Vapers Digest 20th March
Wednesday’s News at a glance:
Two from Colin Mendelsohn, Tobacco Treatment
Victorian Parliament Inquiry into Vaping. Submissions now due
THE VICTORIAN PARLIAMENT INQUIRY INTO VAPING can recommend legislative changes to end the current, failed prescription-pharmacy model that has handed control of the market to criminal gangs. The Victorian Parliament can and should replace it with a strictly regulated adult consumer model.
Please make your submission before the deadline next week, on Friday 29 March 2024.
FDA Petitions Supreme Court to Review Triton Decision
Jim McDonald, Vaping 360
The FDA has asked the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision against the agency in the Triton Distribution appeal. If the court accepts the FDA’s petition, it could forever alter the agency’s premarket review process—or it could validate the FDA’s current practices.
In January, the Fifth Circuit ruled 10-6 for Triton in a rare en banc rehearing of the company’s MDO appeal. The decision overturned a 2022 decision by a three-judge panel of the same court. In the 2024 decision, Fifth Circuit Judge Andrew S. Oldham harshly criticized the FDA, referring to the premarket review process as a “wild goose chase.”
CULLIP: Zyn Outcry Exposes Anti-Smoking Orgs
Fighting To Protect Cigs From Competition
Martin Cullip, Daily Caller
In January, Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate a product called “Zyn,” due to supposed concerns about marketing and health effects.
Zyn is a brand of nicotine pouch that resembles a small teabag and contains plant-based fibers infused with nicotine. It isn’t smoked, it does not contain any tobacco, and presents almost none of the known risks of combustible cigarettes. And yet, anti-smoking organizations are still trying to get it taken off shelves.
Nationals and Greens criticise vaping ‘prohibition’ as battle looms for Labor
Josh Butler, The Guardian
The Australian government may face a fight on its plan to all but ban vaping, with the Nationals and Greens both raising concerns about a “prohibition” approach in legislation to be introduced to parliament this week.
The Nationals are developing their own policy that could see vapes sold in plain packaging through specialist stores, with tougher restrictions on flavours and marketing toward young people, rather than an outright ban proposed by Labor.
https://twitter.com/ChaunceyGardner/status/1770238631283654693
Two From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
No Smoking Day Ignores Vaping
Ex-smoker Andrea Leadsom MP has a dim take on the use of electronic cigarettes. In the past she co-sponsored anti vape legislative proposals and made many flawed statements in the House of Commons. This year’s No Smoking Day campaign saw vaping shamefully reduced to a bit-part role.
NNA Launches Blistering Attack – Part 2
As yesterday’s article began to explain, following the Budget statement, the New Nicotine Alliance says the Chancellor’s vape tax is wrong in principle and naïve in application. The charity is explaining how the budget proposals undermine the government’s swap to stop campaign, making the Smokefree 2030 aspiration now unattainable, punishes vaping more than smoking (costing lives), and relies on Government documents that are “childlike and embarrassingly misunderstand science”.
Alastair Cohen, Clearing The Air
It’s not considered good practice to make new laws at 4am on no sleep: but that’s how the Tobacco Products Directive – which regulates vapes across the EU – was agreed more than a decade ago.
In those frantic, last-minute negotiations between EU countries and the European Parliament, a new clause was added at the behest of the European Commission and almost as an afterthought. No one has really discussed it since, but it could be about to bite back hard.
The clause says that where three Member States ban a particular kind of e-cigarette, the Commission can then extend that ban across the EU using a little known and highly opaque process. Were they to decide to do this, a ban could be agreed in a few short weeks.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Shoddy Research Reinforces Narrative
Jacob Sullum
In 2019, The Journal of the American Heart Association published a study suggesting that nicotine vaping doubles the risk of a heart attack. The authors claimed e-cigarette use is “independently” associated with a heightened risk of myocardial infarction, which is “similar” to the risk among cigarette smokers.
Contextualised e-cigarette testing strategy
Shows flavourings do not impact lung toxicity in vitro
E Bishop, N East, F Miazzi, S Fiebelkorn, D Breheny, M Gaca, D Thorne
Vaping has the potential to reduce the individual health risks associated with smoking and e-cigarette flavours have been reported to help smokers’ transition from cigarettes. In this manuscript, we provide evidence to support the reduced risk potential of e-cigarette aerosols and flavours by assessing commercially available e-liquids (Vuse ePod – Manufactured by British American Tobacco) in a 2D in vitro screening approach.
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