Vapers Digest 25th May
Monday’s News at a glance:
EU Greenlights ‘Reckless’ Vape Ban ~ World Vape Day: Why Millions Believe It Matters ~ Australia’s tobacco debate: two worldviews, one crisis and why Alex Wodak’s framing is more honest about reality ~ Don’t F*&k With Vapers ~ Argentina Regulates What It Could Not Ban ~ “Third Hand” vaping in animal models ~ CAPHRA warns Southeast Asia not to repeat Australia’s nicotine policy failure ~ Australia abandoned harm minimisation on smoking – and fuelled a black market ~ WHO against nicotine pouches: “A new global threat.” Clash over harm reduction ~ World Vape Day vs World No Tobacco Day: A Growing Divide Over Strategy Despite the Shared Ultimate Goal ~ Are vape taxes making cigarettes more attractive? ~ Advocates Fear EU “Domino Effect,” as Belgium Bans Vape Flavors ~ Opinion Poll: The Household Case for Innovation: A Five-Country Survey on Smoking Cessation and Quality of Life ~ FDA staff blindsided by move allowing more e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto US market ~ Nicotine Vapes Triple Smokers’ Odds Of Quitting Tobacco ~ A Pragmatic Path Forward On Flavored E-Cigarettes And The Illicit Market ~ How the UK Tobacco Bill Punishes Smokers Trying to Quit?
Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
International health experts tell Planet of the Vapes that they have strongly condemned the European Commission’s approval of a “reckless” Bulgarian ban on disposable e-cigarettes, warning that the move will drive smokers back to deadly combustible tobacco and undermine global public health commitments.
Two From Alan Gor
World Vape Day: Why Millions Believe It Matters
Every year on May 30, people around the world observe World Vape Day, a grassroots movement dedicated to tobacco harm reduction and the experiences of millions of former smokers who have switched from combustible cigarettes to vaping. Positioned deliberately on the eve of World No Tobacco Day, it has become both symbolic and controversial. To supporters, it is a reminder that public health conversations should include the voices of adults who believe vaping helped save or dramatically improve their lives. To critics, it is seen as a challenge to traditional tobacco control approaches. Regardless of where one stands, the day has become an important focal point in one of the most polarising public health debates of the modern era.
Australia’s tobacco debate: two worldviews,
one crisis and why Alex Wodak’s framing is more honest about reality
Australia’s tobacco crisis is now forcing a confrontation between two very different ways of understanding what has gone wrong.
Reading Simon Chapman and Alex Wodak side by side makes clear that this is no longer simply a debate about excise or enforcement. It is a debate over whether Australia is willing to confront the limits of its current tobacco control model honestly.
Don’t F*&k With Vapers
The Nicotine Project
There’s something the public health crowd, tobacco control groups, and much of the Canadian media still don’t understand about why flavours haven’t been banned, it’s because of vapers. You can’t shame people who have already lived through being treated like society’s cautionary tale. Call us what you want, because we are tough, not industry shrills. The name calling tactic doesn’t work here. And more importantly, we’re not about to sit quietly while government funded NGO’s attempt to take away the one thing that keeps us smoke free.
Argentina Regulates What It Could Not Ban
Claudio Teixeira, Disobedient Margins
Argentina has not simply legalized vapes. It has been admitted that prohibition no longer controls.
For more than a decade, electronic cigarettes were formally banned while circulating through kiosks, social media, informal deliveries, suitcases, school backpacks, and parallel markets. The law said absence. Daily life said coexistence.
ANMAT’s 2026 reversal, therefore, marks less a conversion to harm reduction than a bureaucratic recognition: the market had already arrived, grown, and escaped meaningful oversight.
“Third Hand” vaping in animal models
Roberto Sussman, Roberto’s Substack
I have discussed the possible existence of “third hand” vaping (and “third hand” smoking) in previous posts (here and here).
The conclusion from these posts is straightforward: under the usual environmental conditions in which vaping takes place, there is no indoor aging process in environmental vaping aerosol (EVA) analogous to the indoor aging process of “second hand” smoke (SHS) (which I will denote as environmental tobacco smoke ETS) that forms the physical and chemical phenomena known as “third hand” smoke (THS).
Annachiara Magenta
Another day, another attack on alternatives to cigarettes. This time, the alarm has been raised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which, in its new 156-page report, points the finger at nicotine pouches, which are now widespread in Sweden and rapidly expanding across Europe. The document, published ahead of World No Tobacco Day on 31 May, describes these products as a growing threat to public health, accusing the industry of using flavours, branding and marketing strategies to attract young people in particular. But the report has already sparked a fierce clash between harm reduction advocates and the prohibitionist camp.
World Vape Day vs World No Tobacco Day:
A Growing Divide Over Strategy Despite the Shared Ultimate Goal
Diane Caruana, Vaping Post
For the millions of smokers trying to kick the smoking habit, there’s a significant difference between World Vape Day and World No Tobacco Day. The former is all about practical ways to cut down on harm and providing real tools to help people quit, while the latter mainly campaigns against nicotine and tobacco use in any form.
