A vape-up call for tricity

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 10

Despite the ban on the sale of e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn (HNB) devices, cigarette and pan shops across tricity continue to sell vapers (commonly called vapes), some of which also come with nicotine-based flavours. In October, following the advisory by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), Punjab, had issued a circular to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes and HNB devices.

As The Tribune correspondent set off on the smoker’s trail to Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula, her cheapest tobacco-free find is an EVod Vape for Rs 600, sold at a makeshift bicycle-stand cigarette shop in the City Beautiful. At upscale head shops, a basic vaping pen costs between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,300 and its swankier versions are priced at an exorbitant Rs 9,500 to Rs 10,000.

From Aramax Vaping Pen and Orca Solo to Smok, Xlum and Ivape, almost all vapes are made in China. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a one-year warrantee on the product too, but a shopkeeper suggests, “It’s best to buy one online from Amazon India, Flipkart or Snapdeal.” One surfs and finds more Indian vaping websites, like vapeadda.com and vapestop.in, selling vapes and vape juices too.

But are vapes catching the fancy of city folks? Another shopkeeper replies, “We are flooded with orders and we have already sold so many; people are coming back with their broken vapes, asking us to fix them. Basically, vapes are tobacco and nicotine-free smoking paraphernalia, but we have nicotine-based flavours too. Only people trying to quit cigarettes buy vapes.”

A lawyer said he had been smoking cigarettes for 10 years and took to vaping to quit smoking. “Vape allows me to regulate nicotine content. I don’t feel breathless anymore,” he confesses. “The sale and possession for the purpose of sale of nicotine is to be regulated by licenses. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act specifically pertains to “drugs”and “cosmetics” and nicotine itself does not fall under the definition of either as contained within said act.” As of now, the government imposes 28% GST on all tobacco products, except tobacco leaves. Yet, according to GATS-2 (Global Adult Tobacco Survey) report, 13.7 per cent of adults in Chandigarh alone consume tobacco in some form or the other.