Vapers Digest 27th April

Monday’s News at a glance:

CoEHAR Replica study: “Claim that e-cigarette aerosols make cancer cells more resistant to chemotherapy debunked!” ~ EU Regulatory Observatory: The TTD at a Crossroads ~ The U.K. had the world’s most credible tobacco harm-reduction playbook, but Parliament just tore it up ~ Research consistently shows e-cigarettes help smokers quit. When will U.S. policy catch up? ~ When You Remove the Alternative, People Go Back to Cigarettes ~ The Human Side of the Numbers: Why Empathy is the Missing Link in Public Health ~ Dual Use of Cigarettes & E-Cigarettes: A Scientific Journal Exchange ~ OMG I feel sorry for Tobacco Control ~ Bring Smokeless Tobacco Sticks to America ~ Swedes still face 400% tax hike on pouches with EU’s latest TED revision ~ BENOIT: Canada’s government-funded anti-vaping lobby is misleading the public on youth vaping ~ Nicotine vapes linked to higher quit rates and lower cigarette use, major new review finds ~ Cigarette ban and tougher rules for e-cigs in the UK – ”Doing more harm than good” ~ Ten reasons to dislike the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill ~ The Tobacco Bill and the death of consumer choice ~ The U.K. banned tobacco products for anyone born after 2008. Here’s what could go wrong. ~ STUB IT OUT Flavoured vape ban debated as move could stop teens using nicotine pouches but fears it’ll drive ex-smokers back to cigs ~ Former GOP Sen Explains Key Obstacle To Combatting Illicit Nicotine Crisis ~ OPINION: Why Trump’s FDA Is Finally Fixing the Flavored Vape Disaster… And Why the Critics Are Dead Wrong ~ Renegade Regulator | FDA Chief Blocks White House Push for Flavors | RegWatch ~ ATNF Panel Focuses on Harm Reduction for Adult Smokers ~ ATNF Explores Shifting Dialogue in Tobacco Harm Reduction ~ PICTURING PROGRESS | Building the Global Tobacco Harm Reduction Image Library

CoEHAR Replica study: “Claim that e-cigarette aerosols make cancer cells more resistant to chemotherapy debunked!”

Center of Excellence for the acceleration of Harm Reduction (CoEHAR)

A multicenter replication study conducted by CoEHAR researchers, under the Replica project, reports no consistent evidence that e-cigarette aerosols reduce chemotherapy sensitivity in laboratory models of head and neck cancer.

CoEHAR latest replication study revisits a high-profile concern in cancer research: the possibility that exposure to e-cigarette aerosols may make head and neck cancer cells more resistant to treatment with cisplatin, one of the most commonly used chemotherapeutic agents for these tumors.

EU Regulatory Observatory: The TTD at a Crossroads

Dr. Christopher Snowdon, Epic Center

This briefing examines whether the proposed revision of the Tobacco Taxation Directive (TTD) is a genuine risk-proportionate reform or simply a revenue grab that undermines public health goals.

Focusing on the European Commission’s July 2025 proposal, the paper analyses the sharp rise in minimum excise taxes on cigarettes (from €90 to €200 per 1,000 by 2032) and the introduction of new minimum taxes on lower-risk nicotine products such as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.

The U.K. had the world’s most credible tobacco harm-reduction playbook, but Parliament just tore it up

Jeffrey S. Smith, RStreet

On Monday, the House of Lords gave its final nod to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill—“landmark” legislation that will permanently prohibit anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009, from ever legally buying a cigarette. Once the bill gets royal assent from King Charles III, ministers will have sweeping new powers to regulate tobacco, vaping, and nicotine products, including flavors and packaging. Health Minister Gillian Merron called it “the most significant public health intervention in a generation.” While it may be significant, it may also strip the United Kingdom of its status as a model for reducing smoking-related death through tobacco harm reduction.

Research consistently shows e-cigarettes help smokers quit. When will U.S. policy catch up?

Guy Bentley, Reason

A sweeping new overview of the evidence on e-cigarettes and smoking cessation, published in the journal Addiction by researchers at the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London, should put to rest any remaining doubts over whether e-cigarettes help smokers quit. They do.

