Vapers Digest 15th July
Monday’s News at a glance:
NNA Urges New Health Secretary To Consider Adults In Vaping Policy – Do Flavour Restrictions On Vapes Impact Smoking Or Youth Vaping Rates? – Richard Pruen & Kiran Sidhu Discuss Mental Health & Smoking Cessation – NNA Writes to Labour Health Secretary – WHO – Designed To Kill – WHO getting owned by community notes – In Sweden, Nicotine Isn’t the Enemy – Nicotine use soaring as vapes go underground – CAPHRA Calls On Asia Pacific Governments To Allow Sale Of Oral Nicotine Products – FDA must crackdown on illicit e-cigs – Global forum in Warsaw tackles tobacco use
Three from Michelle Jones, ECigClick:
NNA Urges New Health Secretary
To Consider Adults In Vaping Policy
Following the UK General Election, on Friday 5 July, Wes Streeting MP was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
The NNA (New Nicotine Alliance) have written a letter to Wes Streeting on the new government’s approach to smoking and vaping. They are urging parliament to consider positive results of safer nicotine alternatives in adults and how the benefits can be capitalised on.
You can view the full letter here or see the contents below.
Do Flavour Restrictions On Vapes…
Impact Smoking Or Youth Vaping Rates?
A study published in June 2024 examined whether flavour restrictions on vapes impact smoking or youth vaping rates. You can read more about it here or download the full PDF report here.
The study was conducted by the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) in Massachusetts USA. Flavour bans were implemented in some USA states to try and halt the rise of youth vaping. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of vape flavour bans on vaping and smoking rates.
Richard Pruen & Kiran Sidhu Discuss…
Mental Health & Smoking Cessation
In an excellent article in Filter magazine, the founder of Safer Nicotine Wiki – Richard Pruen – discussed smoking cessation and mental health with Kiran Sidhu.
Kiran is also a great advocate for harm reduction often writing about topics on tobacco harm reduction.
The article caught my eye for many reasons as I know Richard quite well having interviewed him here for Ecigclick and he has helped me so much with our contributions to the Safer Nicotine Wiki.
Two from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes:
NNA Writes to Labour Health Secretary
On Friday 5 July, Wes Streeting MP was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The New Nicotine Alliance has written a letter to Wes Streeting on the new government’s approach to smoking and vaping, laying out that it should take a pause to consider the potential negative impacts of the Bill as it stood.
The letter from the New Nicotine Alliance to the Secretary of State goes as follows:
WHO – Designed To Kill
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been on a phenomenal run of being publicly corrected. As detailed the other month, the WHO published a succession of posts on its Twitter/X account that resulted in Community Notes being appended to each one, correcting the misinformation. Now it has declared that vapes are “designed to kill” – to which it received yet another Community Note.
The World Health Organization, posting on its @WHO Twitter/X account, wrote:
“We estimate that eliminating the prescription requirement but still allowing consumers to voluntarily get prescriptions yields aggregate benefits of AU$1.8 billion per year.” https://t.co/3xLwEL4Tu8
— Phil (@phil_w888) July 15, 2024
Calling out fake news part 5:
WHO getting owned by community notes – Alastair Cohen
It’s been a bust few weeks in the world of safer nicotine products, what with Australia’s effective prohibition, some European country urging a continent wide flavour ban, and Sweden going the other way and implementing harm-based taxation.
In amongst all of these, we haven’t put out an update on our series on prohibitionists getting owned by Community Notes in a while. That doesn’t mean it’s stopped happening, as today’s offerings will show. WHO goes off the deep end, claiming vapes are “designed to kill”
In Sweden, Nicotine Isn’t the Enemy
Kiran Sidhu
About one in four Swedes use nicotine products, which is comparable to the rest of Europe. But Sweden sees 44 percent fewer tobacco-related deaths per capita, according to a recent report. The difference, say the authors of “No Smoke Less Harm,” is that Sweden has embraced snus and nicotine pouches, both of which are smoke-free products that are far less harmful than cigarettes.
