Vapers Digest 24th July
Friday’s News at a glance:
Parliament Matters ~ Smoking Poverty ~ Research: UK Vape Use to Quit Smoking ~ The Conversation Australia Needed to Have ~ The FDA Follows the Evidence. Will Europe? ~ The new merchants of doubt ~ Is nicotine good for you? ~ Sweden lodges a strong protest against Poland’s ban on white snus ~ The Harm Perception Crisis: Why Most Smokers Now Think Vaping Is As Dangerous As Cigarettes ~ Three things Australia must do to end the tobacco wars ~ Safety of high-powered sub-ohm devices (part I) ~ The Glas Ceiling: Gold, Sapphire and Vaping Surveillance ~ Vape shops are “antisocial”, says UK PM. Illegal vapes aren’t. ~ Full switch from smoking to vaping linked to lower heart risk, review finds ~ Vape restrictions risk slowing smoking decline after New Zealand’s fivefold acceleration
Three From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
Parliament Matters
Welcome to this week’s scintillating trip to the House of Commons where Shadow Exchequer Secretary James Wild obtained information about the vaping products duty stamp scheme from Exchequer Secretary Dan Tomlinson. Also, Opposition Assistant Whip Andrew Snowden received clear advice from Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health Sharon Hodgson.
Smoking Poverty
New research from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) finds that smoking pushes 417,000 UK households into poverty, including 137,000 children. The price differential between vapes and tobacco products was a key motivator to help adults switch, but this is being attacked as government plans will make ecigs more expensive.
Research: UK Vape Use to Quit Smoking
According to data from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), daily vaping among adults has overtaken daily smoking in Britain for the first time, with 3.3 million vape users saying they are ex-smokers. Rather than celebrate this, the charity is focussing on ‘ever tried’ teen vapers (instead of ‘daily use’). As a consequence, ASH says there is an urgent need to reduce youth uptake.
The Conversation Australia Needed to Have
Alan Gor
There are moments in public policy when the conversation itself becomes more important than the conclusions. They are the moments when ideas that have been dismissed for years suddenly enter the mainstream and questions that were once considered unacceptable are finally asked in one of the nation’s most influential forums. The National Press Club discussion on Australia’s illicit tobacco crisis felt like one of those moments.
The FDA Follows the Evidence. Will Europe?
Tobacco Harm Reduction.net
For the first time, the FDA has authorised nicotine pouch products to be marketed with a modified-risk statement, recognising that using ZYN instead of cigarettes lowers the risk of conditions including lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
This is not an endorsement of nicotine use without limits. It is an acknowledgement of a fundamental public health reality: not all nicotine products carry the same level of risk. Combustion – and the toxic smoke it produces – is what makes cigarettes exceptionally deadly.
The new merchants of doubt
Marc Gunther, The Best Laid Plans
We’re no longer shocked when industry-paid scientists shade the truth. That’s largely due to the groundbreaking work of academics such as David Michaels, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Their books, Doubt is Their Product (Michaels, 2008) and Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes and Conway, 2010) documented the ways that big corporations and the unethical scientists who serve them distort, suppress or ignore evidence to the detriment of public health. The “assault on science,” as my friend David Michaels put it, was carried out by corporations that make fossil fuels, chemicals and plastics, but their playbook was pioneered by Big Tobacco, which deliberately confused politicians, regulators and the public.
Is nicotine good for you?
Carl V Phillips, PhD, Carl V Phillips’s epistemic musings
This is not one of those times where the headline is phrased as a question to be mere clickbait before conceding that the default “no” answer seems to be right after all. Neither is it a rhetorical trick by an author who wants to lie (deliberately delivering a message they believe to be false) without making a concrete false statement (by making it a question instead). Based on what we currently have reason to believe and predictable refinements thereof, my assessment is that the answer to the question (as refined below – a question cannot be scientific without more precision in its phrasing than the headline) is probably yes.1 However, the net effect is close enough to null and complicated enough that I suspect that the limits of our methodology mean that we will not get a definitive answer until well past the time that we are no longer the same “we”. As a further warning not to expect anything close to a decisive answer here, I am not even laying out my case in this post; I am just writing this up as a starting point.
Sweden lodges a strong protest against Poland’s ban on white snus
Stefan Mathisson, Vejpkollen
The Swedish Government has decided to submit a so-called detailed opinion to the European Commission and the Polish Government regarding Poland’s planned legislation on tobacco-free nicotine products.
Such a statement is used when a Member State considers that a draft law risks infringing EU rules on the single market. The Government has therefore instructed the National Board of Trade to formally submit Sweden’s objections in accordance with the so-called TRIS procedure.
