New York bans flavored e-cigarettes

Several deaths and hundreds of cases of health problems that are believed to be linked to smoking e-cigarettes have occurred over the past year in the United States. President Donald Trump said last week that his administration will ban taste e-cigarettes across the country.

In the past, flavored e-cigarettes have been banned in Michigan and San Francisco.

Researchers in the United States have found harmful levels of the carcinogenic substance pulegon in mint flavor e-cigarette liquids. The findings have been featured in an article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. That's what Reuters reports.

Pulegon is a clear, colorless oil that can be extracted from, for example, catnip and peppermint. Since last year, Pulegon has been banned as a food in the United States, and tobacco companies have already previously minimized the use of the substance in ordinary menthol cigarettes due to the substance's potential toxicity.

The researchers who conducted the study have found pulegons in six different liquids for e-cigarettes. In their study, they write that anyone who inhales pulegon through an e-cigarette gets 1,000 times as much of the substance as a person who smokes a regular menthol cigarette.

E-cigarettes or special liquids used for e-cigarettes can be banned in Sweden if it can be proven that they are sufficiently harmful to health. It is also possible to regulate certain types of products if they attract young consumers. Therefore, for example, ordinary menthol cigarettes have been banned in Sweden, which will come into force in 2020. In Finland it is already banned.

So far, there has been relatively little research on how dangerous smoking e-cigarettes is. Therefore, they are not regulated with the same permit requirements or warnings on packaging as regular cigarettes in Sweden.