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Vapers Digest 25th August

Kevin CrowleyPosted on Posted in Latest News

Monday’s News at a glance:

Parliament Matters 3 – Paulo Freire can redefine Tobacco Control – A full guide to vape aerosols: Post 9, environmental aerosols (part 2) – Experts Urge Modernization Of Public Health Through Risk Reduction  Strategies – A Day in the Life of a Black-Market Vape Dealer – Australia’s Vaping “Health” Reforms: Safety Theatre, Power Grab – Environmental Sustainability – Nicotine – Opportunities – FDA Continues War on Vaping, Now with Fifth Circuit Help – NJOY Sues FDA Over Delayed Ruling on Flavored Disposable Vapes – Summer Reading: Tobacco Harm Reduction – Vape ban could backfire, industry players say – Time to get real on taxing cigarettes and restricting vapes – How Australia Is Failing People With Mental Illness Who Smoke – What’s next — sugar, alcohol? PSM chairman says vape ban sets dangerous precedent – Tobacco Lawsuits: USA

Parliament Matters 3

Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes

Ashley Dalton talked up the Tobacco and Vapes Bill as part of the 10-Year Health Plan debate, claiming the “landmark” legislation will end tobacco sales. In the final debate prior to the MPs lovely summer holidays, Labour’s  Phil Brickell and Lucy Powell and the Conservative’s Bob Blackman all spoke about vaping – but only focussed on negative aspects, not the success experienced combatting adult levels of smoking.

Paulo Freire can redefine Tobacco Control

Claudio Teixeira, Dispatches From the Editor’s Desk

In the cold early hours of São Paulo, a middle-aged man leans against the side wall of a public hospital. He wears an oversized coat draped over his shoulders. His shoes are worn. In his hand, he clutches a plastic bag that sometimes fills with wind like an improvised lung. Between coughs and shallow breaths, he lights a cigarette. He coughs, swallows hard, lights it again. Between his trembling hands, the cigarette goes out once more. He looks around. He looks into the bag. The gesture is almost clandestine. He carries medical test results in that transparent plastic bag as if transporting his own fate. Or sentence.

A full guide to vape aerosols: Post 9, environmental aerosols (part 2)

Roberto Sussman, Roberto’s Substack

This 9th Substack post expands the previous 8th post by reviewing the results of two studies: one looking at the chemical composition of exhaled vape aerosol, the other discussing biomarkers of exposed bystanders. So far, all studies (even those methodologically questionable) do not provide robust evidence of concerning aerosol toxicity or health effects from bystander exposure to aerosol exhaled by vapers.

The take away message: the effects of indoor vaping in non-smoking environments is almost the same (and is hard to distinguish) from same environments if vaping had not happened.

Experts Urge Modernization Of Public Health Through Risk Reduction Strategies

The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), Scoop

Health policy experts and advocates are calling for a fundamental change in how public health addresses substance use. For decades, abstinence has been positioned as the primary solution to reduce harm, but growing evidence suggests that this approach is often unrealistic, exclusionary, and ultimately ineffective for many individuals.

Abstinence-only models rely on the assumption that people can and will completely stop harmful behaviors. In practice, this assumption fails to account for the complexities of real-life circumstances.

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Two From Alan Gor, Australia Let’s Improve Vaping Education (A.L.I.V.E.)

A Day in the Life of a Black-Market Vape Dealer

A satirical stroll through the consequences of prohibition Morning:

alarm, espresso, inventory audit

He wakes at 6:15, bleary-eyed and entrepreneurial. Not because he loves spreadsheets, he doesn’t, but because the margins on nicotine salts are a math problem he can’t ignore. He pours coffee into a mug that says “LEGITIMATE BUSINESS OWNER” (the irony makes him feel civic), flips open a spreadsheet named definitely_not_illegal_inventory.xlsx, and begins his morning audit.

Australia’s Vaping “Health” Reforms: Safety Theatre, Power Grab

Australia’s latest vaping amendments aren’t about keeping people safe. They’re about control, handing bureaucrats new powers, silencing inconvenient voices, and choking off legal options so the black market keeps doing a roaring trade. Meanwhile, smokers and vapers bear the costs.

Here’s the plain-English breakdown of what’s really going on.

Two From Skip Murray, Skip’s Corner – Let’s Talk!

Environmental Sustainability

Vaping, Harm Reduction, and Environmental Sustainability: Towards an Ethical and Responsible Vision: A reflection based on experience and research on how tobacco harm reduction can go hand in hand with responsible waste management and the circular economy.

Aylen Van Isseldyk is an activist and expert in the field of vaping, originally from Argentina, known for her work in tobacco harm reduction and environmental sustainability. She is the founder of Circular Vape Recycle, a global research project that studies the environmental impact of vaping devices, integrating perspectives from bioethics, harm reduction, and the circular economy.

Nicotine – Opportunities

You can quickly find updates since the last edition by looking for “*NEW*.

Reminder: I cannot know which journal submission requests are from reputable entities. I include conferences I find that might be of interest to people in the nicotine space, some of which may not have nicotine on the agenda.

FDA Continues War on Vaping, Now with Fifth Circuit Help

Jim McDonald, Vaping 360

Despite President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “save vaping,” the FDA doesn’t appear to have changed course on vaping regulation and enforcement since Trump’s inauguration.

