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By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

The Mexican government’s top medical and health authority, the Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris), on Thursday, May 19, issued a maximum health alert against vaping and all other forms of tobacco consumption devices, such as hookahs and water pipes.

In a press release issued Thursday afternoon, Cofepris, in collaboration with Mexico’s Interior Secretariat (Segob), announced that it has declared a “maximum health alert” for vapers in all forms and declaring that it has “designed a strategy to prevent risks and strengthen sanitary control actions for these products, which are priorities for the federal health authority.”

Those actions include:

1. Strengthening health surveillance actions, increasing the number of verification visits and seizures of devices, especially those located at points with a higher risk of being consumed by minors.

2. Increasing training of federal health authorities on control of this type of product and the establishments that sell them.

3. Implementing a National Health Complaint Day focused on promoting vigilance and citizen reports on vending machines and points of sale that sell these products.

While with traditional cigarettes consumers inhale warm tobacco smoke, with e-cigarettes, or vaping, they inhale the same smoke in a cooler fashion, perhaps consuming even more smoke.

Six decades of rigorous studies have shown that there are at least 7,000 chemicals inhaled during smoking that impact the lungs.