The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has announced a reform through which she plans to ban vapes because she understands that they represent a risk to the health of the population. In this way, it supports the determination of the previous government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was the one who started the crusade against these products.
“The approval of the elimination of vaping devices is in process, we hope that this year all the reforms that were presented on February 5 will come out,” said Sheinbaum.
Last August, the Constitutional Points Commission of the Chamber of Deputies endorsed prohibiting the production, distribution, marketing and sale of electronic cigarettes, vapers and other similar electronic systems or devices established by law. Now the approval of the Senate is missing.
The business sector has spoken out against it. The tobacco company Phillip Morris Mexico has indicated that the ban on heated tobacco and vape devices has only given rise to a new business for organized crime and has caused a tax loss of 5 billion pesos annually (approximately 250 million euros). . According to official data, Mexico has 17 million active smokers.
The black market for vapes is not a secret in Mexico City. In this capital it is common for street vendors to sell vapes on terraces, bars and at the exit of nightclubs, which have also become extremely popular among the young public.
“You have been warned”
An irregular business that in other latitudes offers more sinister postcards. In October of last year, a naked man appeared on the streets of Los Mochis, in the state of Sinaloa, in the Mexican Pacific, tied to a light post and with a piece of cardboard stuck to his chest: “This happened to me because I was selling vape pens, This is a warning for the missing grasshoppers. “The others are going to do worse, they have been warned, we have already identified them.” The video circulated on social networks and quickly spread the news that drug cartels are now also entering the vaping business.
According to a report from the Sinaloa Youth Integration Centers (CIJ), the use of vapers among young people in that state increased by more than 50%. The document also points out that in 2023 these centers received more than 300 adolescents who confirmed that electronic cigarettes became their entry into the world of other drugs such as marijuana, crystal and fentanyl.
Mixed with fentanyl
Martha Alicia Torres Reyes, head of the State Commission for the Prevention, Treatment and Control of Addictions (CEPTCA), stated that organized crime is behind the sale of vapes altered with mixtures of methamphetamines and fentanyl to “hook” new consumers.
In an interview for the ‘Río Doce’ portal, he explained that organized crime is taking advantage of the niche that vapers represent, because given the prohibition on their legal sale in Mexico, the cartels are meeting that demand but they do so with substances that are dangerous for young people. .
The London newspaper ‘The Guardian’ also reported this weekend that the black market for vapers covers 90% of consumers and that it is infiltrated by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The crusade against the legal sale of vapers began in the López Obrador government when in his morning conferences the now former president began to say that vapers “destroy the respiratory system of young people.” In October 2022, the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) warned about their use, because, it stated, they contain more than 30 substances that are omitted from their labeling, one of which is used to kill flies and cockroaches.
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