The agency has issued numerous marketing denial orders (MDOs) since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration—all except one going to small U.S. manufacturers. The FDA has also increased enforcement actions against vape imports, and continues to fight legal challenges against its decisions, now armed with Supreme Court approval of its shifting policy standards.

NJOY Sues FDA Over Delayed Ruling on Flavored Disposable Vapes

2FIRSTS

NJOY, LLC, a subsidiary of Altria, together with several Louisiana-based distributors and retailers, filed a lawsuit on August 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Lafayette Division. The defendants include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Acting Director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) Bret Koplow.

Summer Reading: Tobacco Harm Reduction

Christina Smith, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

As the summer heats up, heated debates about tobacco harm reduction (THR) have millions of consumers sweating. While smokers are desperately searching for ways to kick their deadly habit, policymakers have doubled-down on onerous restrictions that curtail the availability of reduced-risk products and fuel black markets. It’s time to turn down the thermostat and chill out with some cool-headed solutions and science, rather than misinformation and scare tactics.

THR products like vapes, pouches, and heated tobacco are—as the name suggests—less harmful alternatives to traditional cigarettes. More than 480,000 deaths occur annually in the United States from smoking. This amounts to about one out of every six deaths in the U.S. each year. A conventional cigarette contains more than 6,000 ingredients which, when burned, release more than 7,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogens, including arsenic, formaldehyde, lead, and tar. Unsurprisingly, traditional cigarette use is associated with a host of diseases and chronic illnesses.

Vape ban could backfire, industry players say

Business Times

A nationwide vape ban could harm public health, livelihoods and drive consumers to the black market, the Malaysian Organisation of Vape Entity (MOVE) said. Move president Samsul Kamal Ariffin cautioned that banning vape outright would not remove demand, but instead push consumers toward unregulated alternatives.

The Health Ministry has confirmed that an expert committee is reviewing the implications of a ban, including its economic and public health impact. Several states such as Johor, Kelantan, Perlis and Pahang have suspended the issuance of new vape licences, fuelling speculation that a broader prohibition could soon be implemented.

Time to get real on taxing cigarettes and restricting vapes

Ross Fitzgerald, Pearls And Irritations

Australia’s cigarettes are now the most expensive in the world. Excise has been increased cumulatively by over 340% in the past 20 years, clearly helping to depress consumption for many years.

But the effect of sky-high prices on cigarette consumption in recent years is less certain as smokers switched increasingly to much less expensive illegal supplies. Excise will be increased by an additional 5% in Australia on 1 September 2025.

The unintended negative consequences of the exceedingly high cigarette prices have been staggering. The independent economist, Chris Richardson, recently estimated that the revenue generated for the federal government may have been cut by as much as $10 billion annually.

How Australia Is Failing People With Mental Illness Who Smoke

Lindsey Stroud, Tobacco Harm Reduction 101

A new study published in Health Expectations is providing important insight into smoking cessation among people diagnosed with mental illness. The researchers set out to explore how individuals with mental health conditions experience tobacco use and quitting, why they smoke, what motivates them to stop, and what forms of support they find helpful or lacking. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 17 adults in Queensland – all of whom had a mental health diagnosis and at least one quit attempt in the past five years – the study highlights the complex interplay between tobacco use, mental health, and recovery.

What’s next — sugar, alcohol? PSM chairman says vape ban sets dangerous precedent

Malay Mail

Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) chairman Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj today said that a ban on the sale and use of vape products in Malaysia would amount to criminalising personal habits. Dr Jeyakumar said the government’s proposed ban represented an over-reach of state authority.

“Put bluntly, an individual should have the right to engage in an activity even if it is bad for his/her health, as long as that activity does not adversely affect others,” he said in a statement. “The state can advise, cajole and persuade him or her but it should not coerce the individual to live ‘healthily’ by criminalising that activity,” he added.

Tobacco Lawsuits: USA

Tobacco Insider

Altria’s NJOY LLC subsidiary, together with retailers with presence in the state of Louisiana, initiated legal proceedings against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including officials such as FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The lawsuit, filed on August 21, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana1, concerns FDA’s protracted delay in ruling on NJOY’s appeal regarding the marketing denial orders (MDOs) issued by the U.S. FDA for NJOY flavored vapes – including Blue/Blackberry, Watermelon and Tropical Twist flavors. NJOY states that these products are identical in composition to previously approved tobacco and menthol variants. NJOY contends that the delay significantly exceeds statutory review period and has caused illicit flavored products to proliferate in the market.

On this day…2023

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

#COP10 documents guide:

FCTC/COP/10/9 – COPWatch

To continue the Copwatch guide to documents being provided to ‘educate’ national delegations at the COP10 conference in November, here is a look at FCTC/COP/10/9, published in July.

This document deals with heated tobacco products but, as we shall see, it is not very impressive. It claims to “examine the challenges that novel and emerging tobacco products are posing for the comprehensive application of the WHO FCTC … as requested in paragraph 3 of decision FCTC/COP8/(22).”

WHO Call To Ban Flavoured Vapes

A Bitter Attack On Liberty – ecigclick

IN AN air-conditioned convention centre in Panama, the future of vaping and its global impact on tobacco consumption will be shaped by a group who want e-cigarettes banned.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) made this position clear, when it gave India a Special Award by its Director General for prohibiting vaping in 2019.

Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World

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