The problem is smoke, not nicotine
The theme for World Vape Day 2026, “One Switch – Everyone Wins,” conveys a simple message: when smokers switch from regular cigarettes to safer alternatives, it’s a win-win. Smokers get to breathe easier with fewer health problems, while families can enjoy cleaner air without worrying about secondhand or thirdhand smoke.
Are vape taxes making cigarettes more attractive?
Ali Anderson, Clearing The Air
New research suggests badly designed nicotine taxes could backfire by narrowing the price gap between smoking and lower-risk products
Governments have used cigarette taxes for decades to reduce smoking. The logic is that if cigarettes cost more, fewer people will buy them.
But the nicotine market has changed. Cigarettes now sit alongside vapes, heated tobacco products (HTPs) and nicotine pouches.
These products are not risk-free, and should not be used by children or people who do not already use nicotine. But for adults who smoke, they can offer a crucial route away from combustible tobacco.
Advocates Fear EU “Domino Effect,” as Belgium Bans Vape Flavors
Kiran Sidhu, Filter
Belgium has confirmed a ban on vape flavors, leaving consumers with only two legal options: tobacco-flavored or unflavored. The move, which will make vaping less attractive to people who smoke, has been coming. And harm reduction advocates worry about its wider influence across the European Union.Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke cited familiar concerns to justify the ban in an April 30 press release, in which he claimed it would “protect the health of our children.” The ban is set to take effect in September 2028.
Opinion Poll: The Household Case for Innovation:
A Five-Country Survey on Smoking Cessation and Quality of Life
We Are Innovation
Most surveys on nicotine products ask smokers.
We asked the people around them.
Today, We Are Innovation releases “The Household Case for Innovation,” a survey of over 4,000 friends, partners, and family members of former smokers across five countries: the USA, Canada, the UK, France, and Japan. Instead of asking those who quit about their experience, we asked the people who watched it happen. The result is a picture of smoking cessation that tobacco control debates rarely capture.
FDA staff blindsided by move allowing more e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto US market
Matthew Perrone, AP
Senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco center were blindsided by a recent decision that opens the door to allowing more unauthorized electronic cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto the U.S. market, The Associated Press has learned.
The guidelines, posted days before former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, will allow companies to launch certain nicotine-based products before they’ve been fully vetted by regulators.
Nicotine Vapes Triple Smokers’ Odds Of Quitting Tobacco
Dennis Thompson, US News
Nicotine vapes can triple smokers’ odds of successfully giving up traditional cigarettes, while also exposing them to fewer harmful chemicals, a new study argues.
Smokers who started using a nicotine e-cigarette were over three times more likely to quit smoking within six weeks, compared to smokers who used an identical e-cigarette containing no nicotine, according to results published May 19 in JAMA Network Open.
They also had lower levels of toxic chemicals produced by burning tobacco, researchers found.
A Pragmatic Path Forward On Flavored E-Cigarettes And The Illicit Market
Jeffrey G. Willett, Lindsay Mark Lewis, Health Affairs
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) recently issued draft guidance clarifying its approach on flavored e-cigarettes. The guidance outlines a “graduated risk-proportionate evaluation” establishing a lower evidentiary burden to authorize tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes, a greater burden for menthol and mint-flavored products, and the greatest burden for sweet-flavored products. To date, the CTP has authorized 45 e-cigarette products in primarily tobacco and menthol flavors—and these are the only e-cigarettes legally sold in the United States.
How the UK Tobacco Bill Punishes Smokers Trying to Quit?
Global Forum on Nicotine
Is the UK’s “smoke-free generation” plan destined to backfire? In this episode of GFN News, host Zuzanna Kopacz sits down with author and freelance writer Jacob Grier to unpack the practical realities and hidden dangers of the newly passed UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill.While the policy aims to create a smoke-free generation by phasing out legal tobacco sales for anyone born after 2009, Grier argues that the legislation ignores the needs of current smokers. Worse yet, by introducing sweeping bans on vape advertising and targeting alternative nicotine flavors, the bill threatens to shut down the very pathways that help smokers successfully switch to lower-risk harm reduction products.
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
The nanny state we’re in
Christopher Snowdon, Velvet Glove Iron Fist
Since the first edition of the Nanny State Index was published in March 2016, there have been many regulatory changes, most of them for the worse. Of the 28 countries included, all but six of them have a higher score than they did last year.
Evolution not revolution
Simon Clark
Scientists say so-called ‘light’ cigarettes with ventilated filters may have made smokers more vulnerable to what is now the most common form of lung cancer.
Research has found a ‘clear relationship’ between rising rates of adenocarcinoma and greater demand for ‘light’ cigarettes.
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