Vapers Digest 26th May
Wednesday’s News at a glance:
TWO from Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
Dutch Zealot Wants Vapes Banned
Wanda de Kanter and a handful of anti-harm reduction lobbyists want the Netherlands to ban or severely restrict all forms of reduced harm nicotine products like electronic cigarettes. They have called upon the Dutch government to introduce harsh legislation because vaping leads children into smoking, they say, using findings from junk research.Wanda de Kanter and a handful of anti-harm reduction lobbyists want the Netherlands to ban or severely restrict all forms of reduced harm nicotine products like electronic cigarettes. They have called upon the Dutch government to introduce harsh legislation because vaping leads children into smoking, they say, using findings from junk research.
WHO Denies Ecig Reality
The World Health Organization has issued a press release denying the evidenced reality that vaping is safer than smoking and helps smokers quit. The ridiculous statement has been described as “completely infantile and anti-scientific abstinence-only propaganda” by a leading tobacco harm reduction expert.
Why an Impending Flavor Ban in the Netherlands Matters for All Vapers
Michael Landl, Filter Magazine
Back in June 2020, the Dutch State Secretary for Health, Paul Blokhuis, announced that he wanted to ban all non-tobacco vape flavours in the Netherlands. Even though consumers raised their voices and expressed their outrage against the ban, the Dutch government is now pushing on with its plan—ignoring impacted citizens and health experts alike.
The empirical evidence is clear: anti-vaping policies are pro-tobacco policies
Chris Snowdon, IEA
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics this week looked a ban on e-cigarette flavours implemented in San Francisco on 1 January 2019. The ban was supposed to make e-cigarettes less appealing to young people. And so it did, but with the unintended consequence that high school students smoked more instead. After the ban came into effect, the youth of San Francisco were more than twice as likely to smoke than their counterparts in other districts. As the author noted: “This raises concerns that reducing access to flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems may motivate youths who would otherwise vape to substitute smoking.”
Politicians and regulators just can’t stop thinking of the children
Barnaby Page, Tobacco Intelligence
The news that Florida is planning to increase the purchase age for tobacco products to 21 – reported by our sister website ECigIntelligence this week – may seem bemusing, given that the same minimum age has been mandated by federal law right across the United States for well over a year. But it’s another clear indication (if another was needed) of just how much the issues of youth smoking and youth vaping dominate the minds of politicians and regulators alike.
Ban on flavored vaping may have led teens to cigarettes, study suggests
Michael Greenwood, Yale News
When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure banning the sale of flavored tobacco products in 2018, public health advocates celebrated. After all, tobacco use poses a significant threat to public health and health equity, and flavors are particularly attractive to youth.
A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Youth Smoking
Abigail S. Friedman, PhD, JAMA Pediatrics
Restrictions on flavored tobacco product sales are increasingly popular; 5 US states and hundreds of localities have implemented them in the past few years alone. Yet only 1 study,1 to my knowledge, has considered how complete flavor bans applying to electronic nicotine delivery systems and combustible tobacco products, without retailer exemptions, are associated with tobacco use. A convenience sample of residents of San Francisco, California, aged 18 to 34 years who had ever used a tobacco product showed significant reductions in any tobacco use following the city’s flavor ban, with a marginally significant increase in combustible cigarette use (smoking) among those aged 18 to 24 years.1 Absent a comparison group, however, it is impossible to ascertain if preexisting trends could have driven these findings.
San Francisco’s Flavored Vape Ban Linked to More Teen Smoking, Study Finds
Ed Cara, Gizmodo
A 2018 ban on flavored tobacco products in San Francisco may have had some unintended consequences, new research this week suggests. The study found that high school teens were more likely to take up smoking after the ban than those living elsewhere.
On this Day…2015
Smoking, Vaping and Nicotine
When I requested an interview with Zeller, I didn’t expect him to tip his hat on which direction he wanted the center to go, and he didn’t. Indeed, one of the points he made was that the F.D.A. was conducting a great deal of scientific research — more than 50 studies in all, he said — aimed at generating the evidence needed to better understand where to place e-cigarettes along what he calls “the continuum of risk.”
Tobacco is still more harmful than E-Cigarette
The World Health Organization reported that three years ago the number of smokers worldwide increased to almost one billion. This is mostly due to population growth but even so, the negative effects of smoking on human health should not be neglected and prompt more people to quit.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World
