Richmond Uses Vape Kits to Drive Success ~ Mackinac Center Comment to FDA Regarding Modified Risk Tobacco Products ~ Nicotine Is Back—and America’s Better for It ~ Youth, Nicotine, and the Misuse of “Addiction” in Policy Debate ~ The Real Drivers of Youth Substance Use: Separating Science From Scare Stories ~ Finding Hope in Tobacco Control’s Rare Gems ~ The Media’s Blind Spot: Why Adult Quitters Are Never Interviewed ~ Opening Substack post: an interview with me ~ To the 1.3 Billion People Who Smoke Cigarettes: We’re Very Sorry. ~ China Regulates Nicotine Pouches Under Strict Tobacco Rules ~ Lab study’s passive vaping claims don’t match real-world exposure, say experts ~ BREAKING: China Brings Nicotine Pouches Under Tobacco Monopoly Regulation, Signaling Major Shift for Oral Products ~ SUICIDAL POLICY | Michelle Minton and America’s War on Safer Nicotine
The council at Richmond-upon-Thames is celebrating the fact that it has a record low number of smokers thanks to it providing free swap-to-stop vape starter kits and smoking cessation support. Smoking rates have now dropped to 5.3% of the borough’s residents – the lowest in the country – and closing in on the national smokefree target.
Michael D. LaFaive, Mackinac Center For Public Policy
Thank you for the opportunity to submit a comment on Docket No. FDA-2025-N-0835 regarding pending Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) applications. This comment is offered for the purpose of informing the Agency’s evaluation under section 911(g)(1) of the federal Food and Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It focuses particularly on FDA’s obligation to assess whether an MRTP, as actually used by consumers, is likely to benefit the health of the population as a whole.
Not with fruit bowls or kombucha taps this time, but with a small, quietly humming fridge filled with nicotine pouches. The new corporate perk. In parts of Silicon Valley and Austin, startups are now offering them openly to staff—sometimes free, sometimes subsidized—alongside espresso machines and standing desks. They appear in break rooms, stocked like LaCroix once was, pitched not as indulgence but as “focus support.”
Youth “addiction” to nicotine pouches and other smoke-free nicotine products is increasingly invoked as a political shorthand, often without reference to how addiction is actually defined in modern clinical science. This matters, because the DSM-5 framework, the global reference standard for diagnosing substance-related disorders, does not define addiction by frequency of use alone, nor does it treat all forms of nicotine use as equivalent in terms of harm or clinical significance.
As nicotine markets evolve and smoking rates continue to decline in many countries, policymakers face a growing challenge: young people are experimenting with a wider range of substances at the same time that adult smokers are increasingly turning to safer nicotine alternatives. Too often, these trends are blurred together in public debate, leading to restrictive policies that risk undermining public health rather than improving it. New research on youth cannabis and nicotine use highlights this tension and reinforces the need for harm-reduction-based regulation instead of prohibitionist responses.
To be within the ballpark of what Skip Murray says about being kind, I readily admit that I have trouble, generally, doing that to most people in the world of academia, research, public health, and tobacco control. Momentarily, this will be one of those times:
I’m normally, let’s say, pessimistic and snarky about both the integrity and intelligence of most within those fields. Warning: here comes the old cab driver in me:
There is a striking absence at the centre of almost every media story about vaping: the adult who quit smoking because of it.
Articles overflow with experts, advocates, spokespersons, and concerned commentators. They feature politicians promising crackdowns, academics warning of risks, and NGOs calling for tougher controls. What they almost never include are the voices of ordinary adults who smoked for years, sometimes decades, and finally stopped by switching to a lower-risk alternative. This silence is not accidental. It is structural.
This is my introductory Substack post. I hope this interview will help readers see where I am coming from and why I hold the views I do. I hope it may even persuade those who disagree to engage.
This post is based on questions from an interview I did with an investment bank a while back. I have updated my responses and would like to use this to introduce my Substack and my views. My intention is that future posts will be shorter (1,500 words or less). Please be forgiving while I learn this new system!
This apology letter is sent on behalf of the global public health community. It may seem a little presumptuous of me to take this on, but I have been around long enough to recognize a catastrophic blunder when I see one. To be clear, this is not a personal apology letter but one written on behalf of all public health institutions around the world, including the World Health Organization (WHO). No individuals, institutions, or organizations have endorsed or even asked me to write this letter, but someday they will appreciate it. History will not be kind to those who tried to impede access to the “cure” for the biggest preventable health crisis in the world. I urgently need to get this letter out to the 1.3 billion people who consume tobacco. If you could kindly pass this on to at least one person, it would be a great start. Here goes.
The Chinese government will regulate nicotine pouches and other smokeless nicotine and tobacco products under strict rules designed for cigarette manufacturers. Before now, there was no specific regulatory framework for pouches or oral tobacco like snus and chewing tobacco.
The news was announced publicly on Friday in a statement from the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) dated Jan. 6.
China’s top tobacco regulator on Friday issued its first explicit regulatory framework for oral nicotine products, formally bringing nicotine pouches and other smokeless tobacco items under the country’s tobacco monopoly system.
The announcement, issued by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA), was dated Jan. 6 and released publicly on Jan. 9, taking effect immediately. It marks the first time China has clearly defined the regulatory status of oral nicotine products, which had previously operated in a legal grey area.
America’s tobacco policy has turned self-destructive. Safer nicotine products are demonized and restricted while combustible cigarettes remain widely available. In this GFN interview, Michelle Minton of the Reason Foundation explains how fear, ideology, and institutional incentives replaced evidence in U.S. tobacco control—pushing consumers back toward smoking and undermining one of the greatest public-health opportunities of our time.
If you think you’d seen it all when it comes to tobacco control junk science, wait till you get a load of this story of everyday charlatans visiting a vaping convention, published last month. Yes, this was actually published.
Popular clichés suggest that academics regularly opine on subjects they know less about than average people who work or live those subjects. This is often unfair; many academics are steeped in the common knowledge of their subject matter, and their departures from common views are genuine expert insights rather than errors. Unfortunately, that is not the case in the field of public health, where the cliché is spot-on.
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