Vapers Digest 11th February

Wednesday’s News at a glance:

A Turning Point For Policy ~ VPZ Announces Huge Investment Programme ~ Rugby Fans Warned ~ Tobacco & Vapes Policy Has Collapsed! Quitting Now Costs More Than Smoking! ~ What Access, Truth, and Results Look Like in Real Life ~ VicHealth at a Crossroads – When Prevention Becomes Ideology ~ Nicotine Exceptionalism ~ Re: The Joint Legislative Budget Committee Hearing on Health/Medicaid ~ England, After the Smoke ~ Proposed Vape Ban May Drive Consumers to Black Market, WVA Warns ~ Spain’s rising female cancer deaths spark warning over nicotine pouch ban ~ Risk is Not Binary: Why “Safe vs Dangerous” Thinking Is Blocking Tobacco Harm Reduction ~ How to Dispose of the Environmental Argument Against Vapes? ~ EU backlash grows over Spain’s nicotine pouch restrictions ~ Dutch bid to raise nicotine age to 21 taps into Europe-wide shift ~ Factual information about developments in the Netherlands following the introduction of a flavour ban in e-cigarettes ~ Vaping ban up in smoke ~ Europeans Being Silenced? The “Fake Submissions” Claim Explained | Ep. 90 ft. Peter Beckett ~ What the Research on Vaping and Harm Reduction Really Says?

Three from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

A Turning Point For Policy

The United States leaving the World Health Organization (WHO) is a turning point for Asia Pacific policy, says the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates, as it calls on Asia-Pacific governments to review WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). In addition, the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, has questioned the continued funding for the FCTC.

VPZ Announces Huge Investment Programme

VPZ, the UK’s largest specialist vape retailer, has tells Planet of the Vapes that it is launching a multi-million-pound investment programme to expand UK manufacturing, strengthen supply-chain controls, and create hundreds of jobs nationwide. The investment includes a fifth production line at its UK facility, alongside plans to open 40 new stores throughout 2026.

Rugby Fans Warned

Rugby fans attending Saturday’s Six Nations game between England and Wales at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham have been warned not to take banned items including vapes into Twickenham Stadium. Although they may be able to enjoy a beer in their seat at the game, vaping or smoking will during games will lead to expulsion from the grounds and bans from future matches in the series.

Tobacco & Vapes Policy Has Collapsed! Quitting Now Costs More Than Smoking!

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

There is something profoundly broken about a public health system in which trying to quit smoking costs more than continuing to smoke, if you buy illicit cigarettes. But over 80% of the nicotine consumer market now buy illicit suppliers.

That is now the reality in Australia. For years, governments have justified relentless tobacco tax hikes as a necessary public health measure.

Three From Alan Gor

What Access, Truth, and Results Look Like in Real Life

For millions of adults around the world, smoking is a daily struggle with life-or-death consequences. Each cigarette smoked carries a predictable cost: increased risk of cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, and premature death. Public health policy has spent decades trying to reduce smoking prevalence, yet smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in nearly every country. In this context, vaping represents one of the most promising tools ever developed for harm reduction, but only if policies are guided by three fundamental principles: access, truth, and results. Without all three, public health fails, often with catastrophic consequences.

VicHealth at a Crossroads – When Prevention Becomes Ideology

The announcement that VicHealth may be absorbed into the Victorian Health Department has been met with apocalyptic language. We are told its abolition is “incomprehensible”, “a disaster”, even a threat to democracy itself. Defenders invoke Quit, SunSmart, and a golden era of public health success. They remind us that prevention saves money, boosts productivity, and delivers handsome returns on investment.

Nicotine Exceptionalism

There is a peculiar phenomenon in public health policy that rarely gets named, even though it quietly governs laws, funding priorities, ethical reasoning, and media narratives across much of the developed world. It appears the moment nicotine enters the frame. Principles that are treated as foundational when discussing alcohol, illicit drugs, or mental health suddenly vanish. Harm reduction becomes suspect. Autonomy becomes dangerous. Lived experience becomes irrelevant. Outcomes stop mattering. Only abstinence remains morally permissible.

Re: The Joint Legislative Budget Committee Hearing on Health/Medicaid

Jeffrey A. Singer, CATO Institute

Nicotine replacement therapies — gum, patches, and newer products like e‑cigarettes and nicotine pouches — offer safer ways for nicotine-dependent adults to satisfy their dependence without exposing themselves to smoke.

England, After the Smoke

Claudio Teixeira, Disobedient Margins

There are moments when data do more than inform: they shift the ground beneath public debate. They do not merely add nuance; they rupture consensus, erode certainties, and force repositioning.

The newly released Health Survey for England: 2024 marks one of these rare inflection points. Smoking in England has fallen to its lowest level since records began: just 11 percent of adults identify as smokers, a proportion that, according to the survey itself, continues on a downward trajectory.

Proposed Vape Ban May Drive Consumers to Black Market, WVA Warns

The Malaysian Ministry of Health plans to introduce a full-scale ban on vaping products, starting with open-pod systems, via amendments to its tobacco control legislation, a move the Health Minister has called non-negotiable.

This policy is being justified by concerns that some users are consuming illegal substances through pod-based devices. While misuse with illicit drugs is a serious issue, the World Vapers’ Alliance argues that the real problem is the black market, which thrives on prohibition and lack of regulation.

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