I find it curious, although regrettable, the president's obsession with vapers. Despite the many times he has wanted to express a liberal philosophy with the phrase “Forbidden to forbid”, his prohibitionist obsession is overwhelming. This February 5, when launching twenty new initiatives for constitutional reforms, he reached the absurdity of equating vaping devices with fentanyl and asked that its prohibition be reflected in the Constitution. The issue, for him, is something personal. Lopez Obrador has tried by all means to ban vapes, but curiously not cigarettes, cigars or pipes. On February 20, 2020, it published a decree to prohibit the import of products for vaping and electronic cigarettes, which was based on article 16 of the General Tobacco Control Law, which prevents “trading, selling, distributing, displaying, promoting or producing “any object that is not a tobacco product, that contains some of the elements of the brand or any type of design or auditory signal that identifies it with tobacco products.” This article was made to prevent tobacco promotion with products such as chocolate cigarettes, but not vapes.
The Supreme Court invalidated the decree on October 19, 2021, by seven votes to four. Minister Juan Luis González Alcántara (nominated by AMLO) established in his draft that the decree was unconstitutional for violating “the right to equality.” The then president of the Court, Arturo Zaldívar (close to the president), joined in considering that it violated “freedom of commerce and free development of personality.”
Despite the ruling, the president has insisted. On May 31, 2022, he prohibited, again by decree, not by a law approved in the legislature, not the importation, but “the circulation and marketing” of electronic cigarettes and vaporizers, even without nicotine. The eighth district court in administrative matters granted protection in September 2023 to the Sanborns company against this measure. The issue reached the Supreme Court again, in this case to the Second Chamber, which on December 6, 2023 protected a business in Morelos to protect it from sanctions that were applied to it for having had a machine to dispense these products.
Now the president, astonishingly or ridiculously, places vapes at the level of fentanyl and wants to ban them from the Constitution. His initiative is based on “the human right to health”; but again, he only cares about vapers, not smoked tobacco. On October 18, 2022, he went so far as to state that “vaping is more harmful than tobacco, than cigarettes.” It is understood as the opinion of a politician without scientific knowledge, but not what Alejandro Svarch, head of Cofepris, maintains, which confirms that the institution has abandoned all attempts to maintain technical criteria. Svarch declared in a morning that vapes contain “cockroach poison.” He was referring to linalool, a terpene with many uses; He apparently hasn't learned that regulators around the world, including his Cofeprishave approved it as a food additive.
Vaping can be harmful to your health, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other regulators note that “e-cigarettes generally contain fewer harmful chemicals than smoke from smoked products.” They also point out that vapers can help combat cigarette addiction. The president, however, maintains his foolish campaign. There is no doubt that, for him, this is a personal issue that has nothing to do with health or science.
Junk bonds
The Moody's rating agency reduced the rating of Pemex bonds from B1 to B3 with a negative outlook, “junk bond” level. The only thing that prevents the oil company from being bankrupt is the money that the Mexican government gives it.
“There is something personal between those guys and me”
Joan Manuel Serrat
#Obsession #prohibit
