Minister Praised by Experts – UKVIA Shines a Light on Teen Concerns – Shop Owner Repeats Bad Behaviour – Health advocates push for harm reduction in smoking alternatives – Pouches Close Sweden’s Tobacco Harm Reduction Gender Gap – Scottish E-cigarette Market Report (2) : Elfbar, Lost Mary, SKE have declined significantly, and Gold Bar has plunged by 93.5%. Pixl and Higo have seen strong growth – One in four disposable vape users are now puffing illegally or have returned to tobacco – THR Makes the #Filthy15 List! – Public Health Theater – Portugal Pushes Back: The Economic and Public Health Stakes in the EU Tobacco Tax Reform – Are Pharma Influence and Policy Confusion Reigning Over the Vape Battle in Malaysia? – Flavour bans cut youth vaping – but slow cigarette smoking decline, study finds – The JUUL Case and the FDA: Regulatory Redemption or Strategic Maneuver? – The Death of the American Vape Shop
International tobacco harm reduction experts at Smoke Free Sweden have applauded Casey Costello, New Zealand’s associate minister of health, for her staunch defence of safer nicotine alternatives that have brought her country to the brink of official ‘smoke-free’ status.
New research, published in BMJ Tobacco Control, suggests that UK teens who vape are ‘just as likely to smoke as their peers were in the 1970s’. The intergenerational study reportedly found that young people who said they vape in 2018 had nearly a one-in-three chance of also reporting smoking – matching the overall proportion of teen smoking 50 years ago. Newspapers have leapt on a press release to spread fear, ignoring the opinions of experts.
The owner of an Oxford off-licence, already stripped of its premises licence earlier this year, appeared before Oxford Magistrates’ Court at the end of July charged with further offences relating to the sale and supply of illegal vapes and tobacco. Avtar Singh Lulpurwal, who manages the Uni Food & Wine in Park End Street, saw his business investigated by Oxfordshire County Council’s trading standards team after they received a report that the shop had been selling Swedish tobacco snus.
Safer smoking alternatives were high on the agenda at a women’s wellness event where Gauteng MPL and former health MEC Dr Bandile Masuku called for deeper engagement on harm reduction.
Speaking at The Wellness Collective, a gathering focused on shifting South Africa from selling harm to promoting wellness, Masuku on Tuesday pointed to the example of a pregnant woman who smokes but cannot quit entirely.
Sweden’s use of the oral tobacco product snus has led it towards becoming the world’s first “smoke-free” country (defined as an overall smoking rate below 5 percent). But modern nicotine pouches are accelerating this progress—with women leading the way, highlights a new report.
Like snus, these pouches are placed under the lip to deliver nicotine. But unlike snus, they contain no tobacco, but rather a powdered mix of plant fibers and flavorings to go with the active ingredient.
British media SLR cited the latest report from retail data consulting firm Talysis to analyze the e-cigarette retail market in Scotland. It was reported that in the first month after the implementation of the single-use e-cigarette ban in Scotland, the market showed a clear trend of “brand reshuffling”. This article compiles the changes in the brand landscape of the Scottish e-cigarette market and the brand response strategies.
BRITAIN’S ban on single-use vapes has driven huge numbers of Britons back to smoking tobacco, according to a bombshell poll, suggesting the new law has backfired. Since the start of June it has been illegal to sell single-use vapes, a change brought in ahead of a much stricter set of laws on flavours and packaging still being debated in Parliament.
A new poll of UK vapers and smokers suggests that while the ban could be having a positive environmental impact, it may be driving people to smoking tobacco or even to using illegal vapes. 26% of single-use vapers have since turned to either illegal products, started smoking more or returned to tobacco entirely since the ban came into force.
“The last five marketing scams in the 2025 Firebreak Filthy Fifteen look at how marketing opportunists get involved in campaigns for systemic change, trying to get ahead of the curve on the transitions to what is promised to be a better, more sustainable world.”
My heart sank when I saw that #13 is “Non-Tobacco Nicotine Products.” I braced for more of the same O, same O. We know the drill…addicting the next generation, gateway, kid-appealing flavors, ingredients used in antifreeze and paint thinner, brain damage, EVALI, chemicals & metals, stigmatizing users, popcorn lung, and evil industry plots…
On the day Utah banned flavored vapes, everything changed. Imperceptible at first, but now impossible to ignore.
Nothing in my shop moved. The shelves stayed where they were. The customers kept coming. The conversations felt familiar. But something underneath shifted. Quietly. Then steadily.
Cigarette sales started ticking up.
Not dramatically. Not like a rush. But enough that I noticed. Enough that I had to start restocking brands I hadn’t needed to keep in volume for years. Enough that I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time:
As the European Commission pushes forward on its most ambitious tobacco tax reform in over a decade, Portugal has stepped up as a strong opponent to key elements of the proposal. The sweeping reform, designed to align with the EU’s Beating Cancer Plan and introduce minimum tax levels on novel nicotine products like vapes and pouches, has drawn praise from public health advocates. But it also faces mounting criticism from countries that warn of unintended consequences. At the forefront of this resistance is Portugal, which argues that the proposed tax increases could undercut public health goals, harm national budgets, and fuel illicit trade.
In Malaysia, the heated debate over a proposed national ban on vaping products continues to intensify. What appears on the surface to be a public health measure, is according to THR advocates, a move heavily influenced by pharmaceutical interests. They argue that the push to outlaw vaping is less about protecting public health and more about protecting the market for nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) like gums and patches.
On July 17, 2025, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved JUUL Labs products for legal sale for the first time. This decision-following years of media battles, lawsuits, and public demonization-represents more than just a technical authorization: it’s a move with political, industrial, and strategic implications. JUUL is not just any company. Born from the innovation ecosystem of Silicon Valley, it revolutionized the vaping market with its nicotine salt devices, quickly capturing an unprecedente market share. But that meteoric rise was followed by a steep fall, marked by accusations of targeting youth, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and a public campaign that made JUUL the main villain in the war against vaping.
The tobacco harm reduction space in America has changed dramatically since 2007, when the first vaping device landed on U.S. shores and reshaped how adults consume nicotine.
What began under the shadow of Food and Drug Administration overreach — and continues to be stifled by it — grew into a movement powered by thousands of small business owners, millions of consumers and passionate advocates sharing their personal journeys of quitting smoking and helping others do the same.
But in America, small things that grow too large often end up crushed.
It’s been another hectic week for your humble host. Quite apart from business pressures, I’ve found myself variously in Norwich, Brighton, rural Essex and Shrewsbury in the past few days. I will write about the Norwich leg later in the week but the Shrewsbury jaunt was for a weekend at Vapefest 2017.
The rate at which people quit smoking has gone up a notch, a recent study shows, and e-cigarettes may have something to do with it.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, analyzed data from five U.S. Census tobacco-use surveys, the first of which was from 2001 to 2002 and the last from 2014 to 2015. Only the last, which followed a substantial increase in e-cigarette use, showed a significantly higher rate than the others of people quitting smoking. And the increase came entirely from people who had tried e-cigarettes.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World
