Vapers Digest 29th April
Wednesday’s News at a glance:
ASH Attacks Keep Britain Tidy ~ Dutch Flavour Ban is Failing ~ Vape Bill Clears Parliament ~ France’s Nicotine Ban Sparks EU Legal Showdown ~ Public health doesn’t depend on quit-or-nothing ~ When Public Health Ignores the Evidence on Heated Tobacco ~ Vaping, Cancer, and Misinformation: CAPHRA Calls for Evidence-Based Public Health Messaging ~ The NHMRC Vaping Review: When “Evidence-Based” Isn’t Neutral ~ The Galileo of Nicotine: When Data Challenges the Priesthood. ~ A Deeper Dive into High School Vaping from the 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey ~ The confusion about “recreational use” of nicotine ~ New Hub Platforms Lived Experiences of Tobacco Harm Reduction ~ Despite Media Cheerleading, Vapes Still Not Shown to Cause Cancer ~ Anti-Nicotine Employment Laws in Some US States are Outrageous ~ US flavoured vape policy thrown into doubt after Trump intervention ~ Inside the Lab with Chris Allen: What Is Actually in Your Vape? ~ Spain moves to tighten sales channels for vapes and nicotine pouches ~ A balanced outcome policy needed for nicotine alternatives ~ The Tech Bros Are All In on Zyn ~ Opinion | Dobson: Missouri Needs One Set of Rules for Tobacco Sales. Right now, it doesn’t have them. ~ Fifth Circuit grapples with flavored vape regulations ~ Nicotine Pouch Panic: How Government Keeps People Smoking ~ BREAKING THE SMOKE | Myths, Bans, and Nicotine Education in Kenya
Three From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
ASH Attacks Keep Britain Tidy
Anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH UK), which demanded the tobacco industry pays for clean-up operations of cigarette waste, is annoyed that the tobacco industry is paying Keep Britain Tidy money towards its clean-up operations. ASH says the move has caused confusion and it was not party to any discussions about the donation.
Dutch Flavour Ban is Failing
The UK Government is being given a stern warning as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill passes into law. An oft-spoken part of the Bill is the gifting of the ability to restrict vape flavours. A new report from Prohibition Does Not Work (PDNW) finds that the Netherlands’ vaping flavour prohibition has “totally undermined any control over the market and failed to achieve its public health goals”.
Vape Bill Clears Parliament
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill has cleared parliament and will become law – banning cigarettes for everyone born after 2008 and potentially banning eliquid flavours. The move has been welcomed by politicians and Action on Smoking and Health (ASH UK) but vape industry experts warn that unintended consequences could lead to increased smoking and a black-market boom.
France’s Nicotine Ban Sparks EU Legal Showdown
Javier Villamor, The European Conservative
France’s decision to criminalise the possession and use of oral nicotine pouches is facing scrutiny in Brussels, with members of the European Parliament asking the Commission to assess whether the ban breaches EU law.
The request marks the first concrete challenge to a policy that has gone further than any other in the bloc. Under rules introduced this month, France has not only banned the sale of oral nicotine pouches but made it an offence to carry or consume them—meaning a product legally bought elsewhere in the EU can trigger penalties the moment someone crosses the border.
Public health doesn’t depend on quit-or-nothing
Ruth Bonita, Robert Beaglehole, Newsroom
Comment: There are still about 300,000 people in New Zealand who smoke, many of whom have tried repeatedly to quit. For these people, policy debates about tobacco control are not abstract – they are about what options are available now.
Despite decades of tobacco control, nearly one billion people worldwide still smoke, and tobacco use continues to cause more than seven million deaths each year. Without new approaches, smoking prevalence is projected to decline only gradually over the coming decades.
When Public Health Ignores the Evidence on Heated Tobacco
Martin Cullip, Real Clear Science
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has renewed modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) authorizations for several IQOS heated tobacco devices for the second time. This is a straightforward public health measure, but it also exposes a rift between regulatory science and many extreme elements of the tobacco control industry.
Vaping, Cancer, and Misinformation: CAPHRA Calls for Evidence-Based Public Health Messaging
Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA)
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) extends sympathy to any young person facing a serious cancer diagnosis and to their family, however tragic personal stories should not be used in ways that blur the vital public health distinction between smoking and regulated lower-risk nicotine alternatives for adults who would otherwise continue smoking.
Two From Alan Gor
The NHMRC Vaping Review: When “Evidence-Based” Isn’t Neutral
The Australian government says this is just a routine “update.” It isn’t. It’s a reset of the narrative, one that risks entrenching the same institutional blind spots that have already shaped Australia’s uniquely hostile stance on vaping.
The Galileo of Nicotine: When Data Challenges the Priesthood.
There is a pattern that repeats itself so reliably that it almost feels like a law of human behaviour. Not a scientific law, not something written into physics or biology, but something embedded in institutions and the people who inhabit them. When a new idea emerges that challenges an established belief system, the first response is rarely curiosity. It is a defence.
A Deeper Dive into High School Vaping from the 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey
Dr. Brad Rodu, Tobacco Truth
I previously took a deep dive into high school vaping data reported in the 2023 National Youth Survey (here). That analysis demonstrated that, contrary to the government narrative, vaping was not an epidemic or crisis threatening to enslave a generation of teens to nicotine. The same can be said today, with even more certainty, based on the FDA’s recently released 2025 data.
