Vapers Digest 29th April
Monday’s News at a glance:
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill echo chamber – Vaping prohibition has failed, experts say – Reefer Madness Finds A New Home With Nicotine – Media Watch: CBC on Nicotine Pouches – NNA Writes to Regulatory Policy Committee – Experts reacted to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill – How To Change Health Policy Strategies? – Protectionists Have Weaponized the Flavored Vape Ban – Philip Morris faces key test with US heated tobacco push – Biden Abandons Disastrous Menthol Prohibition Plan – Addressing the Delay in Menthol Cigarette Ban
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill echo chamber
Christopher Snowdon
When I mentioned the ludicrously one-sided Tobacco and Vapes Bill committee last week, I speculated about who would be called to give ‘evidence’…
We shall see who gives oral evidence next week. I would guess it’ll be Debs from ASH plus someone from the Department of Health, a local public health director and one of the other sockpuppet NGOs like FRESH.
The list has now been published. Sure enough, Debs will be first up to speak tomorrow morning alongside Sheila Duffy (ASH Scotland) and someone from Cancer Research UK (which funds ASH). Ailsa Rutter (CEO of FRESH) will appear in the afternoon alongside local public health director half-wit Greg Fell and a host of prohibitionist academics including Robert West, Linda Bauld and Ann McNeill.
Vaping prohibition has failed, experts say
Colin Mendelsohn
HARSH GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS on vaping products amount to prohibition and have created “an extraordinarily large, uncontrollable, and dangerous black market”. Attempts to restrict the market further will almost certainly fail according to leading experts in criminology and law enforcement, Dr James Martin and Mr Rohan Pike.
Dr Martin is a Deakin University criminologist, with special expertise in illicit markets and criminal supply networks. Rohan Pike is a law enforcement consultant who established the first Tobacco Strike Team which later expanded into becoming the Illicit Tobacco Task Force. Both have made submissions to the Senate Inquiry into Vaping (see below).
Reefer Madness Finds A New Home …
With Nicotine – Skip Murray
A rerun of the war on drugs is being played. Reefer Madness is knocking on nicotine’s door.
By now, the adverse effects of the “war on drugs” are well known. As Christopher Moraff said, the strategy can best be summed up as the term was used “to divert attention from the fact that the conflict to prevent illicit drug use through violence is a war on people, not a war on drugs.”
The examples of a drug-related war on people are legion. Jaylin Hughes was left paralyzed, Bryce Masters ended up brain-damaged, and Ryan Wilson didn’t survive after encounters with the police over suspected cannabis use.
It’s literally incredible. The world’s leading public health authority, @WHO, is now getting regularly lit up by @CommunityNotes for brazen and calculated deceits about nicotine vaping. Let’s take a close look.
THREAD 🪡 pic.twitter.com/jnyZ9tyJOb— American Vapor Manufacturers (@VaporAmerican) April 27, 2024
Media Watch: CBC on Nicotine Pouches
Jospeh Hart
The anti-ZONNIC nicotine pouch agenda just keeps going. This time, CBC is getting in on the act, with hilarious results.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has long been considered the country’s most biased news source. It’s effectively a mouthpiece for state propaganda, which is no surprise when you consider government funding makes up two-thirds of its revenues.
One could be forgiven for thinking that journalistic integrity could still prevail. However, as an excellent article in The Hub argues, the perception that this once venerable public broadcaster is failing Canadian citizens is growing by the year.
Three from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes:
NNA Writes to Regulatory Policy Comm.
The New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) consumer charity has written to the Regulatory Policy Committee to express its concerns about the Impact Assessment for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The NNA says that it believes that the impact assessment “does not adequately reflect the balance of benefits and detriments and will have the effect of supporting legislation for which there is an extremely weak rationale and major scope for unintended consequences.”
The charity states: “We wish to comment on the Impact Assessment for Tobacco and Vapes Bill and the RPC’s “green rating” for this analysis. We believe the fundamentals are flawed and that the assessment does not provide legislators with a reasonable or informative account of the legislation’s costs and benefits…..”
