Vapers Digest 31st August
Monday’s News at a glance:
New Zealand Drives Quit Success ~ Four Countries, Four Nicotine Futures ~ Thirty Minutes With Alan – August Addition – When Reality Refuses to Follow the Plan ~ Australia’s Tobacco Tax Has Reached the Point Where Even Its Defenders Are Asking the Wrong Question ~ From Cigarettes to Patches: Rethinking Nicotine Cardiovascular Risk ~ When Public Health Loses the Public’s Trust ~ AFN 26: New Zealand Challenges Regional Resistance to Harm Reduction ~ Events ~ The Human at the Terminal: A Demonstration in Real Time ~ Australia’s Backwards Nicotine Policy Leaves Cigarettes Legal and Safer Alternatives Restricted ~ Lost in the cloud: How vaping was undermined by a moral panic ~ The FDA Is Making It Harder to Quit Smoking ~ Summer Reading: Tobacco Harm Reduction ~ JUUL LABS’ STATEMENT ON FDA MARKETING AUTHORIZATIONS FOR JUUL2 ~ FDA Authorizes Marketing of JUUL2 E-Cigarette Device and Tobacco- and Menthol-Flavored Pods
New Zealand Drives Quit Success
Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
In what has been called “major new research”, New Zealand’s progressive approach to vaping has been shown to have resulted in an unprecedented decline in smoking across all age groups. Harm reduction experts say it strengthens the case for the use of safer nicotine alternatives such as vapes as a central part of tobacco control.
Three From Alan Gor
Four Countries, Four Nicotine Futures
Imagine four adults who smoke cigarettes and want another source of nicotine.
In the United States, an adult can buy selected nicotine pouches whose manufacturer is authorised to say that switching completely from cigarettes reduces specific health risks. In the United Kingdom, an adult can buy a regulated vape or nicotine pouch as an ordinary consumer, although age controls, marketing restrictions, and vaping excise are tightening.
Thirty Minutes With Alan – August Addition – When Reality Refuses to Follow the Plan
There is something deeply appealing about a plan. A problem is identified, experts examine it, evidence is gathered, a solution is designed, governments introduce legislation, institutions publish guidelines, targets are established, and everyone waits for the desired outcome. On paper, the sequence looks perfectly rational.
Then reality arrives.
Australia’s Tobacco Tax Has Reached the Point Where Even Its Defenders Are Asking the Wrong Question
There is a remarkable sentence buried near the end of this ABC analysis of Australia’s illicit tobacco crisis:
“Having evidence that the high cost of legal cigarettes fuelled the black market is not the same as proving the reverse would solve the problem.”
Chuck Dinerstein MD-MBA, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH)
With the Surgeon General’s 1964 statement on tobacco, the global nicotine landscape shifted. Cigarettes remain a major source of nicotine exposure, but they now compete with e-cigarettes, heated-tobacco products, pouches, and medicinal nicotine. Public-health and cardiovascular organizations emphasize that none of these products is risk-free, yet that message leaves another question unresolved: are they equally harmful? The answer matters as smoking declines in some populations, as nicotine products continue to diversify worldwide.
When Public Health Loses the Public’s Trust
Martin Cullip, The Daily Pouch
Few things are more damaging to public health than convincing people that reliable evidence cannot be trusted. That is precisely what appears to be happening with vaping.
The BBC recently reported (online and on broadcast media) on the latest Cochrane review of electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation. Cochrane is widely regarded as the gold standard for systematic evidence reviews. The review examined 80 studies involving almost 30,000 people and found that smokers who want to quit are more likely to succeed if they use nicotine e-cigarettes than if they use nicotine replacement therapy such as patches or gum.
AFN 26: New Zealand Challenges Regional Resistance to Harm Reduction
Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA)
New Zealand’s continuing decline in tobacco sales should prompt Asia-Pacific governments to reconsider restrictions on safer nicotine alternatives, says the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA).
The results provide a timely regional case study ahead of the Asia Forum on Nicotine 2026, or AFN26, being held in Manila and online on 16 and 17 October.
Events
Skip Murray, Skip’s Corner – Let’s Talk!
