At the request of the deputy minister of health and on the recommendation of the professional echelon in the ministry, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu signed an order to prevent the import and marketing of electronic cigarette JUUL.

The Ministry of Health claims that the decision to ban the import and marketing of a JUUL electronic cigarette product containing nicotine, with a concentration greater than 20 milligrams per milliliter, was made due to the serious public health danger. The Ministry of Health announces that, like the standard in Europe, due to the high amount of nicotine the product contains, the order to ban the import and marketing of the product as a consumer product, as defined in the Pharmacists Ordinance, applies.

JUUL was launched two years ago and became a hit in the United States, especially among teenagers. As of January 2018, the JUUL controls half of the electronic cigarette market in the United States and has managed to increase its sales by 700% since it was launched. It is estimated that the company is rolling over $ 450 million.

Although the law prohibits young people under the age of 18 from purchasing electronic cigarettes or other tobacco products, many teenagers still find ways to obtain these products. JUUL Israel claims that they forbid the sale of the product to minors, and even conducted several operations to locate centers that sell the product to minors.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, the use of electronic cigarettes increased from 1.5% in 2011 to 16% in 2015 among high school students, and from 0.6% in 2011 to 5.3% in 2015 among middle school students. An estimated 2 million high school and middle school students in the United States used electronic cigarettes.

“Since the electronic cigarettes are still relatively new, it is too soon to have gathered the results of studies that will teach us about the long-term effects of steam inhalation from these cigarettes,” said Professor Harold J. Farber, a pediatrician from Texas Hospital. “We do not have the same thirty years of research on using electronic cigarettes as we do about people who smoked tobacco cigarettes, but we know for sure what the effects of nicotine are and what are bad effects.”

JUUL has no tobacco, only nicotine. But nicotine contains a toxin that interferes with the normal functioning of the nervous system cells and can change one’s brain chemistry. “This is a very dangerous substance for children and adolescents, because their brains are still developing, and nicotine is a drug,” says Prof. Farber.

Israel is the second country in the world to market the product.

The JUUL was invented by James Moncus and Adam Bowen of San Francisco, Stanford University graduates who smoked for many years, and decided over a decade ago to make a change and look for an attractive alternative to cigarettes. The years realized that they had to find a product with a nicotine level that does not exist in any other product on the market, which produced a smoking experience. That’s how the electronic cigarette was created.

About two months ago, the company’s representatives visited Israel and presented the results of the studies carried out by the company in the United States, which showed that the percentage of youth who smoked declined from 15% to 7%.

In May, the JUUL began to market in Israel. “Before the company launches the product in other countries, it is examining a number of parameters, such as the rate of the population interested in quitting smoking, cigarette prices in the country and the openness to regulatory regulation,” the company explained. “In Israel, most smokers want to quit smoking, unlike Russia, for example, where 80 percent of smokers do not want to stop, and the price of cigarettes in Israel is high, they added.

About three months ago, Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri sent a letter to Litzman in which he promised to examine whether it is legally possible to prohibit the marketing and sale of electronic cigarette JUUL. “I carefully read the position of the professional bodies in the Ministry of Health regarding the health damage involved in using the product in question, and we naturally share your position regarding the need to find an immediate solution to the issue in order to reduce the damage,” wrote Nizri in his letter to Litzman.

Nizri said that the High Court of Justice had rejected the Health Ministry’s decision to ban the marketing of electronic cigarettes in Israel. Therefore, his believes the way to ban the use of cigarettes that endanger health, is as part of the completion of legislation to regulate the manufacture and marketing of electronic cigarettes. Now, the acting Health Minister, PM Netanyahu, has decided to sign the order.

The JUUL Company released the following statement: “We are astonished by the Health Ministry’s decision, and view it as political and not in the public’s interest while the Ministry of Health decides to continue to sell cigarettes and tobacco products, which are the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in Israel, it prohibits the sale of a nicotine-containing brand and does not include tobacco, while similar products continue to be sold. We will petition the High Court to cancel the order. ”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)