Vapers Digest 17th June
Monday’s News at a glance:
European Council To Discuss Flavour Ban – Twitter / X Community Notes Fighting Misinformation! – CoEHAR multilateral approach in Warsaw – CASAA Needs Your Help! – Anti-vape researchers accused of double standards – What is the future of novel tobacco products? – Vaping is just as good as Chantix – Vaping Bill Doubles Down on Failure – FDA has ‘not done its job’ – Deadly Tobacco Drug War Down Under
European Council To Discuss Flavour Ban
Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes
The European Council will be discussing placing an EU-wide ban on flavours for all nicotine products on 21 June following requests from Denmark and Latvia. French advocacy group SOVAPE tell us that Latvia’s application is supported by “Cyprus, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain”. The aim of the discussion is to include the comprehensive ban in the next iteration of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.
According to SOVAPE, “the Council will debate on June 21 in Luxembourg proposals to ban flavours for all nicotine products – excluding pharmaceuticals – throughout the European Union. If accepted, these proposals would bypass the evaluation of the ongoing Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) by already imposing a revision project.
Twitter / X Community Notes
Fighting Misinformation! – Michelle Jones, ECigClick
Lately Twitter / X community notes have been fighting back against misinformation about vaping and THR (Tobacco Harm Reduction). It is such a wonderful thing to see – that the public are able to counteract blatant lies from large organisations!
On the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) there is a method to directly dispute a claim in a post / tweet. I quote below from X’s community notes explanation page…
“Community Notes aim to create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post. Sign up to become a contributor.
You can sign up to be a community notes contributor here or simply vote on informative notes you see whilst scrolling through your timeline.
CoEHAR multilateral approach in Warsaw
GFN2024
At the GFN 2024, CoEHAR experts showed the latest results of the high profile research conducted in Catania and in affiliated labs around the world, demonstrating the versatility of their approach, which ranges from the replicability of scientific work to data on the real consumption of exclusive vapers
The latest edition of the GFN, the Global Forum on Nicotine, has just concluded and, as every year, it was the stage for sharing updates on research, communication and impact of harm reduction strategies.
Consider smokers plea in the debate on safer alternatives pic.twitter.com/B2A1ilOfMs
— Joseph Magero (@Josephmagero) June 14, 2024
“Strict regulation, such as banning products or increasing prices, may prompt UK youth to switch from vaping to smoking.” https://t.co/IAZSf4pHyy
— Jukka Kelovuori (@jkelovuori) June 17, 2024
CASAA Needs Your Help!
Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association
As you may know by now, CASAA has always been shy about fundraising from our membership. It is a strategic consideration acknowledging that most people who smoke may not have extra cash laying around that they can give away easily. As a result, CASAA has relied on the bulk of our donations coming from the industry for several years. This has allowed us to continue our work without pestering our membership for donations, or placing CASAA’s resources behind a paywall.
But while our membership has grown, recurring, sustaining support has remained relatively flat and one-time donations have declined. CASAA is at a point where we must make difficult decisions. The most immediate concern is whether or not we can continue our level of engagement beyond this summer.
Anti-vape researchers accused…
Of double standards in transparency row – Ali Anderson
Anti-vape researchers have been accused of double standards in a row over declaring conflicts of interest in scientific journal The Lancet. The controversy was sparked by an article written by global health advocate Derek Yak titled ‘WHO should embrace tobacco harm reduction to save lives.’
In the opinion piece, Mr Yach – a former Executive Director at the World Health Organisation (WHO) – argued that the institution should embrace tobacco harm reduction tools such as vaping to prevent deaths from smoking. He wrote that the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) had failed to adapt to “scientific and technological advances that can help smokers to quit.
With a right-leaning EU Parliament…
What is the future of novel tobacco products?
The result of the latest European Union elections is a clear twist to the right, signalling a potential shift towards a more business-friendly and deregulated environment for the vaping and heated tobacco industries.
