It is just a move to gain popular votes from the people that are benefits from it, the Tabacco industry, the thousands of vape SME.
Maybe the government or the Ministry of Health should consider to impose law that if you are a smoker and or vaping on nicotine, you are not entitle for free/subsidized health care for life. The implementation can be as simple as using existing infrastructure like MySejahtera to register your smoking habit, you show your ID and scan every time your purchase a pack or any amount of nicotine, it aggregates the data and show the projection of the probability of your life expectancy, the more transactions the more less likely the government gonna lay eyes on you.
Some additional contexts from Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye [1].
NO one said vaping is a safe alternative to smoking.
So why are we now legitimising vaping when we are taking steps to introduce an anti-smoking law?
Currently, the law regarding the possession, distribution, and advertisement of electronic smoking devices (ESD) is too loose, allowing underage citizens to freely buy the products either at physical stores or online platforms.
Youths and children are easily attracted to ESD, commonly known as vapes, as they perceive the device as “the lesser evil”, cool and “harmless”.
Long story short, the move is viewed as a giant-ass obvious eyesore trojan horse for the Generational Endgame Bill which aims to stop and prevent smoking and vaping among children and teenagers, our future generations.