Vapers Digest 21st October

Wednesday’s News at a glance:

EU Lobbies Itself ~ An Addiction Tax ~ STS Vaping Trends ~ Tobacco Harm Reduction Weekly Roundup: 11–18 October 2026 ~ Popcorn Lung: The Myth Medicine Won’t Retire ~ Asia Forum on Nicotine 2026 opens with call for broader tobacco harm reduction, safer nicotine use ~ Beyond the Ban: What Could WPRO’s Tobacco Plan Mean for People who Smoke? ~ ASH continues to lie about the black market ~Worse Than Big Tobacco – The Researchers Helping to Protect Cigarette Sales ~ The Generational Nicotine Ban: Same Voices, Same Mistakes, No Accountability ~ Latin American Survey Finds Widespread Confusion Among Adolescents About Nicotine Pouch Risks ~ Consumer advocate Skip Murray appointed to advise US FDA on nicotine regulation ~ Smoking among young Swiss people falls by almost a quarter in two years ~ French vapers face fresh tax threat as MPs battle over nicotine rules ~ German Bundestag Passes Tobacco Tax Hikes: Vape Liquid Duty to Reach €0.44/ml, Heated Tobacco Taxes to Rise and Cigarettes Seen Near €12 a Pack ~ Pennsylvania Lists 163 Vape Products Eligible for Sale, Including Vuse and JUUL; Previously Pending Chinese Brands Such as OXBAR Remain Absent, While Unlisted Products Including Geek Bar Face Enforcement From October 19 ~ Pennsylvania’s Heavy-Handed Nicotine Rules Should be Eliminated to Help Smokers Quit

Three From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes

EU Lobbies Itself

Nine Brussels organisations received more than €12.8 million in EU funding in the period covered by a new Free Market Foundation report, the World Vapers’ Alliance tells Planet of the Vapes. Three of the organisations spent much of the past year arguing for higher nicotine taxes, restrictions on flavours, and rules that put alternative nicotine products in the same category as cigarettes…the course the Commission is already on.

An Addiction Tax

Vapers have taken to social media to hit out at the new tax on vapes and eliquids. Some vape product users say they are turning back to smoking cigarettes as they can’t justify the increased cost of vaping. Vape Club tells Planet of the Vapes that the government’s figures don’t stack up and that the tax will simply grow the black market.

STS Vaping Trends

The Smoking Toolkit Study (STS) team has released the latest findings looking at the trends in vaping in England. The statistics are compiled by Vera Buss, Loren Kock, Robert West, Emma Beard, Dimitra Kale and Jamie Brown at University College London (UCL).

Tobacco Harm Reduction Weekly Roundup: 11–18 October 2026

K. Farsalinos, MD, MPH, PhD, Science & Public Health

Bottom line (11–18 October 2026): The week’s biggest developments were regulatory. The European Commission published the results of its Tobacco Products Directive consultation (41,693 submissions), Germany’s Bundestag passed a tobacco tax increase running to 2030, and US states kept tightening vape product directories, with a federal judge upholding Pennsylvania’s law and Iowa delaying its own. New scientific evidence on smoking cessation was thin this week.

Popcorn Lung: The Myth Medicine Won’t Retire

Tobacco Harm Reduction

In 2015, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health tested 51 e-cigarette flavours and found diacetyl in 39 of them. Diacetyl is the butter flavouring linked to bronchiolitis obliterans, the rare lung disease nicknamed “Popcorn Lung” after a cluster of cases among microwave popcorn factory workers in Missouri.

The paper never claimed anyone would get popcorn lung from vaping. The press release did not quite say it either, but the headline ‘Chemicals in e-cigarette flavors linked to respiratory disease’. And a study co-author was quoted saying the flavouring chemicals found can cause lung damage.

Asia Forum on Nicotine 2026 opens with call for broader tobacco harm reduction, safer nicotine use

INQUIRER.net

The Asia Forum on Nicotine (AFN) 2026 opened on October 16 at Astoria Hotel in Ortigas with a call for wider adoption of science-based tobacco harm reduction (THR) and broader access to safer nicotine products across the Asia Pacific.

Beyond the Ban: What Could WPRO’s Tobacco Plan Mean for People who Smoke?

Asia Harm Reduction Alliance

The World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) has proposed a regional action plan to accelerate tobacco control. As Member States consider the plan, they face a critical question: will restricting these products reduce harm, or risk closing off lower-risk alternatives for adults who smoke?

The draft recommends banning the manufacture, distribution and sale of these products “as appropriate”, with strict regulation where they are not banned. But a policy’s success depends on its outcomes, not its intentions. Governments must weigh the benefits of restrictions against their potential effects on smoking behaviour, access to alternatives and enforcement.

ASH continues to lie about the black market

Christopher Snowdon, The Snowdon Substack

The state-funded prohibitionist pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has published a report claiming that “the UK’s illicit tobacco market is now only a fraction of the size it was at the turn of the century” and that “the UK has one of the most effectively controlled illicit markets in the world”.

Worse Than Big Tobacco – The Researchers Helping to Protect Cigarette Sales

Martin Cullip, Martin on THR

It should be deeply disturbing to public health professionals that new research has celebrated making vaping less attractive while showing so little concern for the consequences for people who smoke. But that is exactly what is now happening.

A University of Stirling study examining proposed restrictions on retail displays of vaping products and nicotine pouches concluded that restrictions could “reduce positive messaging around vaping”. The authors seem to regard reducing positive perceptions of vaping as an achievement.

Latin American Survey Finds Widespread Confusion Among Adolescents About Nicotine Pouch Risks

Joseph Hart, The Daily Pouch

Nicotine pouches have strong markets in Scandinavia, the US, parts of Europe and even Pakistan. However, as tobacco companies look to diversify their offering and move to lower-risk products, pouch use is steadily gaining traction in other regions.

A new paper, called Adolescent use of nicotine pouches in four Latin American countries: A cross-sectional survey (Alexandrou, 2026), examines nicotine pouch use, harm perceptions and access among adolescents in Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

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