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TOBACCO

France vows to ban new cannabis ‘e-joint’

France will seek to outlaw a new electronic cigarette containing cannabis, a minister announced on Tuesday, on the very day the product was launched. The so-called e-joint claims it provides all of the relaxation but none of the mind-altering effects of marijuana.

Published: 16 December 2014 13:31 CET
France vows to ban new cannabis 'e-joint'
Just as it was launched, France says it will ban the 'e-joint'. Photo: AFP

French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said the product would "incite the consumption of cannabis" and that she intended approaching the courts to ban it.

"I am opposed to such a product being commercialised in France," she said on RTL radio.

The product,that has been dubbed an e-joint, was launched by a French-Czech company called Kanavape which says it hopes to offer "millions of people a legal and flavourful way to consume cannabis."

Smoking e-cigarettes, or "vaping", is ultra-fashionable in France, and while people have long since figured out how to doctor them to smoke marijuana — as evidenced by hundreds of YouTube how-to's on the subject — Kanavape claims their product is 100 percent legal.

Three young Frenchmen launched their electronic cigarette containing cannabis extracts on Tuesday which they say will give you the relaxing and pain-killing effect of the drug but without the high – and they claim it will be entirely legal.

“KanaVape brings you many of the benefits of cannabinoids without the psychotic effect of THC,” the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to the website of the product due to go on sale this month.

“Vape pens” – the fashionable term for electronic cigarettes – which allow consumers to inhale cannabis vapour rather than combusted smoke, are increasingly popular in the United States, where many states have recently legalised the consumption of cannabis for medical or recreational purposes.

But they are rare in Europe, where the Netherlands is the only country to have legalised marijuana.

KanaVape hopes to tap into the potentially huge market.

“By using only hemp with 5% CBD (Cannabidiol) and no THC, KanaVape provides you a unique cannabinoids experience. Cannabidiol is a non-psychotic cannabinoid, it will not make you "high" but will help you relax,” the firm claims.   

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SMOKING

Austrian lawmakers vote to abandon smoking ban in the name of ‘freedom of choice’

Austrian MPs on Thursday scrapped a smoking ban in bars and restaurants that was due to come into force in May, despite a petition in its favour collecting 545,000 signatures.

Published: 22 March 2018 20:41 CET
Austrian lawmakers vote to abandon smoking ban in the name of 'freedom of choice'
Café guests smoke cigarettes with their drinks in Vienna on March 22nd 2018. Photo: AFP

The overturning of the ban, introduced by the previous government, was approved by lawmakers from the ruling coalition of the conservatives and the far-right.

In an attempt to assuage critics, they also voted to extend the minimum age  for smoking to 18 as well as to ban smoking in vehicles if a minor is on board, effective from 2019.

Scrapping the ban was a key campaign pledge last year by the cigarette-loving leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache, 48.

He argued that a ban would infringe on “freedom of choice” and that he wanted to protect restaurant and bar owners whose businesses he said would be hit by a ban.

The Alpine country is one of Europe's last havens for tobacco lovers and is nicknamed by anti-smoking campaigners the “Ashtray of Europe”.

Smokers have to be seated in a separate area in bars and restaurants, but campaigners say that this fails to stop the smoke wafting elsewhere, and the rules are often flouted in any case.

No separate area is necessary in establishments smaller than 50 square metres (540 square feet) if the owner is happy to allow smoking on the premises.

Some 13,000 people die of tobacco-related causes in Austria each year. The country has the third-highest proportion of smokers in the EU (30 percent of those over 15), according to Eurostat.

The ongoing petition in favour of an outright ban threatens to put the FPÖ in a tricky position since another of its campaign pledges was to have more referendums and “direct democracy”.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, 31, of the People's Party (ÖVP), a non-smoker, says he is bound by his coalition agreement with the FPÖ.

His party was part of the previous coalition with the Social Democrats (SPÖ) that approved the smoking ban in the first place.

“You are acting against science and without a conscience. You are making a deliberate decision today in favour of death,” said Matthias Strolz, head of the small opposition party the NEOS.