Vapers Digest 21st June
Friday’s News at a glance:
ETHRA letter to the Council of the European Union – ASH ORG UK :- Policy Leaders or Followers? – UK Vape Bans: What, When & Why – Sharp rise in use of high-strength vapes – Perspectives from GFN24 – Day 3 – The Michael Russell Oration and Award – Euro Bureaucrats Will Spur Smoking – CAPHRA Showcasing Global Lessons – French and German governments sign onto EU wide flavour ban – Vape ban could lead to MORE young people smoking – Australia’s vape bill will “double down on failure” – The Tobacco Control Act Turns 15: – ZYN Suspends Online Sales – Harm Reductionists Wary on New Philippines Vape Regulations – FDA Authorizes Marketing of Four Menthol-Flavored E-Cigarette Products – E-cigarettes found effective in smoking cessation – THR could save 2m lives in the Middle East – Scare Tactics Don’t Work for Smoking
ETHRA letter to the Council of the EU
European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates
On 5 June and 17 June a number of EU member states issued a call to action urging the Commission to ban flavours in consumer nicotine products. The motion was added to the agenda of a meeting of the Council of the European Union (EPSCO – Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs) to be discussed on June 21. Ahead of that meeting ETHRA wrote to all EU Health Ministers to highlight the serious unintended consequences a flavour ban would lead to. The letter is copied below.
We write as advocates for consumers of safer alternatives to smoking. We are aware of the forthcoming Health Ministers’ Council discussion and a call for action to protect young people from novel tobacco and nicotine products led by the government of Latvia.
EU Health Ministers Consider Vape Flavor Ban – Jim McDonald
ETHRA Urges Health Ministers to Reject Flavour Ban – Alastair Cohen
ASH ORG UK: Policy Leaders or Followers
Re Safer Nicotine Products 2012-2024? – Alan Beard
This blog is my attempt to make some sense out of ASH actions/inaction over the the previous decade or so,regarding safer nicotine products. This could go back even further in time,but I will leave it to the period 2012- 2024 and deliberately confine my commentary to e-cigarettes/Vaping.
ASH is a government funded campaigning charity who has a primary aim of reducing Smoking rates to at most 5%, which would be considered as ‘Smokefree’. However, a government sponsored campaigning organisation that campaigns that same government has been described as a ‘sock-puppet’ from some quarters.
UK Vape Bans: What, When & Why
James Dunworth
Vapers are increasingly concerned about a UK vape ban, but there’s also confusion and uncertainty about what will be banned.
There are three key points to understand:
- Disposable vapes will likely be banned from April 2025. There is no plan to ban reusable vapes – yet.
- You can still use alternatives to disposable vapes which are more economical and create less waste.
- Plans to ban or regulate e-liquid flavours have been shelved – for now.
In this post we’ll explain which bans are definite and which are being considered, the best alternatives to banned products, the motivation for the bans and potential consequences.
Sharp rise in use of high-strength vapes
Tobi Thomas – Guardian
The use of high-strength nicotine vapes has increased sharply in the last three years, a study has found.
Researchers found that in June 2021, only 6.6% of people were using the highest-strength vapes, defined as those near the legal limit of 20mg/ml of nicotine, yet by January 2024 that had increased to 32.5% of users.
The study, by UCL researchers, looked at a survey of 7,314 adults who vape in England in order to assess how the use of vapes of different nicotine strengths had changed during that period.
Following feedback from vapers, we have now expanded the survey to capture views of vapers of all ages.
If you’re 16 or older, currently vape, and live in the UK we want to hear from you.
Complete our short survey here: https://t.co/oSiNUVSEXO https://t.co/taHaVhQKV7
— Sarah Jackson (@DrSarahEJackson) June 17, 2024
Four from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes:
Perspectives from GFN24 – Day 3
The vape market is unrecognisable from what it was when Planet of the Vapes came into being; the products and the players have almost all changed.
