Vapers Digest 10th November

Monday’s News at a glance:

Lancs Shop Closed Down – Parliamentary Matters – WHO FCTC COP-11 Forward-looking tobacco control measures a delegate’s guide – Expert Wall: statements on FCTC and tobacco harm reduction (2025) – Warning: the FCTC Secretariat is pushing for a new, abusive interpretation of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control – A Subtle But Vital Shift: The EU Softens Its Position On Smoke-Free Nicotine Ahead of COP11 – CAPHRA Calls On Philippines To Champion Consumer Voices At WHO COP11 – The “Blank Slate” Problem in Behavioral Health Research- Setting goals for nicotine regulation and policy – MAGNIFICAT project: the final event highlights a pioneering study on dual use – “Massive Milestone” as Vaping Overtakes Smoking in Britain – Public health versus the public – WHO ATTACKS HARM REDUCTION! WHO ARE THEY PROTECTING? – The $82 Billion Lesson Australia Refuses To Learn: Prohibition Always Fails – UK smoking rates fall to record low as vapes overtake cigarettes – Vapes more effective than other quit smoking aids, landmark Cochrane review finds – COP11 agenda dismisses harm reduction as ‘tobacco industry narrative’ – New Data from New York State Show that Youth Smoking is at Its Lowest Level in Recorded History; Anti-Nicotine Groups Continue to Claim that Vaping is a Gateway to Smoking – When Anti-Vaping Ads Sell Vapes Better Than Vape Ads – Safer Solutions: When will the facts about tobacco harm reduction trickle down to veterans? – Vapes and Violence — Mexico’s Prohibition Problem – The Catch-22 in banning vapes – Coming Up Live From Geneva | TPA’s GOOD COP 2.0 – News flash – quitting smoking is not easy – GFN.TV Interviews | HARM IS HARM | Breaking Down the WHO’s Ideological Wall – The Advocates Voice – November 2025

Two From Dave Cross, Planet of The Vapes

Lancs Shop Closed Down

An East Lancashire shop has been ordered to close for three months, meaning it must remain closed until January, after hording stashes of illegal vapes and tobacco and selling a vape to a child. European Mini Market on Manchester Road, Haslingden was given a Closure Order on 15 October 2025 after an undercover sting by Lancashire County Council’s Trading Standards officers and Lancashire Police.

Parliamentary Matters

Jack Rankin poses some legitimate questions to the Department for Health and Social Care; the responses show the limitations in thinking within the government. Ashley Dalton’s replies displayed ignorance of facts and a reliance on people spreading misinformation and lies. Have you written to your MP yet?

Two from Clive Bates, The Counterfactual

WHO FCTC COP-11 Forward-looking tobacco control measures a delegate’s guide (PDF)

Introduction
So-called “forward-looking measures” will be on the COP-11 agenda (Agenda item 4.1) and set out in the COP paper FCTC/COP/11/5 Forward-looking tobacco control measures (in relation to Article 2.1 of the WHO FCTC).1

This paper and supporting materials were compiled by an expert group consisting mainly of tobacco control activists.

Expert Wall: statements on FCTC and tobacco harm reduction (2025)

This page provides statements from independent experts on tobacco science and policy. They are addressed to delegates in advance of the 11th Session of the FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP-11), held in Geneva, 17-22nd November 2025. Each statement is linked from the author’s entry in the table of contents.

Warning: the FCTC Secretariat is pushing for a new, abusive interpretation of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control

Jean-François Etter, Nicotine, tobacco and smoking cessation

A Subtle But Vital Shift: The EU Softens Its Position On Smoke-Free Nicotine Ahead of COP11

Diane Caruana, Vaping Post

With COP11 now imminent in Geneva, a very unexpected development inside Brussels has shifted tone and energy across the European harm reduction world. After a year of escalation, maximalist language, rumours of coordinated attempts to shut down entire product classes, the newest compromise draft text circulated to EU delegates ahead of the FCTC negotiations has come in considerably softer than anyone assumed likely as recently as two weeks ago.

CAPHRA Calls On Philippines To Champion Consumer Voices At WHO COP11

Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), Scoop

The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) formally appeals to the Department of Health to represent Filipino consumers at the Eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, convening in Geneva from 17-22 November 2025. In a letter to Secretary Teodoro J. Herbosa delivered today, CAPHRA emphasises that consumers—the people most impacted by global tobacco policy—have been systematically excluded from FCTC deliberations for two decades.

The “Blank Slate” Problem in Behavioral Health Research

Arielle Selya PhD, Selya Behavioral Science Substack

The term “blank slate” refers to the title of the book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Prof. Stephen Pinker. The book essentially addresses the nature vs. nurture debate in psychology: is it our environment or our heredity that affects our personalities and behavior?

Much of modern academic psychology seems to take the “nurture” side of the debate, I assume as a reaction against harmful and unethical beliefs from a century ago such as eugenics. The “blank slate” viewpoint is essentially that our personalities and behavior are completely undetermined at birth and are shaped only by extrinsic factors such as our upbringing, family environment, society, etc.

