Vapers Digest 23rd October

Monday’s News at a glance:

FCTC budget: nice work if you can get it – Raise Your Voice In The Ireland Vaping Consultation – A comprehensive review of the evidence on nicotine vaping – School allows students to have smoking and vaping breaks – Push for vapes to be regulated like alcohol – Vapers caution against jeopardising UK’s successful pathway – Harm reduction should guide Tobacco regulations in Africa – A risky exclusion – Paper finds WHO strategies lacking – Vapers To Pay More In Latvia

FCTC budget: nice work if you can get it

COPWatch

Here Copwatch brings you what you need to know about the COP10 documents relating to the FCTC budget. This covers three documents, all posted on the COP10 main documents page:

FCTC/COP/10/17 Proposed Workplan and Budget for the financial period 2024–2025, 

FCTC/COP/10/18 WHO FCTC Investment Fund, and

FCTC/COP/10/19 Rev.1 Payment of Assessed Contributions and measures to reduce Parties in arrears 

The first thing you need to know is that 59 Parties have not paid their contributions. That’s around one third of the FCTC membership. You should also know that the biggest funder of the FCTC is China. As we know, China is also home to the China Tobacco monopoly, the biggest cigarette company in the world.

COPWATCH: More Misinformation From WHO Prior To COP10!! – ECigClick

Raise Your Voice Ireland Consultation

ECigClick

Following on from the news that the UK Government is launching a public consultation on smoking & vaping, we now have an Ireland Vaping Consultation on the way.

According to an email from the advocacy group “Respect Vapers” – there will be a public consultation starting on 7th November 2023.

This was announced by the Minister for Health on 12th October 2023 where the Government and the members of the Oireachtas Health Committee met for a hearing.

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Vapers To Pay More In Latvia

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

Latvian government is to increase e-liquids taxation and in doing so making tobacco harm reduction less appealing to current smokers. The move has been decried by the World Vapers’ Alliance, which has called the anti-science approach and demanded the Latvian authorities follow an evidence-based approach towards the taxation of alternative nicotine products.

The Latvian government adopted a series of amendments to the Excise Tax Law which include a gradual increase in the excise tax on e-liquids and other tobacco substitute products.

A comprehensive review …

Of the evidence on nicotine vaping – Colin Mendelsohn

TODAY WE SENT A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW of the latest evidence on nicotine vaping to all Australian federal, state and territory Members of Parliament. We hope the review will help to support evidence-based policymaking.

The fully referenced document (available here) outlines the health effects of vaping, its potential as a quitting aid, the challenge of youth vaping and why Australia’s prescription-only regulatory model has failed. It also addresses the key myths on vaping.

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Why one school allows students …

To have smoking and vaping breaks – Kylie Stevens

Students of all ages at a special school in Queensland are permitted to have smoking and vaping breaks to reduce stress and disruptive behaviour during class, parents and former staff have revealed.

It’s understood Arethusa College’s Deception Bay campus north of Brisbane reportedly implemented the policy several years ago, despite staff raising concerns.

As many as 50 students are believed to be on a list as permitted to smoke or vape and even have a designated area.

Push for vapes to be regulated …

Like alcohol and tobacco in Australia – Ally Foster

Australians are calling for regulations around vaping to be stripped back, saying the country should follow the lead of New Zealand and the UK.

A whopping 20 per cent of young people and nine per cent of adults now vape on a regular basis, according to the Australian Department of Health.

In a bid to reduce these figures, the Albanese government announced in May it would outlaw the importation of non-prescription vaping products as part of the biggest smoking reforms in a decade.

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Vapers caution against jeopardising UK’s..

Successful pathway to harm reduction

Vaping consumer bodies have warned that the government would be making a ‘grave mistake’ if it decides to ban disposable vapes, calling it a ‘significant over-reaction to the exaggerated perception of harms to youth’.

The government on Thursday announced a consultation, setting out a range of options to reduce vape product availability to young people.

The consultation proposes restrictions on the sale of disposable vapes, ‘child-friendly’ vape flavours and packaging and the display in retail outlets. The disposable vape restrictions include a proposal for prohibiting their sale and supply.

Harm reduction should guide …

Tobacco regulations in Africa

Stakeholders in the health sector have been challenged to consider harm reduction as a key guide in driving public health strategies in Africa.

Harm reduction refers to interventions aimed at reducing the negative effects of health behaviours without necessarily extinguishing the problematic health behaviours entirely or permanently.

At the third yearly Harm Reduction Exchange with the theme: ‘Amplifying the voice of Harm Reduction advocacy across Africa’, the President of the African Medical Association and the Association of Medical Councils of Africa, Dr. Kgosi Letlape tasked African governments to adopt harm reduction approaches when regulating public health challenges.

A risky exclusion

Arshad Ali Syed

The tenth session of the Conference of Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, along with the third session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, will be held in Panama next month. The tenth session of COP will be held from November 15 to 20 while the MOP3 will be held from November 27 to 30.

Both the meetings are critical to how the parties move forward with their agenda for a smoke-free world. With 182 parties to the convention, the FCTC is one of the “most widely embraced” UN treaties.

Paper finds WHO strategies lacking

To address smoking

The Institute for Tobacco Studies (ITS) in Täby, Sweden released a topical paper urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to look at the successful Swedish experience of large-scale transition from cigarettes to smokeless alternatives to reduce smoking-related deaths globally.

The paper was published on Qeios—a platform where it can be downloaded.

Dr. Lars Ramström, the principal investigator of ITS, is a reputed researcher in tobacco control issues with numerous international engagements. He has served as a WHO expert and as secretary general of the 4th World Conference on Smoking and Health.

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On this Day…2022

A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…

The benefits of vaping

Letters – The Guardian

Your editorial about vaping does not match the science (“Before we embrace vaping, we need to know more about its long-term risks”). No credible scientist says vaping is “completely safe” – few things are. The point is that vapes are far, far less harmful than smoking. Moreover, the public health consensus that vaping is a “much less harmful” alternative to smoking is based on robust independent reviews of the scientific evidence, not “assumptions”.

The evidence on whether vaping helps smokers to quit is not “mixed”, as your editorial suggests. The weight of high-quality evidence – from Cochrane, among others – shows e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine replacement therapy in helping smokers quit. Cochrane reviews are a highly trusted source of objective health evidence used by policy makers worldwide.

How many adult Australians vape?

Dr Colin Mendelsohn

THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED 1,150,000 current adult (18+) vapers in Australia, or about 5.5% of the adult population. A tiny minority of vapers (5-10%) have a nicotine prescription as required by Australia’s draconian prescription-only laws.

The numbers are a clear indication that vaping nicotine has been embraced by Australia’s smokers as a safer alternative to deadly smoking. In the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, vaping was Australia’s most popular quitting aid, used by 22% of smokers to quit or reduce smoking. By comparison, only 1.8% used Quitline.

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