Vapers Digest 10th March

Monday’s News at a glance:

España: Que Lastima! ~ Built-in selection bias means the study cannot show the effect of vaping on smoking cessation ~ CDC Tells Public that Saving Millions of Lives is Offset by Youth Ripping Some Tobacco-Free, Smokeless Vapes ~ The CDC May Hate It, but Vaping Is Rapidly Replacing Smoking ~ International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025 ~ ABC Radio Irresponsibly Broadcasts A Misleading Antivaper Activist! ~ The World Needs Gender-Specific Tobacco Harm Reduction ~ Five Essential Things Retailers Should Know About The Uk’s Disposable Vape Ban ~ Zyn and the New Nicotine Gold Rush ~ Media Watch: The Island Packet’s Pack of Lies ~ Commentary: Banning nicotine pouches will hurt veterans ~ Hot Seat: Former HHS Secretary Tom Price advocates for tobacco harm reduction in Oklahoma ~ Electronic cigarette usage amongst high school students in South Africa: a mixed methods approach ~ Can The WHO Be Trusted With a Pandemic Treaty? (feat. Clive Bates and Roger Bate) ~ Ep. 12 – Freedom to Vape: The Right to Choose, with Jack Parow and Wayne Pieterse ~ DON’T GO THERE | Ex-WHO Official Blasts Misinformation on THR

España: Que Lastima!

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

Despite growing evidence proving the relative safety of flavoured vapes and how successful they are at transitioning smokers away from tobacco, Spain is pushing forward to ban them. Against this, a recent study by The World Vapers’ Alliance reveals that 92% of vapers use flavours to help them quit and remain tobacco-free.

Built-in selection bias means the study cannot show the effect of vaping on smoking cessation

Clive Bates Comment, PubPeer

The main problem is that the study baseline (2017) includes only smokers and, therefore, only the subset of vapers who vape at that time but have not quit smoking. Secondly, it counts people who switched from smoking to vaping between baseline (2017) and follow-up (2021) as non-users, but many people who were non-users at baseline may have quit by using vapes in the interim four years.

The sample is all smokers:

A total of 6013 smokers were included in the sample

It classifies the exposure according to their vaping status at the baseline (2017)

CDC Tells Public that Saving Millions of Lives is Offset by Youth Ripping Some Tobacco-Free, Smokeless Vapes

Michael Siegel, The Rest of the Story

The CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health (where I worked for two years as an EIS Officer in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service) has just published an article that summarizes changes in smoking, tobacco use, and e-cigarette use over the past seven years (2017 to 2023). The astounding finding of the article was that cigarette smoking has reached its lowest point in 60 years and that from 2017 to 2023, the number of smokers (not counting dual users) decreased by 6.8 million people!

The CDC May Hate It, but Vaping Is Rapidly Replacing Smoking

Jim McDonald, Vaping 360

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that vaping has replaced cigarette smoking for millions of Americans since 2017. However, the CDC has chosen to ignore the massive health benefits provided by vaping for smokers who switch, and instead conflate all “tobacco use.”

The CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) released March 6 provides the facts, but the agency continues to create doubt among people who smoke about whether switching would be a positive change.

International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025

Skip Murray, Skip’s Corner – Let’s Talk!

Today is International Women’s Day. I wanted to know more about this day and found a timeline that helped me understand its importance.

Since becoming a tobacco (read “smoking tobacco”) harm reduction advocate in 2014, many outstanding women have crossed my path.

I found myself thinking of the many ways women are involved in the nicotine space after reading the latest in Filter. “The World Needs Gender-Specific Tobacco Harm Reduction” reminded me of the many ways that women who smoke can be stigmatized and how many of them have limited access to health care and smoking cessation services.

ABC Radio Irresponsibly Broadcasts A Misleading Antivaper Activist!

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

While people were on the edge of their seat listening for the next prediction on Cyclone Alfred’s movements on Thursday 6 March at 7.45am, they broadcast what could only be described as a diatribe against vaping by John Pierce.

Claims made by Professor John Pierce of the University of California, San Diego, don’t align with the substantial body of evidence supporting vaping as a smoking cessation tool. As public discourse on vaping intensifies, it’s crucial to distinguish fact from fiction, especially when misinformation risks undermining public health!

The World Needs Gender-Specific Tobacco Harm Reduction

Nafisat Dasola Jimoh, Filter

Tobacco harm reduction (THR) is a transformative public health opportunity, saving people’s lives by offering safer alternatives to smoking for those who are unable or unwilling to quit nicotine. However, much THR dialogue has overlooked the specific challenges and needs of women—especially in regions of the world where cultural, social and economic barriers most compound the risks associated with smoking.

Women smoke at lower rates than men worldwide, but still suffer over 2 million annual smoking-related deaths. And women who do smoke are disproportionately impacted by health consequences. Beyond the general risks of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illness, women face specific threats such as reproductive health complications, cervical and breast cancers, and higher susceptibility to smoking-related heart disease and COPD.

Five Essential Things Retailers Should Know About The Uk’s Disposable Vape Ban

Yorkshire Times

More than two in five (43%) people who vape in the UK say they use disposable vapes, a government survey has found.