Setting goals for nicotine regulation and policy

Joe Gitchell, Substack

On Tuesday, 28 October 2025, I had the privilege of chairing an hour-long session at the US Food and Drug Law Institute’s annual Tobacco and Nicotine Product Conference. The panel focused on the opportunity to pursue product standards as a tool to make the regulation of noncombusted nicotine products, under the Tobacco Control Act’s Appropriate for the Protection of Public Health rubric, more efficient and effective. I was joined by leaders with expertise in toxicology, regulation, and a technology-based approach to minimizing underage access and use of noncombusted products.

MAGNIFICAT project: the final event highlights a pioneering study on dual use

Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of HArm Reduction (CoEHAR)

On Thursday, October 30, CoEHAR hosted the final event of the MAGNIFICAT project— a study that, for the first time, carefully analyzed the switching process of dual users through an innovative methodology and the analysis of biomarkers of exposure and harm

“The MAGNIFICAT project has the potential to really advance our understanding of dual use and hopefully resolve some of the inconsistencies in the current research,” said Arielle Selya, Senior Scientist at Penny Associates, opening the streaming event dedicated to the MAGNIFICAT study — the first longitudinal study to evaluate and measure changes in risk and health factors among a group of dual users.

“Massive Milestone” as Vaping Overtakes Smoking in Britain

Kiran Sidhu, Filter

For the very first time, more adults in Great Britain are using vapes than are smoking cigarettes.

New data from the Office for National Statistics show that 5.4 million people over 16 were vaping daily or occasionally in 2024, while 4.9 million were smoking. That’s 10 percent of the population vaping, with 9.1 percent smoking—a figure that’s down from 10.5 percent in 2023.

Daily vaping is most common among adults between the ages of 25-49. Vaping fell slightly among men from 2023-24, but rose among women.

Public health versus the public

Christopher Snowdon, The Critic

As I mentioned back in June, the European Commission has been hatching a plan to introduce EU-wide taxes on e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches. Consumers have got wind of this and replied in large numbers to a consultation that the Commission was obliged to hold. As one might expect, the response was overwhelmingly negative.

The “public health” NGOs are hopping mad about the public getting involved in a public consultation and have hit back via one of their favourite mouthpieces, Politico.

Two From Pippa Starr, Australia – Let’s Improve Vaping Education (A.L.I.V.E.),

WHO ATTACKS HARM REDUCTION! WHO ARE THEY PROTECTING?

The WHO Is About To Make a Historic Public Health Mistake, And Most People Have No Idea It’s Even Happening

Most people have never heard of “COP11”.It’s the next major global meeting of the World Health Organization’s tobacco treaty (the FCTC) ,where bureaucrats and health officials decide what rules, restrictions, and global norms should apply to nicotine products and smoking policy worldwide.

The $82 Billion Lesson Australia Refuses To Learn: Prohibition Always Fails

Australia is now living inside the exact criminal environment experts warned would form the moment government doubled down on prohibition, and the ACIC’s own numbers prove it.

According to new national intelligence reporting, the illicit tobacco trade has now exploded into one of the most violent and fastest-growing criminal markets in the country, costing $4 billion in 2023–24 alone.

Click to visit Danish Vapers Association

Three From Ali Anderson, Clearing The Air

UK smoking rates fall to record low as vapes overtake cigarettes

The share of UK adults who smoke has fallen to 10.6 per cent, the lowest since records began in 2011.

Among 18 to 24-year-olds, smoking has dropped dramatically from 25.7 per cent in 2011 to 8.1 per cent in 2024.

Vaping use has overtaken smoking for the first time, with 10 per cent of adults in Great Britain now using vapes daily or occasionally.

The data suggest vaping is contributing to falling smoking rates, as millions of smokers move away from tobacco.

Vapes more effective than other quit smoking aids, landmark Cochrane review finds

Nicotine vapes help more people quit smoking than nicotine replacement therapies such as patches or gum

People using nicotine vapes are also more likely to quit than those using non-nicotine vapes or no support at all

Rates of side effects and serious adverse events were similar across all groups

Researchers found no evidence of serious harm from regulated nicotine vapes, but called for longer-term studies

COP11 agenda dismisses harm reduction as ‘tobacco industry narrative’

The World Health Organisation’s upcoming tobacco control summit, COP11, is under fire for framing harm reduction as a “tobacco industry narrative” – a move that critics say sidelines evidence and consumer voices.

WHO sets tone for closed debate

Set to take place in Geneva from 17 to 22 November 2025, the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is intended to guide global tobacco policy. The treaty, which came into force in 2005, recognises “harm reduction” as part of comprehensive tobacco control. But the provisional COP11 agenda takes a different approach.

