전자담배규제 정책의 함의 및 법제도적 전략-영국의 전략을 참고하여-

The international community is actively trying to regulate the tobacco products based on the serious harmful effect from tobacco products through international treaties and other mechanisms that stipulate the specific obligations of member states. As a result, the member states of the relevant international treaty (such as Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC )) are actually responsible for closely comply with concerned regulations and for implementing domestic policies in many ways. Given that the republic of Korea is a member of the treaty (FCTC) on tobacco regulation, we should implement various measures to regulate and manage tobacco products. In particular, the international community, including the respective states, is focusing more on restrictions or regulatory measures on tobacco products, considering that the overall policy against tobacco products is necessary. Despite such extensive efforts to regulate tobacco, however, the outcome of the antismoking policy, or the anti-smoking rate, seems to have been stagnant for quite some time. It is true that we need to consider a more diversified policy to focus on electronic cigarettes. It is e-cigarettes that are receiving a lot of attention recently for the sake of the diversified policy against cigarette products. Although there is no general agreement on the dangers or risk of e-cigarettes, there is a country that try to induce smokers to quit smoking by the e-cigarettes based on the fact that the risks of e-cigarette are less than that of regular cigarettes. For example, the UK is pursuing a variety of policies in order to reduce the smoking rate by separating the legal status of e-cigarettes and the regular cigarettes and making e-cigarettes a replacement for regular cigarettes. Furthermore, UK sets up a separate agency that controls and leads the overall policy of e-cigarettes and establishes a more consistent policy targeting e-cigarettes. On the other hand, we insists on domestic policy on e-cigarettes focusing on the harmfulness of e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes and adopts a one-dimensional and simple policy on cigarettes, including e-cigarettes, based on the attitude that e-cigarette is one of the regular cigarette. However, if e-cigarettes are not included in the category of regular cigarettes, we are able to consider the discriminatory policies on the e-cigarettes different from the regular cigarettes in order to raise the effectiveness of smoking policy on the condition that e-cigarette is not harmful as much as regular cigarette. At this point, we can find reasons to confer to the UK e-cigarette policy in general.