Vapers Digest 17th December

Wednesday’s News at a glance:
GFN 2026 Lifts Off ~ Principles Abandoned for Ideology ~ Vaping Isn’t Cool ~ Germany Risks More Smoking ~ Parliamentary Matters ~ Australia’s prohibition double whammy ~ They Made It Personal: The Human Cost of EU Nicotine Regulation ~ Media Watch: Radio New Zealand on Pouch Legalisation ~ The FDA Might Be Thawing to THR: Here’s How It Could Move Faster ~ Cheered On by the WHO, Vietnam Tightens Total Vape Ban ~ Taxing safer alternatives backfires, pushing users back to deadly cigarettes ~ Weekend Interview: Guy Bentley Challenges Nanny-State Crusades on Gambling, Alcohol, and Nicotine ~ EU to fast track new nicotine laws: proposal expected next year ~ Panic over vapes, opioids and Dutch teens – what the science actually says ~ To Prohibit, To Punish, To Disappear: The Mexican State and the Fiction of Public Health ~ WVA attacks EU ‘Safe Hearts Plan’ for ignoring harm reduction ~ NZ’s Falling Teen Vaping and Near-Zero Smoking: New Data Confirms the Absurdity of the FCTC’s Dirty Ashtray Award ~ Juul named in proposed B.C. class action amid ongoing efforts to support harm-reduction and regulation ~ Smokers and Vapers Face Price Shock Under Brussels Tax Plan ~ Up in smoke ~ COP30 Proves Inclusive Climate Action Works Better Than Tobacco Control Exclusion ~ The Next Frontier in Advancing THR: Oral Nicotine Products | #GFN25 Science Discussion
Five from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes
GFN 2026 Lifts Off
The GFN team says that they are delighted to announce that registration for the Global Forum on Nicotine 2026, the foremost event for discussion about harm reduction policy and research, is live. #GFN26 will take place in the striking and vibrant city of Warsaw, Poland, at The Warsaw Presidential Hotel (former Warsaw Marriott Hotel), from Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 June 2026.
Principles Abandoned for Ideology
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) has condemned the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat for permitting Michael Bloomberg-funded prohibitionist non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to dictate policy narratives at its recent Conference of Parties (COP11), directly contradicting the treaty’s foundational principles.
Vaping Isn’t Cool
Despite being singled out for vilification recently, the work being done in New Zealand continues to bear fruit as the rate of daily youth vaping drops yet again. The daily vaping rate has now dropped down to 7.1% among New Zealand’s Year 10 students. This is down from ‘peak vape’ in 2022, according to Action on Smoking and Health New Zealand.
Germany Risks More Smoking
A major new international report reveals the scale of the public health disaster Germany could face if politicians push ahead with restrictions or bans on nicotine pouches, the modern, tobacco-free alternative that has helped drive Sweden to the lowest smoking rate in Europe.
Parliamentary Matters
Conservatives Joe Robertson, James Cleverly, and Richard Holden hold the government to account in this week’s coverage of incredible vape related matters from the Houses of Parliament. Subject discussed included the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, vape shops, and (again) the highly divisive issue of bus stops.
Australia’s prohibition double whammy
Christopher Snowdon, Velvet Glove Iron Fist
The government of South Australia has launched an anti-vaping campaign on social media aimed at impressionable youngsters. It features some woman from the Cancer Council asserting that vaping “definitely” causes lung cancer based on a speculative report that doesn’t even make that claim.
They Made It Personal: The Human Cost of EU Nicotine Regulation
Juan Taborcia, Considerate Pouchers
For years, nicotine policy in Europe was boring. Technical. Bureaucratic. Written by people who had never met a smoker who actually quit. That changed.
Because now, the European Commission isn’t just debating regulation.
It’s going after the very tools that helped millions of people change their lives for the better. And that’s when it stopped being theoretical. That’s when it became personal.
Media Watch: Radio New Zealand on Pouch Legalisation
The Daily Pouch
After a decade of sharp falls, New Zealand’s smoking prevalence has plateaued at around 6.8%. A recent article, cross-posted in The Conversation and Radio New Zealand (RNZ), thinks this is a good reason to oppose the introduction of nicotine pouches to the southwestern Pacific Ocean island country.
Two from Kiran Sidhu, Filter
The FDA Might Be Thawing to THR: Here’s How It Could Move Faster
Baby steps, but 2025 might have been the year the United States Food and Drug Administration started changing course on tobacco harm reduction.
To THR advocates, it’s too little and long overdue. The FDA has been guilty of spreading misinformation about safer nicotine products that can help people quit smoking.
Cheered On by the WHO, Vietnam Tightens Total Vape Ban
On December 11, Vietnam passed an amendment to its Investment Law in order to prohibit all investment or commercial trade in nicotine vapes and heated tobacco products.
The move makes the country’s total ban on these harm reduction alternatives to smoking—implemented at the beginning of 2025, and including personal possession and use—even more absolute.
Taxing safer alternatives backfires, pushing users back to deadly cigarettes
Smoke Free Sweden
Major new research has delivered a stark warning to governments considering punitive taxes on safer nicotine alternatives: when lower-risk products are made less affordable, most users return to smoking cigarettes, with potentially devastating public-health consequences.
A study of Chinese adults who vape found that 68% stopped vaping after a 2022 e-cigarette tax increase. Alarmingly, around three-quarters of those former vapers switched to smoking far more harmful cigarettes instead.