The confusion about “recreational use” of nicotine
Jean-François Etter, Nicotine, tobacco and smoking cessation
The expression “recreational use” of nicotine is often used to describe the use of the new, non-combustible nicotine products. This expression should not be accepted without scrutiny, because it feeds the polemics on tobacco harm reduction, as recreational use is often seen as morally or ethically unacceptable, and because the definition of this expression is vague and debatable. It is virtually impossible to find an operational definition of “recreational use”, i.e. a definition that can be easily used in surveys or clinical practice, to draft policies, or to enforce bans, prohibitions and regulations.
Two From Filter
New Hub Platforms Lived Experiences of Tobacco Harm Reduction
Kiran Sidhu
People with lived experience of using safer nicotine products for harm reduction take center stage on a new platform that aims to amplify their voices. THR Global collates real-life testimonies from individuals who have made a potentially life-saving switch. Visitors can read these accounts—organized by country, city, type of safer product used and so on—and submit their own testimonies if applicable.
Every so often, a piece of research emerges that tells a specific audience exactly what it has always wanted to hear. Not because it is robust, well-evidenced or scientifically groundbreaking, but because it confirms a false belief they had already committed to. The latest claim that vaping “likely causes cancer” is a perfect example. And the speed with which it was embraced says less about the science than it does about the ignorance and credulity of those cheering it on.
Joseph Hart, The Daily Pouch
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the injustice of vapers and pouch users paying similar insurance premiums as smokers. Recently on X, I came across something that is even more unfair: US hospitals doing drug tests for nicotine and firing people for being smokers.
It seems so insane that it can’t be true, right? So, let’s take a look at the evidence.
Three From Clearing The Air
US flavoured vape policy thrown into doubt after Trump intervention
Ali Anderson
Signals from Donald Trump have thrown fresh uncertainty over US plans to restrict flavoured vaping products, as the administration weighs youth prevention against adult use and industry concerns.
Trump said he would meet with representatives from the vaping industry, medical professionals and state officials to “come up with an acceptable solution” to the “vaping and e-cigarette dilemma”, adding that “children’s health & safety, together with jobs, will be a focus”.
Inside the Lab with Chris Allen: What Is Actually in Your Vape?
Peter Beckett
What exactly is inside the vapes and nicotine pouches millions of adults use every day? In our latest episode of Clearing the Air, toxicologist Chris Allen takes us inside the lab to reveal the complex science of harm reduction and the shocking truth about the UK’s black market.
Spain moves to tighten sales channels for vapes and nicotine pouches
Ali Anderson
Spain’s two main political parties have reached a rare agreement to restrict where vapes and nicotine pouches can be sold, in a move aimed at tightening control over access and distribution.
The Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Party (PSOE) backed a non-binding motion in the Joint Congress-Senate Commission for the Study of Addiction Problems, calling for sales of these products to be limited to authorised and controlled channels such as tobacco shops and specialised stores.
A balanced outcome policy needed for nicotine alternatives
Felix Simba, Business Daily
Across North America in 2025, public policy toward nicotine pouches and other non-combustible, smoke-free products revealed a stark divergence in regulatory philosophy.
In Canada, federal and provincial authorities have layered restrictions that make nicotine pouches harder to access than traditional cigarettes. In the US, by contrast, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly described nicotine pouches as among the safest ways to consume nicotine, signalling a markedly different harm-reduction approach.
The Tech Bros Are All In on Zyn
Mattha Busby, Wired
Entrepreneur Garrett Campbell has a 6-mg “cool mint” Zyn tucked under his lip at all times during his mammoth 15-hour workdays, aside from when he is eating.
“I was always very against nicotine,” says the software company founder. The 26-year-old saw his peers using nicotine pouches at college, when they first emerged as a potential productivity-boosting hack, and considered it a “degenerate thing to do.”
Opinion | Dobson: Missouri Needs One Set of Rules for Tobacco Sales. Right now, it doesn’t have them.
Kenny Dobson, The Missouri Times
Missouri lawmakers have an opportunity right now to bring fairness, consistency, and fiscal common sense to the regulation of tobacco and nicotine products across the state. House Bill 2085 would establish statewide preemption for the sale of tobacco, alternative nicotine, and vapor products, meaning that every retailer in every city would operate under the same rules. The Missouri Senate should pass it without delay.
Fifth Circuit grapples with flavored vape regulations
Gabriel Tynes, Courthouse News Service
It was a simple but cloudy question: Can the FDA force vape makers to prove their flavored e-liquids help smokers quit better than plain tobacco flavor, without ever telling them that rule existed?
That tension dominated oral arguments Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit, where seven small vape-liquid companies are fighting the Food and Drug Administration’s blanket denial of marketing approval for flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems.
Nicotine Pouch Panic: How Government Keeps People Smoking
John Stossel
Nicotine pouches, like Zyn, are safer than smoking. But now, politicians want to restrict the pouches. Here’s why that’s a problem.
BREAKING THE SMOKE | Myths, Bans, and Nicotine Education in Kenya
Global Forum on Nicotine
Today we sit down with Marceline Akinyi to discuss the complex landscape of nicotine education and public health in Kenya. As the country faces a wave of product bans, Marceline highlights a dangerous gap between academic research and public understanding.
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…
Canada heading in the wrong direction
On tobacco and nicotine policy – Clive Bates
Health Canada’s review of its tobacco and vaping legislation focuses only on reducing youth vaping. It shows no awareness of the links between smoking and vaping, between adults and adolescents, and the case for harm reduction at all ages
ETHRA April news roundup
European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates
ETHRA’s monthly roundup of news: Czech vow to support harm reduction – How safe is your vape? – COP out – Irish vapers say no to bans – Political support for flavours in Sweden – NNA discusses TRPR – Studies say THR works. Read on for more.
Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World
