Malaysia Rejects Application to Exempt E-Cigarette Nicotine from Poison List

According to an article in the Malaysian Mail on September 7th, the High Court of Malaysia has rejected an application from an anti-tobacco organization to halt the exemption of liquid nicotine from the list of hazardous substances, while awaiting judicial review.

These three citizen groups had hoped for the court to enact a law that temporarily reinstates liquid nicotine as a toxic substance on the list, pending the resolution of the Health Minister's lawsuit. However, their attempts were unsuccessful.

High Court judge Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh has rejected the application from three civil society organizations to "suspend" or temporarily halt the decision of Health Minister Zaliha Mustafa to remove e-cigarette liquid from the list of poisonous substances.

In rejecting the application for suspension, the judge stated that the three civic organizations would need to demonstrate the presence of exceptional circumstances in order to establish the reasonableness of suspending the Health Minister's directive issued on March 31st.

Lawyer Shanmuga of the civil society group expressed that the application for suspension has been rejected. He stated that the high court mentioned that his client did not provide sufficient detailed reasons for the suspension. However, he mentioned that the high court did agree to expedite the hearing of this lawsuit and has scheduled it for December 6th.

Before e-cigarette liquids and e-cigarette gels were removed from the list of poisons, non-medical therapeutic products - which were previously categorized as toxic - were prohibited from being illegally sold to children. Now, these products can be openly and legally sold to children.

If these three civic organizations succeed in obtaining temporary suspension, these e-cigarette liquid products will temporarily be brought back under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health, preventing their legal sale to children.