The Harm Perception Crisis: Why Most Smokers Now Think Vaping Is As Dangerous As Cigarettes
Ecigclick
More than half of Britain’s smokers now believe vaping is as harmful as smoking — or even more harmful.
Read that again.
Fresh figures from Action on Smoking and Health show that 52% of current smokers now have the relative risk completely wrong.
Among smokers who have never tried vaping, the figure rises to an astonishing 61%.
And it does not end there.
Three things Australia must do to end the tobacco wars
Joel Carrett, The Conversation
Last week, new data were released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) suggesting daily smoking prevalence has dropped to a record low of 5.6% in 2025 – down from 8.3% in 2022-23.
Taken at face value, this is the best news in the history of tobacco control in Australia.
But there are reasons for caution. The figures come from a self-report survey, and as the AIHW has previously acknowledged, respondents “tend to underestimate actual consumption levels”, with illicit use particularly undercounted.
Safety of high-powered sub-ohm devices (part I)
Roberto Sussman, Roberto’s Substack
I deal in this Part I and the follow up Part II on high-powered sub-ohm 3rd generation tank models. Part I presents their characteristics, discusses their inappropriate usage in emission and pre-clinical studies, their puffing under optimal and overheating conditions. Part II presents a critique of studies using them to generate overheated toxin laden aerosols, studies that contribute to disinformation on vaping safety.
When launched in 2015-2016 high-powered sub-ohm devices represented a technological advance in vaping. Although they were popular and allowed exhalation of large clouds, only a minority of vapers puffed them. Their usage is now (since 2020) marginal and the devices have had little or no further technological development.
The Glas Ceiling: Gold, Sapphire and Vaping Surveillance
Helen Redmond, Filter
Long vilified by opponents of tobacco harm reduction, fruit-flavored vapes finally got the thumbs up from the FDA in May. The Los Angeles-based company Glas received permission to sell Sapphire (blueberry) and Gold (mango) vapes with age-gating technology—the first non-tobacco, non-menthol vaping products the FDA has authorized. Curiously, the authorization was not announced with a press release.
It was a historic victory to those who support access to a variety of safer nicotine products—including flavors, which research and experience have repeatedly shown to be key to many people’s ability to switch from cigarettes.
Three From Clearing The Air
Vape shops are “antisocial”, says UK PM. Illegal vapes aren’t.
Peter Beckett
It used to be that the proliferation of charity shops was considered the canary in the coal mine for the UK High Street. These days, that honour goes to the humble vape shop. Though unlike Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation, they’re facing a Government crackdown.
Just days after getting his feet under the desk at Number Ten, new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced that he’s cutting business rates on pubs and clubs by 20% from next year, and he’ll fund it through higher rates for “anti-social businesses such as vape shops” alongside some pretty heroic targets on VAT for online marketplaces.
Full switch from smoking to vaping linked to lower heart risk, review finds
Ali Anderson
Exclusive vaping substantially reduces exposure to toxic chemicals linked to cardiovascular disease compared with cigarette smoking, the review found.
Smokers who switched completely showed favourable changes in markers linked to inflammation, blood clotting, cholesterol and blood-vessel health.
Population studies generally associated exclusive vaping with lower cardiovascular risk than continued smoking, while dual use often offered little or no reduction.
The authors said longer-term studies are needed to establish the effects of individual products.
Tim Hong
Governments have been urged to reconsider flavour bans, high taxes and other restrictions on vaping after research found New Zealand’s smoking decline accelerated fivefold as vaping became more widely used.
Smoke Free Sweden said the findings strengthened the case for keeping smoke-free nicotine products accessible to adults who smoke, while maintaining controls aimed at preventing youth use.
The intervention follows an analysis published in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, which found that the annual rate of decline in adult daily smoking in New Zealand rose from 3.5 per cent before 2018 to 17.9 per cent between 2018 and 2023.
On this day…2020!
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Canada takes a wrong turn
After a flawed paper induces moral panic about youth vaping and smoking
Clive Bates, The Counterfactual
In June 2019, an influential and well-respected research group published a paper in the BMJ showing both a sharp rise in youth vaping in Canada between 2017 and 2018 – mirroring the rise in the United States. But the truly shocking finding was that there had also been a sharp rise in youth smoking (not seen in the United States).
Differences in Nicotine Intake
From Smoking Vs Vaping in Dual Users – Diane Caruana
The study recruited 36 healthy participants who used both cigarettes and e-cigarettes. The amount of nicotine in the participants’ plasma was measured, alongside their level of nicotine withdrawal, urge to smoke and vape, affective states, cravings, and satisfaction and psychological reward from vaping as compared to smoking.
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