Photo Release

Cayetano explains no vote: Sen. Pia Cayetano expresses her disappointment for failing to convince her colleagues to vote against the passage of Senate Bill No. 2239 seeking to regulate the importation, manufacture, sale, packaging, distribution, use and communication of vaporized nicotine and non-nicotine products. “It hurts me deeply that I had not been able to convince my colleagues that simply by regulating and allowing the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to do its job, is not good enough for the Senate,” Cayetano said during plenary session Thursday, December 16, 2021. She said Senate Bill No. 2239 reverses the protective measures that they had worked for under the Sin Tax law. According to Cayetano, a provision in the bill would turn over the duty of regulating vaporized products and non-nicotine products to the Department of Trade and Industry. “What business has the DTI have to regulate health? Does DTI have the experience? What I hear from my colleagues until the very end is that we want to save lives, to bring people away from smoking. So, that is exactly what this bill would have allowed to do with supervision of the FDA,” Cayetano stressed. (Screen grab/Senate PRIB)