Experts reacted to Tobacco and Vapes Bill
The Government now moves its Tobacco and Vapes Bill towards implementation following its successful debate and vote in the House of Commons. Despite a handful of Conservative MPs rejecting the Bill, the Government won the day with the support of opposition parties. Scientists have given their reactions to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
Professor Stephen Holgate, MRC Clinical Professor Of Immunopharmacology & Honorary Consultant Physician, University of Southampton, said: “Smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the UK. In adults aged 35 and over tobacco smoking causes at least half a million hospital admissions and 75,000 deaths each year….”
How To Change Health Policy Strategies?
A SMOPHED study is to conduct an investigation on vapers and smokers accessing emergency hospital department to inform how we can change public health policy strategies. This is the first study conducted by the CoEHAR institute that will evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of using combustion-free products and their impact on healthcare policies.
How much do smokers burden the national healthcare system? How much would be saved if all smokers switched to low-risk products? These are the questions COEHAR researchers at the University of Catania say they posed for their “important study aimed at analysing the correlation between the health data of patients arriving at hospital emergency department and their smoking habits.”
Protectionists Have Weaponized….
The Flavored Vape Ban – Peter Clark
Disposable e-cigarettes have recently come into the crosshairs of regulators. For example, Arizona state senator T.J. Shope has introduced legislation targeting the flood of flavored vapes from China. There are proposed measures at the federal level for the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on “illegal vapes.”
Why is China exporting so many e-cigarettes to the United States in the first place?
The FDA’s restriction on flavored e-cigarettes left a void in the vaping market because of the popularity of the devices. Not only is non-tobacco-flavored e-juice more appealing, but it has been crucial in helping adults quit smoking by breaking the connection between tobacco and nicotine.
Philip Morris faces key test …
With US heated tobacco push – Emma Rumney
Philip Morris International’s goals for heated tobacco in the United States are reachable, analysts and investors say, even though rivals see limited potential in a market where vaping dominates.
The world’s biggest tobacco company by market value will launch its flagship heated tobacco device IQOS in the U.S. in the second quarter, developing the brand pretty much from scratch.
IQOS is already the top selling heated tobacco device globally and is central to PMI’s efforts to transform its image from a cigarette maker to a company driving the shift to healthier options.
Biden Abandons Menthol Prohibition
Now Washington Needs To Embrace Harm Reduction
In a rare recognition of reality, the Biden Administration today finally agreed to drop their deeply flawed plans to introduce prohibition for Menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. As Americans for Tax Reform has consistently demonstrated, the evidence is overwhelming that this proposal would have done nothing to reduce smoking rates, but would have created a national black market run by international criminal syndicates, drained much needed resources away from law-enforcement, hurt businesses, and cost state and local governments a staggering $6.6 billion.
Addressing the Delay in Menthol Ban
Cliff Douglas
The delay in the finalization of the ban on menthol cigarettes, announced Friday by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, is a setback for public health.
The ban on menthol cigarettes has been in the works for over a decade. In the proposed ban, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited modeling it funded from me and other national tobacco control experts from Georgetown University and the University of Michigan. Our work showed finalizing the ban could save 650,000 deaths by 2060 through greater smoking cessation.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Dutch move ahead nicotine pouch ban
Snusforumet
The Dutch government announced a ban on the sale of nicotine pouches, depriving smokers in the Netherlands of the opportunity to choose a reduced-risk product that could help them quit the deadly habit.
In addition to formally banning the sale of tobacco-free nicotine pouches in the Netherlands, the new rules also prohibit the use of nicotine pouches in places where smoking is currently banned.
The marketing of nicotine pouches with more than 0.035 grams of nicotine has been prohibited in the Netherlands since November 2021.
The FDA Ringfences Smoking …
While the UK Supercharges Quitting – Martin Cullip
On April 14, Tony Dokoupil (co-host of CBS Mornings TV show), highlighted the stark differences between the UK and U.S. regarding tobacco control policy and observed that “[o]ne of us is right and one of us is wrong.”
His commentary was a reaction to the UK government announcing earlier in the week that it planned to supercharge attempts to quit smoking by giving up to one million free vapor products to the five million adults who currently smoke in an initiative dubbed “swap to stop.” Dokoupil rightly identified that “stakes could not be higher because hundreds of thousands of people die every year … because they are smoking.”
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