Vapers Digest 28th November
Tuesday’s News at a glance:
Call for Input and Collaboration – Higher e-cig nicotine levels linked to more teen smoking – Indonesia, where smoking is widespread, just placed tough restrictions on e-cigarettes – Vape Expo Japan Brings A Boom To Vaping Industry – Smugglers used dark web to sell drugs and snus across Finland – Country with Massive Smoking Rate, Rejects Science of Vaping – Harry’s Blog 41: Read All About It! – The Big Vape Lobby strikes again – Vanderbilt researchers test nicotine patches to treat early memory loss – NSP Daily Digest
Call for Input and Collaboration
Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
Health professionals, researchers and regulators agree that smoking, the consumption of combustible tobacco, is a leading cause of death, disease and disability. The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World’s (FSFW) background and broad areas of investment and action have been described in The Lancet, and are outlined on our website.
FSFW’s research priorities focus on smoking cessation, smoking harm reduction and alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers, and are being developed in consultation with the public health community and other relevant experts in an open and transparent manner. Over the past few months, we have been listening, reading and engaging with experts in one-on-one discussions at an FSFW research symposium in London (October 2017), and in forums including the Food and Drug Law Institute Conference in Washington, D.C. (October 2017), the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa, USA (October 2017) and the E-Cigarette Summit in London (November 2017).
Higher e-cig nicotine levels linked to more teen smoking
Tanya Albert Henry, AMA Wire
If your teen patients or their parents think electronic cigarettes may be a better option for high-school students than traditional combustible cigarettes, new evidence suggests they need to think again.
A study published online in JAMA Pediatrics showed that the higher the nicotine concentration in the e-cigarettes high school students used, the greater the chance those teens increased the frequency and intensity of combustible cigarettes or vaping in the future. The uptick can begin in just a six-month period.
Researchers’ findings are based on the results of following 181 students, split almost evenly between boys and girls, from 10 high schools in the Los Angeles area. The students were surveyed during the spring of 10th grade and participated in a follow-up in the fall of 11th grade.
Indonesia, where smoking is widespread, just placed tough restrictions on e-cigarettes
Vincent Bevins, Washington Post
Indonesia is placing prohibitive restrictions on the sale of e-cigarette materials, and Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita last week offered an easy solution for the growing number of citizens using the products.
They can just “become regular smokers,” he told local newspaper Kompas, a seemingly puzzling statement for a government official in a country where over 200,000 people already die of tobacco-related causes each year.
But observers of politics in the world’s fourth most populous country say this is nothing new, and that because of the power of the tobacco industry here, Indonesia lags far behind rest of the world in controlling use, and suffers from severe health problems as a result.
Vape Expo Japan Brings A Boom To Vaping Industry
Markets Insider
As the neighbouring country of Japan, South Korea government took actions to control smoking well in common with Japan. Firstly, both countries increased tax on cigarette sales, making an effort to establish a non-smoking society. Secondly, they are continuously enlarging the non-smoking areas. Additionally, more smokers are acknowledging that e-cig could replace a traditional cigarette. These are some factors affecting growth of e-cig market. Therefore, Eastern-Asian market is witnessing a steady growth.
To promote vape culture and persuade more people to give up smoking, Vape Expo Japan, the first vape exhibition in Japan, will be held in Hall 3 of Intex Osaka between 29 March to 31 March, 2018. It is estimated that about 180 exhibitors from 25 countries and regions will attend the exhibition.
Smugglers used dark web to sell drugs and snus across Finland
YLE
Police and customs officials in Oulu said they have remanded in custody two individuals suspected of illegally importing and distributing doping and other drugs, as well as the smokeless tobacco product snus.
Officials announced on Monday that the suspects had sold more than 50,000 doping tablets, nearly 8,000 narcotic drug pills and the equivalent of more than 16 litres in doping ampoule doses. The suspects also smuggled and sold snus, the banned smokeless tobacco product, officials said.
The suspects used the dark web on the anonymous Tor network to acquire and distribute the illegal substances, according to officials. The drugs were allegedly distributed across the country primarily by post from Oulu and the northern city of Tornio.
Country with Massive Smoking Rate, Rejects Science of Vaping
Steve Birr, Daily Vaper
Officials in Indonesia, a country with one of the highest smoking rates in the world, are moving forward with onerous laws on electronic cigarettes that will effectively kill the industry.