New Data from New York State Show that Youth Smoking is at Its Lowest Level in Recorded History; Anti-Nicotine Groups Continue to Claim that Vaping is a Gateway to Smoking

Dr. Michael Siegel, The Rest of the Story

New data from the New York State Department of Health show that youth cigarette smoking is at its lowest level in recorded history (meaning ever since youth smoking prevalence began to measured in surveys). Only 2.4% of high school students in New York State reported smoking cigarettes in 2024. E-cigarette use among high school students continued its sharp decline, dropping from 27.4% in 2018 to 18.7% in 2022 to 13.1% in 2024. Overall “tobacco use” (which is actually a measure of tobacco use plus non-tobacco e-cigarette use) dropped from 30.6% in 2018 to 17.0% in 2024.

When Anti-Vaping Ads Sell Vapes Better Than Vape Ads

Kevin Crowley, Vaping Links

In my daily travels on X, I noticed a new ‘study’ from a tweet from Nicotine & Tobacco Research Journal, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, saying “Adolescents and young adults report they are more likely to purchase and use e-cigarettes when exposed to and receptive to e-cig retail marketing…”

I appreciate the blatant admission that any non-profit political front group or government-sponsored “anti-tobacco education” campaign is effectively worthless—hypothetically, of course.

Safer Solutions: When will the facts about tobacco harm reduction trickle down to veterans?

Jessica Shortall, Chelsea Boyd, Rstreet

While veterans’ smoking rates have declined, smoking remains a persistent, deadly issue: About 22 percent of veterans are “current smokers”—twice the rate of Americans overall. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) spends close to $3 billion per year on smoking-related care, and the mortality rates for veterans who smoke are 1.73 times higher than those of non-smoking veterans.

Vapes and Violence — Mexico’s Prohibition Problem

Prohibition Does Not Work

Mexico’s constitutional ban on vapour products has not curbed use — it has created a billion-dollar black market controlled by organised crime. Vapes and Violence, the new PDNW Country Report, reveals how prohibition handed the entire sector to cartels including Los Chapitos, CJNG, La Mayiza, and Unión Tepito. These groups now use their drug-trafficking infrastructure to import counterfeit and untested devices from China, distribute them through extortion networks, and violently enforce monopolies — with reports of arson, kidnappings, and torture of retailers who refuse to sell cartel-approved products.

Catch-22 is a circular dilemma — a situation where solving one problem can end up creating or reinforcing another.

That’s how we can view the government’s current move to ban vapes.

At first glance, a ban may seem ideal: you’re protecting people’s health and discouraging harmful habits.

But it’s not that simple. In trying to safeguard public health, we risk creating a new cycle — banning vapes could lead to a surge in illicit products, which in turn would increase enforcement costs and pressure on the police, while also heightening health risks from unregistered substitutes that may contain dangerous substances.

Coming Up Live From Geneva | TPA’s GOOD COP 2.0

Brent Stafford, Regulator Watch

This November 17 to 22, the World Health Organization meets in Geneva for COP 11 — a closed-door gathering of nearly 200 countries set to rewrite global tobacco policy and push prohibition of safer-nicotine products.

But while the world’s delegates meet in secret, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Good COP 2.0 will meet in the open in Geneva, to set the record straight.

The tobacco-harm-reduction counter-conference to COP 11, Good COP 2.0 unites 37 experts from 22 countries to separate fact from fiction and confront the misinformation shaping global health policy.

News flash – quitting smoking is not easy

Dr Joe Kosterich

Given the admission by a state premier that quitting smoking is difficult you would think that governments would make it easier to do so. You would be wrong.

GFN.TV Interviews | HARM IS HARM | Breaking Down the WHO’s Ideological Wall

Global Forum on Nicotine

The World Health Organization is no longer just fighting smoking—it’s waging an ideological war against nicotine itself. In this blistering interview, former WHO official Professor Tikki Pang exposes how the global health establishment has become evidence-blind, influenced by Bloomberg funding, and driven by a moral crusade that erases the distinction between smoking and safer alternatives.

The Advocates Voice – November 2025

CAPHRA Asia Pacific

This month, 181 countries, plus the European Union will be sending delegations to attend the FCTC Conference of Parties to discuss global Tobacco Control. In documents released by the Secretariat, we know that there will be pressure on these delegations to accept new definitions and interpretations of articles 1d, 5.2b, and 5.3 that will directly impact consumers of safer nicotine products.

On this day…2023

WHO tobacco conference cancelled again

Christopher Snowdon, Velvet Glove Iron Fist

The corrupt and incompetent WHO’s anti-nicotine shindig in Panama was suddenly cancelled last night “due to the current security situation”. It will now be held in 2024, good luck permitting.

COP10 FCTC Postponed Until 2024!!!

Michelle – ECigClick

Wow this took me by surprise! As you may be aware the COP10 (Conference Of the Parties) FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) meeting organised by WHO (World Health Organisation) was due to take place between the 20th and 25th of November in Panama.

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