In order to lower more serious risks to the public’s health, regulations for nicotine-infused vape liquids need to be passed more quickly, according to the former minister of health.
He pointed out that sales of the goods were still unregulated even though nicotine-infused vape liquids had been removed from the Poisons Act list a few months earlier. He went on to say that the delisting removed any system for regulating liquid nicotine and vapes.
After delivering the keynote address at the UCSI University Future Leaders Empowerment Series here yesterday, he said at a press conference that the legislation ought to have been passed first.
Khairy claimed that while serving as the responsible minister, he had declined to sign a directive removing nicotine-laced products from the list.
I was asked to take away liquid nicotine so that we could tax it, but I refused, stating that I would only do so if laws were in place to control the products. I declined because doing so would endanger everyone’s health.
Since liquid nicotine was delisted a few months ago, he claimed, “there hasn’t been any legislation to regulate it.”
The Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Bill 2023 was recently requested by all parties by Health Minister Dr. Zaliha Mustafa in order to ensure that it could be introduced in Parliament at the upcoming session.
She stated that the issue needed to be taken seriously because the nation’s rising disease rate was being exacerbated by the nation’s dependence on smoking and the growing use of electronic cigarettes and vaping.
Meanwhile, Khairy cautioned during his keynote address that if nothing is done to address looming health crises, the Malaysian healthcare system will collapse within the next ten or two years.
“I worked at the Health Ministry for just over a year, spending the majority of my time managing the pandemic, ensuring that everyone was immunised, and ensuring that the nation was released from its state of lockdown so that the economy could be opened up.
But after that, I examined Malaysia’s risk factors and discovered that we were surrounded by a time bomb of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Our healthcare system will collapse in 10 to 20 years if we don’t act now, he warned.
Khairy claimed that in addition to NCDs, a silent pandemic of mental illness also posed a threat to the entire system.
However, he observed that there had been a gradual shift in the public, particularly among the younger generation, where discussions about mental health had become more commonplace.
People are now more open to discussing it. The stigma surrounding mental health is thankfully eroding as more young people talk about it.