Two From Alan Gor

When You Remove the Alternative, People Go Back to Cigarettes

A paper published in the American Journal of Health Economics examined something policymakers often prefer not to look at too closely: what actually happens when access to safer nicotine alternatives is restricted. The study, E-cigarette Flavour Restrictions’ Effects on Tobacco Product Sales, analysed real-world sales data following flavour bans. Its core question was simple: if you take away flavoured vaping products, what do people do instead?

The Human Side of the Numbers: Why Empathy is the Missing Link in Public Health

The conversation around public health is often framed in abstractions—rates, trends, targets, and projections. It is a language designed for scale, for institutions, for systems that must manage entire populations. But in that process, something essential is stripped away. The individual disappears, replaced by a data point. The story is flattened into a statistic. What is gained in clarity is often lost in meaning.

Bring Smokeless Tobacco Sticks to America

Jason Reed, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Cigarette smoking is back in vogue. Gen Z and Hollywood celebrities like the Biebers are embracing the deadly habit, reintroducing a once-declining practice back into American culture. At a time when vapes and nicotine pouches are widely available—and far less harmful— alternatives, cigarettes are nonetheless regaining visibility among some of the hottest young stars.

Swedes still face 400% tax hike on pouches with EU’s latest TED revision

SnusFormet

A new compromise on revising the EU’s Tobacco Excise Directive (TED) has emerged. The latest TED revision would raise taxes paid by Swedish nicotine pouch consumers by 400 percent over current levels.

The leaked draft document reviewed by Snusforumet and dated 17 April 2026 calls for a minimum tax rate of €95 per kilogram that would be phased in by 2032.

BENOIT: Canada’s government-funded anti-vaping lobby is misleading the public on youth vaping

Sabine Benoit, Western Standard

Canadians expect that doctors and non-profit organizations have their best interests at heart and are driven by data and research. Unfortunately, some doctors and non-profit organizations breach that trust with Canadians, and one of those times came in the form of a press conference held on Parliament Hill recently. The Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control, made up of various organizations and, at this press conference, included a doctor, stood in front of Canadians and demanded that the Minister of Health ban vape flavours to help save the children from vaping. The problem is that the data and the analysis they presented were wrong.

Click to visit Danish Vapers Association

Nicotine vapes linked to higher quit rates and lower cigarette use, major new review finds

Ali Anderson, Clearing The Air

Nicotine vapes were associated with significantly higher quit rates than no vaping at multiple time points

People using vapes also smoked fewer cigarettes per day, with consistent reductions across studies

Evidence from randomised controlled trials was rated “high” for both quitting and reduction outcomes

Results comparing vapes with nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) were mixed and not always statistically significant

Cigarette ban and tougher rules for e-cigs in the UK – ”Doing more harm than good”

Stefan Mathisson, Vejpkollen

The UK’s new generational ban on cigarette purchases and tighter restrictions on e-cigarettes are being called a “historic” decision by both government and health groups. But for consumer activist Martin Cullip, there are serious risks that the new laws will have the opposite effect:

– The black market will of course be bigger than ever. And any measure that limits the ability to vape, makes it harder for smokers to switch to less harmful alternatives,” he told Vejpkollen.

Ten reasons to dislike the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Clive Bates, The Counterfactual by Clive Bates

Ten reasons to dislike the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill

1] The headline measure – the Tobacco Free Generation – is worthless as a public health measure. It solves a problem that is already solved by other, less coercive means; the migration of smoking to safer non-combustible nicotine products, notably among young people who will gradually age into the population. Technology is ahead of prohibitive age restrictions in ending the cigarette era. Even people who take up smoking as teenagers today will have plenty of options to switch to safer products well before the long-term damage from smoking begins to accumulate from age 40 onwards. I expect hardly anyone born after 2008 to die from smoking-related disease because the options to avoid it will be pervasive.

The Tobacco Bill and the death of consumer choice

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu, Daily Friend

World Consumer Rights Day, which was marked recently on 15 March, was little cause for celebration in South Africa, where the direction of policy continues to raise serious concerns about growing restrictions on consumer choice across a number of fronts.

The U.K. banned tobacco products for anyone born after 2008. Here’s what could go wrong.

Jacob Grier, MS Now

In 1604, King James I of England wrote one of history’s most fervent anti-smoking tracts in response to the rising popularity of tobacco imported from the New World. Smoking, he concluded, was a “custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.” [sic]

King James would have loved the new law set to be approved by King Charles III establishing a new generation in the United Kingdom that will be forbidden from purchasing tobacco for their entire lives. Specifically, the law makes it an offense to sell cigarettes, cigars, pipe or chewing tobacco, as well as various other forms of tobacco leaf, to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009.

