Since 1 January, a flavor ban on e-cigarettes has been in effect in the Netherlands. However, retailers have until October 1 to sell their stock. Incomprehensible, thinks cardiologist Tomas Symersky. “The e-cigarette is a dirty campaign by the nicotine industry.”
By Jeroen Kleijne
Tomas Symersky works as a cardiologist at the Medical Center Leeuwarden. His work focuses on acute cardiology, cardiac monitoring and first aid and he is involved in the organization of the Cardiovascular Center in the hospital in Leeuwarden.
How often do you have to deal with the consequences of smoking in your work?
Tomas Symersky: “Ongoing. The vast majority of people we admit with an infarction, heart failure or arrhythmia have smoked or are still smoking. We see acute heart attacks most often, usually as a result of accelerated arteriosclerosis. And that’s often due to smoking—decades before the arteries would normally calcify. Nearly 90 percent of women who have a heart attack before menopause smoke. Smoking is an extremely high risk factor for developing heart attacks.”
How bad is that?
“As cardiologists, we are actually fighting a true rearguard action. Whether you are unlucky or have made stupid choices: of course we treat everyone without respect of persons, that is how it should be. But of course it would be much better if we could prevent certain risks by putting much more emphasis on prevention.”
How do you view the rise of the e-cigarette in recent years?
“It is an extremely dirty campaign and technique by the nicotine industry to create replacement smokers. You create an addiction at a very young age in the vulnerable adolescent brain. Hardly anyone wakes up at the age of thirty and thinks to themselves: I’m going to start smoking today. That is precisely why the marketing of vaping is aimed purely at 12 to about 20-year-olds. Not via television, Formula 1 or the newspaper, but with the help of influencers on social media. And of course because of the lollipop-like appearance and the candy flavors. You see those vapes in every seventh grade, because age control is very limited. Children do not realize the danger, and before they know it they are addicted.”
You have children of that age yourself, how do you view them as a father?
“It’s a horror. As a child you just participate in what you see in the schoolyard or on TikTok. When we were that age, we were also fully experimenting, that’s part of it. But the e-cigarette is so accessible that it is not only the responsibility of the child. As a society, as a national government, as a school, as adults, we must ensure that the environment in which such a child finds himself is as healthy and safe as possible.”
Is the government not doing enough in your opinion?
“I think it is a big scandal that we have allowed this kind of product on the market and that it can be sold anywhere. It is not intended for people who want to quit smoking, it is aimed at children. It has now been proven that the switch to tobacco is much too easy and is also made a lot. ‘Lollipops’ for inside, and the cigarette for outside. Completely incomprehensible that the Minister of Health has allowed this at all and that shopkeepers are now given extra time to use up their stocks.”
‘And what are you going to do? Ensuring that there will be more sick people in the future, people who will be withdrawn from the labor process. You just can’t do this’
What should happen first?
“The flavor ban should be enforced immediately. You have to show solidarity with the youth, and not with the nicotine industry. It’s about the children, the young adults, the future of our country. Care is falling, you can hear that on all sides. Education is understaffed. And what are you going to do? Ensuring that there will be more sick people in the future, people who will be withdrawn from the labor process. You just can’t do this.”
And further?
“You should no longer use an age limit for the sale of nicotine-containing products, but a year of birth. In this way you really create that smoke-free generation in the long term, something they have already done in New Zealand. With that you put sod on the dike. As said: at the age of thirty you no longer start.”
How great is the importance of prevention?
“Giant. And you’re not just talking about cardiovascular disease. I think that more than half of the diseases in the western world are lifestyle related. In general, much more attention should be paid to this. In the consulting room, my colleagues and I naturally do our utmost to help patients with this – preferably involving their families as well. We can sometimes make a difference on an individual level, but we cannot do without the backing of a strong government policy. That can really be much better than now.”
tags: cardiovascular disease | interview | e-cigarette | smoke-free generation | young people | nicotine addiction | flavor ban