“Although nicotine may be dependence-forming, it does not cause cancer. Studies have long established this fact,” the report states. “Tragically, significant myths about nicotine persist among physicians and the public alike. …”
Nicotine use soaring
As vapes go underground – Gus McCubbing
The Albanese government’s plan to make pharmacies the gatekeepers of vaping will push more young people onto the black market, experts on the illicit trade say, as new data shows nicotine use is rising.
Nicotine levels found in wastewater in December were almost the highest since authorities started recording them in 2016, a worrying trend that the health department attributes to the rise of vaping among young people.
CAPHRA Calls On Asia Pacific Government
To Allow Sale Of Oral Nicotine Products
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) is urging governments across the Asia Pacific region to follow New Zealand’s lead and allow the sale of oral nicotine products as part of a comprehensive tobacco harm reduction strategy.
New Zealand’s government recently agreed in principle to permit the sale of reduced-harm smokeless tobacco and oral nicotine products, such as Swedish snus and nicotine pouches. This progressive policy aligns with mounting evidence that these products can play a crucial role in reducing smoking rates and improving public health outcomes.
Vaping Continues To Decline Among…
Kentucky Middle and High School Students – Lindsey Stroud
The Kentucky Department of Education has recently released the results from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) conducted in the Bluegrass State. The biennial survey monitors a variety of behaviors among middle and high school students, ranging from dietary habits and physical activity to mental health issues and substance use.
The survey brings encouraging news for policymakers: the use of traditional tobacco products among youth remains low, and the use of vapor products has significantly declined since its peak in 2019.
Majority of swing-state voters …
Believe vaping is as bad as or worse than smoking
A new poll the Vapor Technology Association released reveals that three-quarters of voters across three swing states believe vaping is “as bad as or worse” than smoking cigarettes and other nicotine products.
Former Trump official Kellyanne Conway’s firm conducted the poll, which surveyed 600 registered voters in each of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Despite scientific conclusions to the contrary, 75% of respondents said vaping is at least as bad as smoking.
Global forum Warsaw tackles tobacco use
In the heart of Warsaw, where historic streets meet modern skyscrapers, the 11th Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN) served as a melting pot for individuals from around the world to exchange ideas.
Visiting the city for the first time, my initial view from the hotel was the Palace of Culture and Science, symbolising Warsaw’s post-war reconstruction and ongoing development.
Combining rich history with modern life seamlessly, Warsaw’s Old Town, a 40-minute walk away, features restored buildings and narrow streets that recount tales of resilience following wartime devastation.
FDA must crackdown on illicit e-cigs
Senate and House appropriators are ordering the FDA to target illegal disposable e-cigarettes — demonstrating the bipartisan ire at the flood of products being imported from China without agency authorization.
But the two chambers are wielding different sticks in committee-passed funding bills that aim to ensure the FDA takes a number of actions such as expanding prioritized enforcement to flavored disposable e-cigarettes and requiring foreign manufacturer registrations.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
More Good News From the 2022 NHIS…
But You Won’t Hear It from U.S. Health Authorities – Brad Rodu
Following on my post last week discussing dramatic improvement in vaping and smoking rates from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), today I present additional positive news from that survey.
The CDC last year counted 14.9 million current vapers, representing a 64% increase in just two years. Importantly, 6.1 million vapers, or 41%, are former smokers. This is the fourth NHIS survey in a row with 40+% of vapers having stepped away from the fire. Can we prove that all of them used vapes to quit? Of course not, but former means smoke-free, and it doesn’t matter how they quit, or how they stay that way.
E-cigarettes and the Comparative Politics
Of Harm Reduction: History, Evidence and Policy – Hannah Farrimond
Why can’t public health agree on what to do about e-cigarettes? This book aims to answer that conundrum. More specifically, why have entirely divergent regimes of public health control emerged in the US, UK, and Australia? In an era of shrinking resources, this controversy wastes time, energy and confuses the public. So why is a scientific and policy consensus on vaping so elusive?
The editors, Virginia Berridge (UK), Wayne Hall (Australia), and Ronald Bayer and Amy Fairchild (US) have come together to offer us answers. The collective starting point is that policy cannot be about evidence per se; the same set of evidence has produced startlingly different regulatory regimes. Rather, we must look for clues within the histories and values of tobacco control in each country to understand how such schisms have arisen.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World
