Vapers Digest 3rd March
Monday’s News at a glance:
Bulgaria Bans Vapes ~ A full guide to vape aerosols, formation, properties and comparisons: Post 3. ~ High-Smoking France Bans Disposable Vapes and Nicotine Pouches ~ Our vaping delusions have gone up in smoke. The Kiwis have a better idea ~ 10-Year Milestones ~ France bans nicotine pouches despite being promising smoking quitting aid ~ Sweden’s success in nicotine pouch regulations: lessons for the EU ~ Media Watch: Taz.de Exposes Its Illiberalism With Article on Nicotine Pouches ~ Considerate Pouchers and allies in UK Harm reduction have objected to proposed laws in Denmark limiting the strength of nicotine pouches to 9mgs ~ Will Martin Makary’s FDA listen to the evidence on e-cigarettes? ~ Tobacco Harm Reduction in President Trump’s Second Term: Opportunities and Challenges ~ Let’s talk e-cigarettes, February 2025 ~ BELGIUM BANS DISPOSABLES! | Featuring Alberto Gómez Hernández
Bulgaria Bans Vapes
Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes
The World Vapers’ Alliance (WVA) has strongly criticized the Bulgarian Parliament’s recent unanimous vote to implement a blanket ban on vaping products. The organisation says that this “ill-conceived decision threatens public health and ignores scientific evidence supporting vaping as a less harmful alternative to smoking”.
A full guide to vape aerosols, formation, properties and comparisons: Post 3.
Roberto Sussman, Roberto’s Substack
This is the third Substack post of a series of posts describing vaping aerosols, their properties, their optimal regime of operation and comparisons with tobacco smoke and other aerosols. Understanding how vape aerosols form, operate and can be tested provides the knowledge to understand their pleasurable usage, their toxicity profile and relative safety with respect to tobacco smoke and other aerosols and pollutants. Without being “experts” this knowledge reassures our confidence on the role of vapes in harm reduction and serves us to counter ignorant and malicious disinformation.
High-Smoking France Bans Disposable Vapes and Nicotine Pouches
Kiran Sidhu, Filter
France has banned the sale of disposable vapes, becoming the second country in Europe to do so. The law took effect on February 25. Just the day before, France notified the European Commission that it would also ban nicotine pouches. The moves anger French tobacco harm reduction (THR) activists who have fought to protect access to safer alternatives to cigarettes.
Dr Colin Mendelsohn, The Sydney Morning Herald
A landmark study published in the journal Addiction has revealed that the smoking rate in New Zealand fell twice as fast as in Australia between 2016 and 2023. Over this seven-year period, NZ’s adult daily smoking rate plummeted by an astonishing 10 per cent per year, from 14.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent. In contrast, Australia’s smoking rate declined by only 5 per cent per year, from 12.2 per cent to 8.3 per cent.
10-Year Milestones
Skip Murray, Skip’s Corner – Let’s Talk!
How Can I Celebrate? It was around this date ten years ago when I realized I didn’t know when I had last smoked a cigarette. After failing to quit numerous times, I stopped trying. In late 2014, I was given my first vape to use when I was somewhere I couldn’t smoke. Without thinking about it, I started vaping more and smoking less until I accidentally quit smoking a few months later. I was so excited to hit the ten-year mark that I pre-scheduled my celebratory tweet weeks ago. I wish I could tell you I’m sitting here shedding happy tears, but that would be a lie.
Christopher Oldcorn, Western Standard
France has banned the sale of nicotine pouches, drawing criticism from experts who say these products are among the most effective ways to quit smoking. The French government notified the European Union of its “draft decree” on February 25, marking a significant shift in the country’s tobacco control policy.
Sweden’s success in nicotine pouch regulations: lessons for the EU
SNUSFORUMET
The EU’s inner market for nicotine pouches has become a hodgepodge of inconsistent, ad hoc rules often lacking scientific basis. How did we get here, and what could policymakers across the EU learn about nicotine pouch regulations from the example of Sweden? Sweden has a long history of sensible tobacco regulation that has accommodated less harmful alternatives and resulted in tangible public health gains.