Weekend Interview: Guy Bentley Challenges Nanny-State Crusades on Gambling, Alcohol, and Nicotine
Federal Newswire
Governments are searching for ways to promote health and safety involving sports betting, alcohol guidelines, and nicotine, while voters worry about overreach and personal freedom. Guy Bentley, director of Consumer Freedom at the Reason Foundation, says these efforts reflect a nanny state that avoids tough issues while pushing adults toward underground markets.

Two From Clearing The Air
EU to fast track new nicotine laws: proposal expected next year
Alastair Cohen
The European Commission has announced that revisions to its tobacco control laws will be fast tracked, with a proposal now expected next year.
A leaked draft of its Cardiovascular plan – now renamed the Safe Hearts Plan – obtained by EurActiv and Politico, shows that the Commission plans to “propose, in 2026, a revision of the legislative framework on tobacco control”. The Commission says it wants smoking rates to be less than 5% in 2040.
Panic over vapes, opioids and Dutch teens – what the science actually says
Tim Hong
Two recent stories – Dutch teens “flooding” hospitals after vaping and Belgian kids supposedly being “hooked” on hidden opioids in vapes – sound terrifying.
They also risk seriously misleading the public about what’s really going on with youth nicotine and drugs. Let’s pull them apart, using the best available evidence.
To Prohibit, To Punish, To Disappear: The Mexican State and the Fiction of Public Health
Claudio Teixeira, Disobedient Margins
ACT I
The chamber’s cold lights carve angular shadows on faces caught in perpetual motion: clenched jaws, arched brows, fingers tapping a quiet impatience onto official papers. Everything obeys the choreography of protocol. Microphones flicker on. Ties are straightened. Eyes scan with the studied focus of those who’ve mastered the art of appearing spontaneous. The murmurs don’t disturb the ritual; they consecrate it.
WVA attacks EU ‘Safe Hearts Plan’ for ignoring harm reduction
World Vapers’ Alliance
The European Commission’s newly published Safe Hearts Plan promises to tackle Europe’s cardiovascular burden. Instead of using harm reduction as a prevention and smoking cessation aid, it singles out safer nicotine products as part of the problem rather than the solution. This omission guarantees failure.
Smoking remains a key driver of cardiovascular illness, but EU smoking rates have barely budged, dropping just one point since 2021. At the current rate, the 5 percent target by 2040 slips to 2100, 60 years late.
NZ’s Falling Teen Vaping and Near-Zero Smoking: New Data Confirms the Absurdity of the FCTC’s Dirty Ashtray Award
Diane Caruana, Vaping Post
New Zealand has just delivered one of the clearest global examples that well-regulated vaping and other lower-risk nicotine products can reduce youth harm rather than increase it. New results from the ASH Year 10 Snapshot Survey, one of the world’s largest annual youth nicotine studies, reveal that teen vaping in New Zealand is falling at one of the steepest rates ever recorded. Regular vaping among 14- and 15-year-olds has halved since its 2021 peak, and daily vaping—after reaching 10 percent in 2022—has already dropped to just over 7 percent. These findings are particularly striking given that New Zealand has just been handed the “Dirty Ashtray Award” at the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s COP11 meeting in Geneva, a symbolic (and certainly undeserving condemnation) that accused New Zealand of failing youth, reversing progress on policy, and worsening Indigenous health outcomes.
Rights 4 Vapers
The claim alleges that Juul’s marketing appeals to youth and misrepresents product safety, assertions the company has consistently disputed. A notice of civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court raises concerns about Juul’s advertising, while the company maintains it does not market to minors and positions its products as an alternative for adult smokers seeking harm-reduction.
Smokers and Vapers Face Price Shock Under Brussels Tax Plan
Javier Villamor, The European Conservative
Brussels is preparing to drive up the price of nicotine products across Europe with a sweeping tax hike that several governments say was written by activists, not elected officials.
The draft, prepared by the Danish EU presidency in coordination with the European Commission, would raise the minimum tax on heated tobacco from the €155 per kilogram originally put forward by the Commission to €360 per kilogram and impose a mandatory minimum tax of 55% of the retail price.
Up in smoke
Letícia Arcoverde, The Brazilian Report
With smoking rates going down and e-cigarettes encroaching, Brazil launches a new program for tobacco farmers seeking to leave the sector.
The federal government has launched a new policy aimed at helping tobacco farmers transition to alternative crops as they leave the sector.
Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of raw tobacco and one of its top producers. But domestic output has declined over recent decades as smoking rates fall and other countries gain ground as suppliers.
Aylen Van Isseldyk, We Are Innovation
Although at COP10 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (Panama, February 2025) and at COP11 (Geneva), harm reduction activists, doctors, and independent press could not even enter as observers—as these conferences are characterized by a high degree of closure and exclusion—COP30 on Climate Change (Belém do Pará, Brazil, November 10-21, 2025) has represented a positive and constructive turning point.
The Next Frontier in Advancing THR: Oral Nicotine Products | #GFN25 Science Discussion
Global Forum on Nicotine
In another Science lab presentation, Dr Chris Junker (BAT) shows the latest scientific findings on oral nicotine pouches and discusses how nicotine pouches can advance tobacco harm reduction.
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
It’s A Scandal!
Dick Puddlecote
Yesterday we saw a fine example of the dire state of British journalism and politics. There was this scandal at PMQs, doncha know. Well, actually there wasn’t; merely the lamest and most laughable smear story since the summer of 2013.
Looking Back on 2015
New Nicotine Alliance
At the start of the year, we believed that 2015 would be the Year of the Vaping Advocate, where the voices of the everyday vaper would be heard and changes could be seen to happen. Our first newsletter, posted in March gave an overview of the kinds of activities we are involved in. Subsequent newsletters drop straight into our supporters’ inbox, each one almost overflows with information.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World






