Use new tobacco Bill to mitigate disaster of delisting nicotine as a poison

AT the end of March 2024, Universiti Sains Malaysia's National Poison Centre was reported to have recorded an increase of 30.6% in nicotine poisoning last year. This represented a five-fold increase compared with 2019 figures.

More young people, namely teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 years old, were found to have experienced poisoning due to their use of vape and ecigarettes containing nicotine, with symptoms ranging from drowsiness, diarrhoea, severe vomiting, abdominal pain, loss of consciousness, seizures or worse, psychosis, and hallucinations. Alarmingly, there were also reports of illicit drug use utilising ecigarette liquids which were previously observed occurring in neighbouring Indonesia.