TWO From The Daily Pouch
Media Watch: Taz.de Exposes Its Illiberalism With Article on Nicotine Pouches
Die Tageszeitung is an iconic Berlin newspaper. Formed in 1978, it’s known as a bastion of progressive left-wing politics. Many people consider it to have captured the alternative spirit of the Grey City, with its political critiques and a strong focus on environmentalism, social justice, gender equality, and more. The daily print edition will stop near the end of this year, meaning the online version, Taz.de, will be all that’s left of the outlet. Despite its unique cooperative ownership struggle, some readers have criticised the direction of the paper over the last few years, with some speculating that the paper has drifted to the right on particular issues.
Considerate Pouchers and allies in UK Harm reduction have objected
to proposed laws in Denmark limiting the strength of nicotine pouches to 9mgs
Maddison King
In a letter to health minister Sophie LØhde, Richard Crosby, Director of Considerate Pouchers UK, Bernice Evans, chair of the New Nicotine Alliance, Clive Bates, founder of The Counterfactual and We Vape director Mark Oates have urged officials to “reassess the proposed cap”, that they fear will drive people back to cigarettes. They believe such a limit would stop the effectiveness of pouches – credited alongside vaping with the eradication of smoking in Sweden – and risk a surge in unregulated black market products.
Will Martin Makary’s FDA listen to the evidence on e-cigarettes?
Layal Bou Harfouch, Reason Foundation
President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Martin Makary, is still waiting for his nomination hearing. However, with new leadership on the horizon, the agency has a rare chance to break free from outdated, prohibitionist policies.
The latest findings of the Cochrane Review—a gold-standard library of evidence to inform healthcare decision-making—could help steer the agency toward a smoking cessation approach that prioritizes equipping individuals with evidence-based solutions. Measures like capping nicotine in cigarettes, proposed by the Biden administration, create more problems than they solve, while harm-reduction tools like vaping are already proving effective in helping people quit smoking at higher rates.
Tobacco Harm Reduction in President Trump’s Second Term: Opportunities and Challenges
Gabriel Oke, Policy Watch Africa
As President Donald Trump embarks on his second term in 2025, the landscape of tobacco harm reduction (THR) in the United States stands at a pivotal juncture. The administration’s policy decisions, particularly regarding regulatory approaches and international health collaborations, are poised to significantly influence the future of THR initiatives.
During President Trump’s first term (2017–2021), the administration exhibited a multifaceted approach to tobacco regulation. In September 2019, then-Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, announced intentions to ban flavored e-cigarettes, citing concerns over youth nicotine addiction. This move underscored the administration’s apprehension about the rising popularity of vaping among young people.

Let’s talk e-cigarettes, February 2025
Olivier Drouin, University of Oxford Podcasts
Associate Professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and Associate Professor Nicola Lindson discuss the new evidence in e-cigarette research and interview Dr Olivier Drouin. Dr Olivier Drouin is a Clinical Assistant Professor in both the Department of Paediatrics and Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université de Montréal. In the February podcast Olivier Drouin discusses his ongoing pilot randomized trial of a brief digital screening and intervention tool for parental and adolescents to address tobacco and electronic cigarette use, CanCEASE. This study takes place in paediatric medical care settings in Canada and is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Their pilot study aims to demonstrate the feasibility and evaluate the preliminary effectiveness of the CEASE program for parental smoking cessation and its adapted version for adolescent smoking cessation and adolescent and parental vaping cessation.
Global Forum on Nicotine
Belgium has become the first country in Europe to ban disposable vapes, but will this actually have an impact on youth vaping rates, or will it just reduce access to safer nicotine products for millions of adults who smoke in Belgium? Joining us today is Alberto Gómez Hernández, Policy Manager at the World Vapers’ Alliance, to dissect Belgium’s vaping crackdown and the impact this could have on adult vapers.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Martin McKee: Still wrong about vaping
Christopher Snowdon, Velvet Glove Iron Fist
The heavily overweight Zero Covid crank Martin McKee had a letter published in The Times yesterday in response to an op-ed from the paper’s resident puritan Alice Thomson (whom we have come across before). Thomson has spotted a real problem – the sharp rise in vaping among teenagers, especially those using Elf bars – but characteristically comes up with the wrong solutions: banning flavours, banning colours and getting Public Health England (which she thinks still exists) to “treat vaping in the same way as cigarettes”.
Exposing Defective Research…
But Denied Credit for the Effort: Case 2
Brad Rodu, Tobacco Truth
Two weeks ago I described a flawed mortality study by National Cancer Institute staff that led to a correction but no recognition for our group’s work in uncovering the errors. Here we detail a second, similar case, involving a vaping study by faculty at Columbia and the University of Arkansas, including a former member of the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC).
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