a vape around her neck, but is also releasing smoke at the beginning of the video.”
“It has to get into our heads that vaping is smoking. The Government has to act now and ban this sector. It is not about ending any flavor, but about nipping this problem at the root,” she added, convinced that it is about a “harmful and predatory sector, first cousin of tobacco and that will make this girl a smoker before she turns fourteen.”
After denouncing the “tsunami that is already going for children of communion age,” he pointed out that, in the video, the boxes of pods that the minor is taking out “are all bright colors: pink, yellow, pastel tones. Almost a toy, but it comes with the warning of nicotine-containing products.
“Something that does not seem to matter to parents who give or allow this gift to their 10-year-old daughter,” he added, to recall that, “in its day,” Law 28/2005 on Sanitary Measures against Smoking prohibited products such as chocolate cigarettes, understanding that they “normalized the act of smoking among minors”.
At this point, he wondered “what to do when the toy that his parents give him, surely out of ignorance, contains one of the most addictive substances that exists, such as nicotine”, and he asserted that current legislation “has become completely obsolete ” in this sense.
“Possibly, the parents of the minor think that a vape is water, as the industry makes them believe, and not an aerosol that contains gases and heavy metals that can cause serious complications and side effects,” added the platform, whose president considered “a myth created by the industry itself that they are 95% less harmful”. She also explained that countries like Australia are banning its import and sale, convinced that Spain “should do the same.”
After warning that what this scene “proves” is how the tobacco and nicotine industry “ruthlessly preys on those most unprotected and vulnerable sectors”, he stated that “the State must intervene to put an end to their greed”.
In this regard, he denounced that the “epidemic” of preadolescent vaping “has flourished mainly under the mandates in Health of Salvador Illa and Carolina Darias”, who, according to his point of view, “have not lifted a finger to regulate an addictive industry that today ravages both minors and adults who combine tobacco and vaping”, and insisted on the need for the “immediate” promulgation of a Royal Decree Law that prohibits the sale and marketing of these devices, “regardless of flavors or load or not of nicotine”.
“We have all been fooled by this industry that does not serve to stop smoking, but accumulates synergies with the tobacco industry. The result is that this communion girl will be addicted to nicotine for life and will have a 300% greater chance of end up smoking before reaching the age of 14,” said the organization, which criticized that even vapers that are advertised as nicotine-free “contain certain proportions of it” due to “government carelessness.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