Vivien Azer, a Wall Street financial analyst specialising in the tobacco, nicotine and cannabis industries, opened in the session looking at how tobacco harm reduction has influenced the market to date and will continue to do so in the future.
“The outlook is for the disruption from novel nicotine products to accelerate, because the major public tobacco companies are incentivising consumers to move away from higher risk combustible cigarettes.”
The Michael Russell Oration and Award
The annual Michael Russell Oration was established by the Global Forum on Nicotine “to honour the work and memory of Professor Michael Russell, one of the pioneers in the study of smoking behaviour, clinical interventions and public policy action, who died in 2009.” This year’s Oration was delivered by Cliff Douglas, the President and CEO of Global Action to End Smoking.
Cliff Douglas told attendees that “we owe it to people to listen, to understand their challenges, to understand how they can reduce their health risks if they can’t or don’t otherwise want to stop smoking.”
He warned that those who felt the epidemic of smoking had been solved, that workable options were there, is a misconception.
Takeaways from this year’s thought-provoking Global Forum on Nicotine
Euro Bureaucrats Will Spur Smoking
Bureaucrats in the European Union will “send millions back to smoking” if they persist with their “onerous restrictions”, according to harm reduction experts speaking at the Global Forum on Nicotine conference in Warsaw this week. They say that the EU bureaucrats contemplating what is effectively a tax on quitting smoking, we can expect to see millions of smokers who had quit go back to their old bad habits.
The EU’s flagship Beating Cancer Plan will be a major topic of conversation at the Global Forum on Nicotine conference in Warsaw this week.
CAPHRA Showcasing Global Lessons
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) says it is thrilled to announce its participation in the current Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN) in Warsaw, Poland, from June 13 to 15, 2024. CAPHRA is set to showcase the global lessons to be learned from New Zealand and Sweden at GFN 2024
CAPHRA will be featured in PANEL 2: “GLOBAL LESSONS: WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES CAN LEARN FROM NEW ZEALAND AND SWEDEN,” following the release of Dr Marewa Glover’s groundbreaking ‘Road Map to a Smoke Free New Zealand’ report.
French and German governments…
Sign onto EU wide flavour ban – Alastair Cohen
A new document circulated to EU health ministers and seen by Clearing the Air indicates that the French and German governments have signed onto a new call for a ban on flavours in all nicotine products.
The new paper, titled “Strengthening efforts to protect children from direct marketing and sale of tobacco and nicotine products, especially on digital platforms” also has the support of Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and seven other EU Member States.
As revealed by Clearing the Air last week, the paper will be discussed under “any other business” during a meeting of EU Health Ministers known as EPSCO, on Friday.
Vape ban could lead to …
MORE young people smoking – Ali Anderson
More young people would start smoking if vapes were banned or made more expensive through taxes, a new study says. Youngsters see smoking and vaping as “interchangeable” but are “far more” aware of the potential harms of vaping than the dangers of smoking, researchers found.
This is despite vaping being much less harmful to health than smoking, which kills eight million people globally every year. Ban would stoke black market. Many of the young people polled also believed they could get around a proposed ban on disposable vapes by stockpiling or buying them on the black market.
Lead researcher Caitlin Notley, a Professor of Addiction Sciences at the University of East Anglia, said: “Youth use of disposable vapes has surged in recent years in the UK.
Would banning vapes lead to a resurgence of young people smoking?
Australia’s vape bill will …
“Double down on failure” if passed – Ali Anderson
Australia’s new vaping bill will lead to more youth vaping, a booming black market and a hole in tax revenue, a leading professor has warned.
The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 is set to be debated and voted on in the Australian Senate on June 24. If passed, Australia’s eight state and territory parliaments will each have to put through corresponding legislation.
The Tobacco Control Act Turns 15:
Have We Made Progress at All? – Kim “Skip” Murray
When I was 22, I watched my grandpa wheeled out of his home in a body bag. Aged 53, I sat in the dark with my mom as she breathed her last breath. My family tree is filled with people who died too soon from cancer, heart disease and other ailments linked to combustible tobacco use. All of them smoked, and all were unable or unwilling to quit.