Indonesia’s Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita rankled public health advocates last week when he told former smokers in the country who use a vapor product to just “become regular smokers.” The forthcoming regulatory crackdown on e-cigarettes requires retailers to acquire a number of special government licenses to legally sell vapor products, reports The Washington Post.
Vendors say the process will likely take years and sets up the industry to fail.
“These are standards we’ll never be able to meet,” Rhomedal, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Personal Vaporizer Association, told WaPo. “It will really hurt both small businesses and consumers in our sector.”
Roughly 60 percent of males in the country smoke cigarettes, the highest rate in the world, as do more than 5 million children. More than 200,000 people die from smoking related illnesses each year in Indonesia. Experts say big tobacco companies in the region have a hold on government officials.
Millions of lives are affected by smoking. See how we hope research will create a #SmokeFreeWorld https://t.co/yphamWmS0K pic.twitter.com/1JzxUtGobh
— Smoke-Free World (@SmokeFreeFdn) October 20, 2017
Harry’s Blog 41: Read All About It!
Harry Shapiro, NSP
You don’t have to be a medical insider to understand that smoking a substance that causes cancer is a lot more damaging than smoking one that doesn’t.
Yet health authorities here, by threatening to put people in prison for possessing nicotine, have in effect banned electronic cigarettes, which offer a much safer way for addicted smokers to get their nicotine hit. It’s the nicotine that’s addictive, apparently (I wouldn’t know, having never smoked), not the tobacco, which can kill you.
This is a shameful stain on Australia’s otherwise excellent reputation for public health policies. Sure, we may find in 20 years that e-cigarettes have a horrible side effect, but so may mobile phones and we’re not banning them.
About 15,000 Australians die a year from smoking-related illnesses and about 110 die from overdosing on over-the counter tablets that contain codeine.
Guess which product the federal government is restricting from February next year? That’s right: people with runny noses and toothaches are going to have to traipse off to the local doctor to get a script (which will cost Medicare $37.05 each — thank you, taxpayers) for drugs as dangerous as Demazin and Panadeine. Remember, folks: methadone injecting rooms are OK but, by golly, don’t dare buy an e-cigarette.
The Big Vape Lobby strikes again
Fergus Mason, VapingPost
If you’re a vaper, and you enjoy feeling like a villain, you’re going to love the article Liza Gross wrote about the first US E-Cig Summit last week. It has it all – links to the tobacco industry, playing down health risks and attacking anyone who disagrees. Gross has put together one of the longest, most wide-ranging condemnations of vaping I’ve seen in a while.
The hook for Gross’s article was how badly the E-Cig Summit audience treated one of the speakers, and how this shows that “Big Vape is copying Big Tobacco’s playbook”. Frankly, it was an alarming read, and of course it’s being held up as evidence that vaping is just the next campaign in the long war against the tobacco companies. For example, notorious anti-vaping activist Stanton Glantz mentioned it on his blog. Lots of people in the tobacco control article have made very enthusiastic noises about this article.
Unfortunately there’s just one slight problem with it – the vast majority of it is total nonsense, and the bits that are true are the parts that Gross is trying to attack. In fact all the article’s alarmist claims about the dangers of vaping are well past their sell by date, and the whole narrative it presents is based on something that is, to put it mildly, not entirely true.
Vanderbilt researchers test nicotine patches to treat early memory loss
Holly Fletcher, Tennessean
Researchers are trying to treat early stage memory loss with nicotine patches to prevent those diagnosed from moving into full-blown Alzheimer’s.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center is collaborating with the University of Southern California on a two-year trial to see if mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, can be treated, possibly preventing those people from moving into more progressive forms of memory loss.
There are more than 8 million Americans with an MCI diagnosis.
“We believe that many if not most of the patients, if untreated, will go on to full-blown Alzheimers disease or something similar,” said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine at VUMC and national directory of the study. “What we’d like to do with this treatment is see if we can both improve memory loss and prolong the period in which they are functioning well.”
E-Cigarette Summit #5
Resources
To access the 2017 presentations, please click on the presenters name below – we are awaiting updated versions of a couple of the presenters and hope to add these by the end of this week.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World
The Scottish Government has just announced that vaping is safer than smoking.