World Health Organization wants to ban indoor vaping, advertising to minors

E-cigarettes? Smoke em' if you got em'--while you can, that is. If the World Health Organization (WHO) has its way, people will be banned from smoking or vaping their cigarettes indoors, and cigarette companies would also be banned from advertising and selling their products to minors. The WHO published a report this week that called for those bans as well as increased regulation of the contents of e-cigarettes. 

The WHO's report follows quickly on the American Heart Association's (AHA) declaration that cigarettes can be effective in helping people quit smoking altogether. It certainly doesn't help consumers that two of the biggest health organizations in the world are sending mixed signals when it comes to the health benefits/risks associated with cigarettes. While the AHA claims that cigarettes can help provide an alternative to traditional smoking, the WHO claims that the growing popularity of cigarettes could lead to more young people smoking--traditional cigarettes or otherwise--and they feel that's bad. The one thing both the WHO and AHA do agree on is that more regulation should be implemented to oversee product content and cigarette marketing, with the AHA also calling for the current regulations governing traditional cigarettes to be applied to cigarettes. 

The WHO's report also calls for fruit-flavored and candy-flavored cigarettes to be banned because they might have a greater appeal to minors. The report also advises governments to step in and regulate the health claims being made by the cigarette manufacturers, and to also ban cigarette vending machines. The WHO also asserts that the "vapor" emitted by cigarettes contains nicotine and therefore will expose anyone in the area of an cigarette smoker to chemical substances. 

This latest report from the WHO was part of its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is an international public health treaty first created in 2005. As of today, 179 countries around the world have ratified it. The United States is the most notable nation yet abstaining from ratifying the treaty.