After four days of voting across the EU that ended on Sunday, 9th June, voters in the 27 member states elected 720 lawmakers to be members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for the next five years.
The clear winner of the 2024 elections, the tenth in history and the most important in recent years for the tobacco industry, is the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group.
FDA and Justice Dept.
Force Tiny Vape Manufacturer to Shut Down – Jim McDonald
The FDA announced today that a small e-liquid manufacturer has entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, agreeing to cease operations. It marks the eighth time the FDA and DOJ have used injunction proceedings to shut down small vape manufacturers.
The action was taken against Colorado-based Boosted LLC and its owner Cory Vigil. Boosted, which at one time employed more than a dozen people, has manufactured e-liquids for at least a decade. According to the Justice Department complaint against Boosted, the company ignored warning letters for selling unauthorized vape products.
FDA has ‘not done its job’
When it comes to e-cigs, vaping: Tony Abboud
Vaping is just as good as Chantix
At helping people quit cigarettes – Nicholas Florko
E-cigarettes were about as effective at helping people quit smoking as the gold-standard pharmaceutical drug, varenicline, according to a clinical trial published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The trial randomized 458 people who smoked daily and wanted to quit to receive either a nicotine-containing e-cigarette and placebo tablets, varenicline and an e-cigarette without nicotine, or a placebo tablet and a nicotine-free e-cigarette for 12 weeks. All three groups were also given intensive tobacco cessation counseling.
Vaping Bill Doubles Down on Failure
Ross Fitzgerald
The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 is set to be debated and voted on in the Senate on June 24. If the Senate bill is passed, Australia’s eight state and territory parliaments will each have to pass corresponding legislation. If they don’t, the survival of Australia’s restrictive approach to vaping is doubtful. The federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, is leading these de facto prohibition changes.
Australia began restricting nicotine vaping, a much safer way of taking nicotine than deadly smoking, in 2011. Since then, when evidence of policy failure has become apparent, Labor and Coalition governments have intensified the policy rather than consider other reasonable policy options.
Deadly Tobacco Drug War Down Under
Jacob Grier
Since March of last year, the Australian state of Victoria has been rocked by a series of arsons and firebombings. Some of the targets are victims of extortion; others are caught in an escalating turf war between rival gangs. Two men with links to organized crime have been publicly murdered, one in a broad-daylight shooting at a shopping mall in a Melbourne suburb. Violent conflict is not unexpected in organized crime, but what is unusual is the drug at the center of this conflict: nicotine.
This tobacco turf war has been widely covered in Australian media but generally ignored elsewhere. In international public health discourse, Australia is often upheld as a model for mainstream tobacco control—lauded for its graphic warnings on cigarette packs, extremely high cigarette taxes, and strict prohibitions on e-cigarettes. Recent events, however, demonstrate how these policies can backfire.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Can vaping legal framework
Be built on more than just slipshod bills, please? – Freddie Dawson
It’s surprising the loopholes lawmakers can miss when writing, debating and passing bills.
Then again, maybe it isn’t, given allegations that most politicians don’t even bother reading the bills they vote on and that many proposals either parrot vested interest submissions word for word or copy and paste from similar bills passed in other jurisdictions (often with unintended consequences). Whatever the case, it’s amazing what can get left out of bills. Ireland, for example, is only now moving to close sales of vaping products to under-18s.
Lectio Magistralis on physics and THR
CoEHAR
On June 14, prof. Roberto Sussman, Associate Professor and Researcher in Theoretical Cosmology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, held a Lectio Magistralis on the physical principles linked to the environmental emissions of the ecig aerosol
The environmental emissions generated by the ecig aerosol is a matter of debate in the field of the research applied to combustion free products. Prof. Roberto Sussman is one of the leading experts in the field and collaborated with CoEHAR publishing three extensive articles in collaboration with Prof. Riccardo Polosa on topics related to Aerosol Physics, specifically on bio-aerosols in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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