So, like millions of others in the United States, I have a deeply personal stake in legislation around smoking.
It was 15 years ago, on June 22, 2009, that President Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) into law.
Harm Reductionists Wary
On New Philippines Vape Regulations – Kiran Sidhu
New regulations in the Philippines require all vaping products to be registered with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Having opted in recent years for regulation, rather than prohibition, the country has relatively progressive vape laws compared to many other examples in Asia—and compared to its own brutal drug war. But local harm reduction advocates have mixed feelings about the new rules and their possible impacts, as they seek reliable long-term access to nicotine vapes.
Almost 120,000 people die of smoking-related diseases each year in the Philippines, and the smoking rate among men—projected to stand at 34 percent by 2025—is very high.
ZYN Suspends Online Sales
In Light of D.C. Subpoena – Joseph Hart
It seems that ZYN pouches can’t stay out of the news, But this time, it’s not about the totally made-up, not-at-all-fitting-the-definition-of-epidemic epidemic.
Instead, ZYN is making headlines because the District of Columbia attorney general issued a subpoena demanding information about whether Swedish Match North America violated the 2022 Flavored Tobacco and Electronic Smoking Device Products Prohibition.
FDA Authorizes Marketing of Four …
Menthol-Flavored E-Cigarette Products
Following an extensive scientific review, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today authorized the marketing of four e-cigarette products in the United States through the premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) pathway. The FDA issued marketing granted orders to NJOY LLC for four menthol-flavored e-cigarette products – NJOY ACE Pod Menthol 2.4%, NJOY ACE Pod Menthol 5%, NJOY DAILY Menthol 4.5%, and NJOY DAILY EXTRA Menthol 6%. The two authorized ACE products are sealed, pre-filled, non-refillable pods that are used with the previously authorized ACE device, and the two authorized DAILY products are disposable e-cigarettes with a prefilled, non-refillable e-liquid reservoir.
E-cigarettes found effective
In smoking cessation – Jeremy Faust
Unpopular opinion: e-cigarettes are not the devil. Buckle up! It’s time for some nuance.
Yes, e-cigs contain nicotine, which is an addictive substance—and one that is harmful to young people. Yes, I find people vaping in public to be irritating. And, above all, adolescents should not be vaping, nor should any kind of marketing directed at them be legal or tolerated.
But over the years, I’ve noticed that attitudes towards e-cigarettes among physicians, public health experts, science communicators, and the general public seem to be extreme. For my part, as I wrote in Slate, the 2016 Surgeon General’s warning about vaping was, on close reading, surprisingly underwhelming.
THR could save 2m lives in Middle East
ECigIntelligence
Nearly 2m lives in selected Middle Eastern countries could be saved by tobacco harm reduction, according to a new report that was launched at the World Vape Show in Dubai this month by one of its authors, Derek Yach (pictured) of Global Health Strategies.
The report, titled “Tobacco harm reduction and better treatment could save nearly two million lives in selected countries in the Middle East”, focused on seven countries: Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Of the 390m people living in these countries, 61m adults use tobacco products, and 384,000 die prematurely every year as a result, according to its data.
Scare Tactics Don’t Work for Smoking:
Why Harm Reduction is The Way to Go – Timothy Vermillion
The other day I was chatting with a friend and colleague (hey Nick!) regarding the scare tactics used on smokers to get them to quit. He noted, “I think stigma is huge when it comes to smoking… The subtext of every anti-smoking campaign is smoking is 100% bad, it will kill you, you are bad for doing it” (Personal communication). He was responding to a recent post I made about the disparity between deaths caused by smoking and those by heroin, which is huge, and how heroin has been considered a public health emergency when smoking has not.
The thing is, Nick is right. My post and scare tactics like it are not going to help smokers quit. As a social worker, I believe we need to start where the client is, and harm reduction truly meets this directive.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise….
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