Doctor Raed Arafat, a state secretary in the Internal Affairs Ministry (MAI) and a key figure in the local emergency situations services system, has spoken recently on the issue of the advertising for the new devices for “smoking without smoke.”

In a Facebook post, Arafat spoke of a “return of the media offensive of the tobacco sellers through aggressive advertising for ‘smoking without smoke’, using cigarette heating devices that contain tobacco.”

Arafat said that the studies on the effects of this type of smoking are only beginning and, even if this type of smoking was “healthier” than the traditional one, as companies claim, aggressively promoting smoking under this new form is set to impact the young generation.

“The promotion touches the children and the young who have not yet started smoking, and smoking, regardless of its type, is a danger for the public health and it is a danger for any person practicing it and for those around them. In other words, we are helplessly witnessing a comeback to the similar offensive in the 1990s, before tobacco promotion was forbidden, and when the advertising was targeting the youth and the children, the future clients of tobacco sellers,” the post reads.

In a later post, Arafat said that representatives of the anti-smoking group 2035 fara tutun and other organization are submitting a project to alter the law that bans the advertising of tobacco products so as to cover the newly emerged type of smoking.

“I hope our MPs initiate a legislative project in this respect so as to stop, in the shortest time possible, the promotion of these products and the recruitment of new generations of smokers,” he wrote. He also noted the disappearance of the e-smoking ads from the underground passage at Universitatii Square in Bucharest.

Syrian-born Romanian physician of Palestinian origins Raed Arafat is an intensive care doctor known for setting up in Romania the mobile emergency rescue service SMURD. Last year, he ranked 14th in the 100 Most Influential Arabs in the World in 2017 list put together by Arabian Business.

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editor@romania-insider.com