The health ministry has been urged to draft law which bans manufacturing and selling of e-cigarettes in India as it wouldn’t be possible to impose an import ban on electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes without a proper domestic legislation, said sources.
The health ministry previously had asked its commerce counterpart to issue a notice that bans the import of the Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS), which includes e-cigarettes as well as the flavoured hookahs.
An advisory to suspend output, sale as well as import of ENDS was issued by the health ministry last August to all the Union Territories as well as states. The move was initiated after the High Court of Delhi took an exception to Centre for its delay to come up with proper measures to handle new threats which e-cigarettes is imposing in India.
In the month of April this present year, more than one thousand doctors from 24 Indian states as well as 3 Union Territories urged PM Narendra Modi to prohibit ENDS in order to prevent it from becoming an epidemic in the country, particularly among younger citizens.
Notably, e-cigarettes are basically devices which don’t use or burn tobacco leaves. Instead, these vaporise a kind of solution that is then inhaled by the user. The solution mainly comprises of nicotine and propylene glycol.