With the UK’s disposable vape ban taking effect in three months, the experts at HAYPP have provided essential insight on everything retailers should know ahead of the ban.

Click to visit Danish Vapers Association

Zyn and the New Nicotine Gold Rush

Carrie Battan, The New Yorker

To visitors, Sweden is as remarkable for what is absent as for what is present. Walking around Stockholm, you hear little noise from traffic, because Swedes have so aggressively adopted electric vehicles. (They also seem constitutionally averse to honking.) Streets and sidewalks are exceptionally free from debris, in part because of the country’s robust anti-littering programs. And the air bears virtually no trace of cigarette smoke. During five days I spent in Sweden this January, I could count the number of smokers I encountered on one hand, and I saw no one pulling on a vape. In November, 2024, Sweden was declared “smoke-free” because its adult smoking rate had dipped below five per cent. As smoking has declined, so have related illnesses, such as emphysema; Sweden has one of the lowest rates of lung cancer in the E.U. This shift is broadly described in academic papers as “the Swedish Experience.”

Media Watch: The Island Packet’s Pack of Lies

The Daily Pouch

One of the most quizzical genres of tobacco control is the one where school teachers wander in dazed from the frontline to deliver urgent dispatches about the state of youth vaping. Vaping, they tell us, is out of control. You can’t enter a school bathroom without being engulfed by thick clouds of bubblegum blown out from vapes that are disguised as pens, highlights, or USB drives.

These impassioned pleas always say that vaping is an epidemic. And they are delivered by ostensible authoritative insiders. A big reason why these opinions have any purchase is that the proponents have a unique vantage point on these issues.

Commentary: Banning nicotine pouches will hurt veterans

Timothy Vermillion, Times Union

For generations, smoking has been deeply ingrained in military culture. From basic training to deployment, countless servicemembers have relied on cigarettes to cope with stress, long hours and high-stakes environments. Today, the legacy of that culture remains: Veterans smoke at significantly higher rates than the general population. Instead of helping veterans transition to less harmful alternatives, New York lawmakers are now pushing a ban on nicotine pouches — one of the very products that could reduce the health risks associated with smoking.

Hot Seat: Former HHS Secretary Tom Price advocates for tobacco harm reduction in Oklahoma

Scott Mitchell, News On 6

In this addition of the “Hot Seat,” political analyst Scott Mitchell and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price discuss tobacco harm reduction in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has long grappled with high smoking rates and the health consequences that follow. Price emphasized the serious health risks posed by smoking. He explained that tobacco use leads to significant disease and death, both in Oklahoma and across the nation. “Nearly a half million people every year die as a consequence of [smoking],” Price said. “In Oklahoma, approximately 8,000 individuals die every year from tobacco, and $3.6 billion is spent on smoking-related diseases.”

Electronic cigarette usage amongst high school students in South Africa: a mixed methods approach

eClinicalMedicine

The WHO has highlighted that: “promotion of e-cigarettes has led to marked increases in e-cigarette use by children and adolescents.” The long-term neuropsychiatric and psychological consequences of substance abuse in adolescence is well recognised. Limited data exists on the adolescent burden of vaping-related nicotine addiction and behavioural and/or psychological dependence to guide pharmacological or behavioural interventions to stop electronic cigarette usage.

Can The WHO Be Trusted With a Pandemic Treaty? (feat. Clive Bates and Roger Bate)

Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Health and harm-reduction researchers Clive Bate and Roger Bates sit down with TPA’s Martin Cullip to discuss the World Health Organization’s efforts to institute a pandemic response treaty in light of the organization’s responses to another treaty on smoking and tobacco use.

Ep. 12 – Freedom to Vape: The Right to Choose, with Jack Parow and Wayne Pieterse

VSML South Africa

DON’T GO THERE | Ex-WHO Official Blasts Misinformation on THR

Global Forum on Nicotine

The World Health Organization refuses to debate tobacco harm reduction, but why? In this episode of GFN Interviews, former WHO official Professor Tikki Pang exposes how the WHO’s anti-vaping stance misleads governments and fuels misinformation. He calls out the organization for cherry-picking data, ignoring real-world evidence, and prioritizing ideology over science.

On this Day…2023

A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…

Harry’s Blog 117: An Unholy Trinity

Harry Shapiro

On 15th March, Bloomberg Philanthropies (BP), the World Health Organization (WHO), and Vital Strategies (VP) will co-host the inaugural Partnership for Healthy Cities Summit with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The Summit will bring together mayors and other city leaders from the Partnership global network to discuss strategies to combat the global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries.

Michael Bloomberg is the WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries. He says in the WHO press release announcing the summit, “Noncommunicable diseases and injuries are leading causes of death around the world, but they are preventable, and the Partnership for Healthy Cities is tackling them with the kind of urgency we need more of.”

Who Smokes Menthols?

2020 Update from a Federal Survey – Brad Rodu

Four years ago, I discussed the characteristics of Americans who are menthol smokers, based on data in the CDC’s 2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the agency’s main instrument for monitoring U.S. smoking trends, including consumption of menthol products. Despite the FDA’s strong interest in banning menthol smokes, the CDC did not collect menthol information again until 2022. Since that data is not yet public, I am using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to update my analysis.

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