IN the middle of a deadly health crisis, the tobacco industry scored a win in the country, sticking to a tried and tested playbook to protect its interests.Despite medical experts' warning against the risks to health of vapes and other novel tobacco products, Congress passed a piece of legislation favoring the industry while undermining and contradicting public health protection.
In the Philippines, this is best seen in how legislators pushed for the trade department to regulate the novel tobacco products.There aren't many new tactics to influence policy making and legislation in relation to conventional and novel tobacco products, but only a leveling up of old ones because of the pandemic, according to Dr. Ulysses Dorotheo, executive director of the Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance .'Support through CRS was not done on a very wide scale then.