Vapers Digest 1st May
Friday’s News at a glance:
The Quit Journey ~ European Commission moves TPD file to its scientific unit amid data concerns ~ The EU’s Australian Nightmare ~ Chasing Ghosts ~ The Signal We Can’t Ignore: What Australia’s Wastewater Data Reveals About Nicotine ~ Smokeless products a crucial tool for a smoke-free Europe ~ The vaping evidence gap: what research shows – and what people believe ~ What Counting Misses ~ Spain’s lawmakers accused of protecting cigarettes by blocking safer alternatives ~ People Who Vape Are Lab Rats, Says California “Public Health” Campaign ~ Blind Spots | Cliff Douglas on Makary Flavor Denials | RegWatch ~ Why (Almost) All of the Studies on Health Effects of Dual Smoking-Vaping Are Wrong
The Quit Journey
Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
Vaping experts, Vape Superstore, have conducted a survey to learn more about Brits’ journeys towards quitting tobacco – with over a third saying they did so due to health fears. The next main reason for quitting is how much smoking now costs. One in eight smoke more than 20 a day, and they say relapses tend to occur due to emotional pressure and stress.
European Commission moves TPD file to its scientific unit amid data concerns
Antonia Di Lorenzo, ECigIntelligence
The European Commission has reassigned internal responsibility for the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) dossier to its scientific advice unit, in a move that comes amid concerns over missing information and incomplete data in the TPD evaluation, corroborating earlier reporting by ECigIntelligence.
Michael Landl, World Vapers’ Alliance
A new study published in Addiction lays it out plainly. Australia adopted punitive tobacco taxes and blocked consumer access to less harmful nicotine alternatives. The result: an estimated 55% of all tobacco sold in Australia and 95.7% of all vapes are now illicit. Nicotine consumption is at a record high. Smoking has not collapsed. The illicit nicotine trade is now worth an estimated $5.6 billion, and over 100 firebombings of storefronts in Victoria alone have been linked to criminal groups fighting for market control.
Two From Alan Gor
Chasing Ghosts
I’ve been exchanging emails with Riccardo Polosa, and in one of his recent notes, he distilled the entire nicotine debate into a single, unsettling idea: we are chasing ghosts. Not casually, not rhetorically, but systematically. Entire policy frameworks, public health campaigns, and regulatory instincts are still oriented toward a threat that no longer exists in the form we remember it. The architecture is still there, the language is still there, the urgency is still there, but the object of fear has changed, and no one seems willing to admit it.
The Signal We Can’t Ignore: What Australia’s Wastewater Data Reveals About Nicotine
There’s something uniquely confronting about wastewater data.
It doesn’t rely on surveys, self-reporting, or assumptions about behaviour. It doesn’t bend to messaging or political framing. It simply measures what people are actually consuming.
And in the latest report from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, that signal is becoming harder to ignore.
Smokeless products a crucial tool for a smoke-free Europe
Fred Monteiro, The Parliament
The EU has set ambitious health goals for 2040. How does BAT view this target and how realistic is it under the current direction of travel from the Commission?Fred Monteiro:
The goal of a smoke-free Europe by 2040 is absolutely commendable and we fully support it. We also think it is achievable, but not by regulating smokeless alternatives out of reach. Instead, success relies on a focus on science, real-world outcomes and a genuine assessment of what encourages adult smokers, who would otherwise continue to smoke, switch to such reduced risk profile alternatives.
Ali Anderson, Clearing The Air
A substantial body of research shows that vaping can help people stop smoking and exposes users to far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes.
But that is not how the story is widely understood.
Across Europe and beyond, public perceptions of vaping remain confused – and in many cases increasingly negative. Surveys suggest many people now believe vaping is as harmful as smoking, or even more so.
That disconnect is not just a matter of misunderstanding. It may be shaping whether smokers try to quit, how healthcare professionals advise patients, and how governments regulate alternatives to cigarettes.
What Counting Misses
Claudio Teixeira, Disobedient Margins
For years, Kurt tried to quit smoking in the most common way: by stopping.
It didn’t work. Not once, not twice, but often enough to begin to feel less like failure and more like a pattern.He had grown up in a family where smoking was less a habit than an atmosphere.
His parents smoked. So did his uncles, his aunts, and his grandfather. As a child, he was sent to the corner store to buy cigarettes for the adults—and paid, sometimes, with the change.
Spain’s lawmakers accused of protecting cigarettes by blocking safer alternatives
Smoke Free Sweden
International health experts have criticised new attempts by Spanish lawmakers to limit adult access to safer nicotine alternatives that could help combat their smoking crisis.
The country’s two main political parties – the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) – have voted to confine the sale of vaping products and nicotine pouches to specialist stores.
People Who Vape Are Lab Rats, Says California “Public Health” Campaign
Helen Redmond, Filter
Clockwork Orange-like images show a sweating, terrified young man in a dark laboratory with a black metal contraption on his head that locks his mouth open. We see his clenched white teeth and red gums. A black gloved hand tries over and over to insert a nicotine pouch between his lip and gum.
A young woman is strapped down in a black reclining chair, her mouth covered by an oxygen mask with a vape attached to it. It forces her to inhale vapor continuously.
Blind Spots | Cliff Douglas on Makary Flavor Denials | RegWatch
Brent Stafford, Regulator Watch
The FDA’s mandate is to follow the science, but in practice that’s now in question.
According to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, flavored vape products approved by the FDA’s Office of Science were ultimately blocked by the office of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary.
Today on RegWatch, Cliff Douglas, a veteran of America’s tobacco wars, breaks down the conflict, the role of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, and whether science is driving outcomes.
Are blind spots inside the FDA distorting nicotine policy?
Arielle Selya PhD
There are hundreds of scientific studies claiming that dual-use of cigarettes & e-cigarettes causes worse health risks than smoking alone. But what if the vast majority of these studies all had the same fatal flaws? I discuss 4 common flaws that I’ve seen in hundreds of studies. The result is that lingering or ongoing effects of cigarette smoking are being blamed on vaping, which massively overstates the risk of vaping alone.
On this day…2023!
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
What We Know & Still Need to Learn
About Coronavirus and Nicotine – Sally Satel
In response to intriguing data from French scientists showing that smokers are strongly underrepresented among patients with COVID-19 symptoms, French citizens have started to apply nicotine patches to their upper arms.
Anti-Vaping Zealots Find Opportunity
In the Pandemic – Helen Redmond
“We have to seize this moment,” said Laurie Rubiner, executive vice president of the Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
She was speaking earlier this month, when the National Medical Association (NMA) held a webinar titled, ”COVID-19: Accelerating the urgency of anti-vaping initiatives.”
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