STUB IT OUT Flavoured vape ban debated as move could stop teens using nicotine pouches but fears it’ll drive ex-smokers back to cigs

Colm Burke, David Cullinane, The Irish Sun

NEW legislation is set to come in banning the use of flavoured vapes.

Lawmakers insist that the smoking alternatives are deliberately targeting young people by making the devices more attractive to teens.

The vaping industry has vowed to follow every guideline set down by the Government, but insist the flavours have helped to keep former smokers off the dreaded fags.

Former GOP Sen Explains Key Obstacle To Combatting Illicit Nicotine Crisis

Justin Bailey, AOL

Former Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr laid out how bureaucratic failure has been an obstacle to fighting an illicit nicotine crisis in the U.S. Wednesday at a Daily Caller Live.

Burr laid out how products flow across national borders in a way they didn’t decades ago in a talk with Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief Amber Duke. He also warned about unelected bureaucrats standing in the way of getting legal alternative nicotine vapes to American shops, calling out the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approach to new products.

OPINION: Why Trump’s FDA Is Finally Fixing the Flavored Vape Disaster… And Why the Critics Are Dead Wrong

Tim Young, The Dallas Express

Look, millions of Americans still smoke. They hate it. They want out. And for years, the best tool to help them kick the habit has been right in front of us: flavored e-cigarettes. Not patches that peel off in the Texas heat, not chalky lozenges or gum that taste like regret – vapes actually work. Study after study backs it up. A landmark 2019 randomized trial in the New England Journal of Medicine found e-cig users were nearly twice as likely to quit smoking for a full year compared to those on nicotine replacement therapy (18 percent versus 9.9 percent). Cochrane reviews call the evidence “high certainty”: nicotine vapes beat patches and gums hands down.

Renegade Regulator | FDA Chief Blocks White House Push for Flavors | RegWatch

Brent Stafford, Regulator Watch

A Wall Street Journal exclusive has raised serious questions about whether the White House and FDA are truly aligned on flavored vape approvals.

The White House is reportedly pushing to allow more flavored vaping products on the market, yet FDA Commissioner Marty Makary blocked the move, preventing the authorization of menthol, mango, and blueberry flavored products from Los Angeles-based vape maker Glas. All this despite the FDA’s own tobacco scientists at the Center for Tobacco Products recommending authorization.

Two From Tobacco Reporter

ATNF Panel Focuses on Harm Reduction for Adult Smokers

At the American Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (ATNF), the panel titled “Adults Who Smoke: The Beneficiaries of Harm Reduction Reform” focused squarely on adult smokers as the primary population that stands to benefit from expanded access to reduced-risk nicotine alternatives. Moderated by Dr. Jasjit Ahluwalia, a professor at Brown University, the discussion challenged prevailing narratives in public health, particularly the strong emphasis on eliminating all nicotine use and the skepticism toward dual use. Ahluwalia argued that quitting smoking is often a process rather than a single event, and that transitional behaviors—such as using both cigarettes and alternatives—should not be automatically dismissed if they move individuals toward lower-risk products.

ATNF Explores Shifting Dialogue in Tobacco Harm Reduction

At the American Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (ATNF), the panel titled “From ‘You Can’t Be Here’ to ‘We Need to Talk’” focused on the evolving relationship between public health advocates and the tobacco and nicotine industry, highlighting a gradual shift from outright exclusion toward cautious engagement. Moderated by Joe Gitchell, the CEO of PinneyAssociates, the discussion centered on the importance of dialogue across opposing viewpoints, with panelists reflecting on how entrenched positions, mistrust, and policy rigidity have slowed progress in reducing smoking-related harm.

PICTURING PROGRESS | Building the Global Tobacco Harm Reduction Image Library

Global Forum on Nicotine

In this episode of GFN Insights, Jon Derricott from Knowledge Action Change (KAC) joins Joanna Junak to discuss the development of the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) image library.

Hosted on Flickr, this unique initiative aims to document the rapidly evolving world of tobacco and nicotine products. From modern vape shops to traditional tobacconists and local products like gutka or negrimbo, the library serves as a vital, royalty-free resource for activists, journalists, and presenters worldwide.

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