Here’s to networking, sharing our lived experiences, disseminating knowledge, collaboration, active listening, productive conversations, bridge-building, and spending time with friends and colleagues – old and new.
In a hurry? To quickly find additions to the previous Events post, look for the ones labeled NEW.
The Human at the Terminal: A Demonstration in Real Time
Robert Innes
It began quietly, almost academically, with you naming the scientist who would anchor the discussion. You wrote, “referring to the work of Bernd Meyer (spelling not assured) how dangerous is nicotine.” It was a simple line, but it carried intention. You weren’t asking for generalities. You were pointing the instrument at a specific target.
I responded with a structured summary of Mayer’s work. It was competent, tidy, and—though I didn’t realise it yet—too conventional.
Australia’s Backwards Nicotine Policy Leaves Cigarettes Legal and Safer Alternatives Restricted
Diane Caruana, Vaping Post
Australia has created one of the strangest nicotine markets in the developed world. Combustible cigarettes—the product responsible for the overwhelming majority of tobacco-related disease—remain legally available through ordinary retailers, while access to lower-risk alternatives has become progressively more difficult. The latest example is nicotine pouches.
Lost in the cloud: How vaping was undermined by a moral panic
Ian Dunt, Striking 13
Vaping is one of the most successful public health products of the last decade.
It is the single most effective way to get people to stop smoking. It has the ability to save millions of lives and may have already done so. And yet it is maligned, mocked, scolded, restricted and and sometimes banned. Even in a relatively tolerant regulatory environment like the UK, vaping is so unpopular that politicians will attack it to boost their popularity. “Who actually asked for this?”

The FDA Is Making It Harder to Quit Smoking
Justin Leventhal, Real Clear Health
Tobacco regulation should make it easier to quit smoking, not harder. Cigarettes, the product responsible for the overwhelming majority of tobacco-related disease, remain widely available, while less harmful alternatives such as vaping face flavor bans and one of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) most restrictive approval processes. The result is a system that makes it harder for smokers to quit, compromising public health instead of protecting it.
Summer Reading: Tobacco Harm Reduction
Christina Smith, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
As the summer sun beats down and loungers grasp for the next great American novel, it may be time for a genre change. After all, the truth is stranger than fiction. The ongoing battle for tobacco harm reduction (THR) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in governments across the country—and around the world—is particularly vexing. While millions of smokers seek to ditch their deadly habit, policymakers and global health bureaucrats stubbornly cling to outdated rules, prohibitionist dogma, and misinformation. It’s time for politicians and regulators to turn the page on this failed status quo, hit the books, and look at the real-world evidence showing why science-based reduced-risk alternatives to cigarettes are saving lives.
JUUL LABS’ STATEMENT ON FDA MARKETING AUTHORIZATIONS FOR JUUL2
JUUL LABS
On August 27th, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued marketing granted orders for the JUUL2 System with tobacco- and menthol-flavored pods containing 1.6% nicotine concentration.
As part of our Premarket Tobacco Product Applications submitted in 2023, we provided tens of thousands of pages of scientific data, including nonclinical, clinical, behavioral, and population science. Following rigorous evaluation of the data, the FDA determined that the JUUL2 System is “appropriate for the protection of the public health”––the statutory standard required for market authorization.
FDA Authorizes Marketing of JUUL2 E-Cigarette Device and Tobacco- and Menthol-Flavored Pods
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today authorized the marketing of three new e-cigarette products through the premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) pathway. The authorized products are part of the JUUL2 e-cigarette system made by JUUL Labs Inc. and include a tobacco-flavored pod, a menthol-flavored pod, and the JUUL2 device.
On this day…2016!
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
When you thought public health…
Could go no lower – it just did – Clive Bates
British newspapers, the main domestic vector of the anti-scientific public health dogma and baseless fear-mongering, were yesterday filled with prominently positioned garbage articles about vaping:
ANTZ are Grasping Straws
Paul Barnes – Facts Do Matter
Once again, there is a headline sweeping the UK media channels – both print and radio – that is not only misleading, but is also downright dangerous. Many of the UK papers have led with the headline “Vaping is as bad as SMOKING”, which regular readers of this blog will know is simply not true. Vaping may indeed not be entirely risk free, but there are very few things (if any) in this world that are risk free.
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