Vapers Digest 29th May
Friday’s News at a glance:
Lord Demands Scottish Vape Bans ~ FDA Approves Fruit Flavours ~ Journal Entry – The Fear of Being Silenced ~ World Vapers’ Alliance ~ Reach Out, Don’t Shun: What World No Tobacco Day Used to Mean ~ World No Tobacco Day: How Vaping Saved Millions of Lives—Including Mine ~ OPINION: World No Tobacco Day — Let’s talk about what’s actually happening at the counter ~ While the WHO Spreads Misinformation, Consumers Fight Back ~ World Vape Day and World No Tobacco Day: Putting People Back at the Centre of Public Health ~ A New Symbol, Renewed Hope for World Vape Day ~ Cancer and non-cancer risk analysis of vaping. Part I ~ It’s time for a new approach to quit smoking, once and for all ~ Australian Border Force seize 20 million illegal vapes since January 2024 as crackdown continues ~ Youth Vaping at Historic Lows: Why Vaping Is Canada’s Path to a Smoke-Free Future ~ The TVPA legislative review report is another government fail ~ Illinois’ Latest Flavor Ban Proposal Ignores Falling Youth Vaping and Smoking Rates ~ Institutional Narcissism: The Moral Goalpost Movers in Public Health ~ Michael Bloomberg Is Back at His Nanny Game ~ Sweden blasts France’s ‘absurd’ pouch ban ~ Warning to UK Pouch Users Travelling to France: Congratulations, You’re Apparently an International Drug Trafficker Now ~ We Are Innovation Poll Highlights How Quitting Helps Smokers and Loved Ones ~ France Is Banning Zyn and Threatening To Jail People for 5 Years ~ Special Report | Russian Vape Compromise Faces First Hurdles ~ Product｜PMI Expands High-Strength Nicotine Pouch Portfolio With Zyn 16.5mg ~ EU tobacco ranking rewards prohibition failures and punishes smoke-free success ~ US FDA – Tobacco: News ~ Let’s talk e-cigarettes, May 2026
Two From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
Skip Murray, Skip’s Corner – Let’s Talk!
In 2012, people in 15 countries observed the first World Vaping Day. Every year since, it has been a celebration for people who have found a way to stop smoking by switching to a safer alternative. This year, on the 15th World Vape Day, the tobacco harm reduction (THR) movement has something it has never had before: a universal symbol of its own.
The symbol did not come from a corporation, government agency, public health organization, or marketing firm trying to define us from the outside. It came from us, the people who use nicotine.
Youth Vaping at Historic Lows: Why Vaping Is Canada’s Path to a Smoke-Free Future
The Canadian Vaping Association, Global Newswire
This Saturday, May 30th, we celebrate World Vape Day 2026 and the 80 million adults around the world who made a life-changing decision by transitioning from combustible cigarettes to vaping. These individuals have stepped away from a product that claims more than 8 million lives annually through tobacco-related illness. That is not a small thing. That is a public health movement.
Here in Canada, more than 1.9 million adults are vaping and smoking rates continue to fall. Now is the moment to support the policies and conditions that can carry Canada across the finish line to a truly smoke-free future.
Lindsey Stroud, Tobacco Harm Reduction 101
Legislation in the Prairie State would limit adult access to tobacco harm reduction products. Senate Bill 3148 would establish the “Flavored Tobacco Ban Act” and prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco products, including combustible cigarettes and smoke-free alternatives.
Under the proposed legislation, distributors and retailers would be prohibited from selling or offering flavored tobacco products for sale. Specifically prohibited flavors include fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey, mint, menthol, and others.
The legislation defines tobacco products broadly to include products containing tobacco that can be chewed, dissolved, heated, inhaled, or smoked, covering cigars, cigarettes, and smokeless tobacco. Electronic cigarettes are defined to include all components and parts needed for an electronic nicotine delivery system.
Institutional Narcissism: The Moral Goalpost Movers in Public Health
Kevin Crowley
I posted the above AI-generated picture on my “official page” on Facebook, with the caption “Morals are standards set by those who want their standards met by others. #psychoticnannystate.”
I’ve used that quote for years, but paired it with this photo simply because I didn’t feel like brainstorming a better caption.
I had no grand plan or hidden motive. I just wanted to highlight the obvious narrative the public has been fed and the blind desire some people have to control others with it. It wasn’t meant to be a social experiment, but it accidentally became one… and it proved the point far better than I expected.
Michael Bloomberg Is Back at His Nanny Game
Steven Greenhut, The American Spectator
We haven’t heard much lately from Michael Bloomberg, the one-time New York City mayor, founder of the Bloomberg News organization, and head of his own philanthropy. His disappearance from the limelight probably is a relief given that, during his 12 years in the mayor’s office, he gained a much-deserved reputation as the Big Apple’s nanny-in-chief. I’m not defending many of his unhealthy targets, but his willingness to use the government to try to improve our own personal eating and drinking habits was, however well-intentioned, inappropriately prohibitionist.
Sweden blasts France’s ‘absurd’ pouch ban
Tim Hong, Clearing The Air
Sweden has hit out at France’s sweeping ban on nicotine pouches, after it emerged Swedes could face criminal penalties for carrying a smoke-free product that is legal at home while cigarettes remain on sale.
The row has opened a fresh divide in Europe’s approach to nicotine, with Stockholm accusing Paris of going too far by banning not just the sale of pouches, but their import, possession and use.
Under the French rules, a Swedish visitor carrying nicotine pouches legally bought at home could face penalties of up to five years in prison and a €375,000 fine.
Swedish trade minister Benjamin Dousa said the policy amounted to “an attack on the Swedish way of living”.
Two From The Daily Pouch
Warning to UK Pouch Users Travelling to France: Congratulations,
You’re Apparently an International Drug Trafficker Now
Mark Oates
There are many things British tourists should worry about when travelling to France. Being laughed at for attempting GCSE-level French. Accidentally ordering raw steak. Paris taxi drivers. The existential despair of paying €9 for a small beer near the Eiffel Tower.
What perhaps wasn’t on many nicotine pouch users’ bingo cards was the possibility of being treated like Pablo Escobar for carrying a tin of mint pouches in their backpack.
Yet here we are.
We Are Innovation Poll Highlights How Quitting Helps Smokers and Loved Ones
Joseph Hart
We Are Innovation consistently puts out interesting data and thought-leadership on smoking-alternative products. Yesterday, they released a new report titled, The Household Case for Innovation: A Five-Country Survey on Smoking Cessation, and Quality of Life.
What’s novel about this report is that WAI and Ipsos sought the opinions of the friends and family of those who quit smoking, rather than just polling the smokers themselves.
France Is Banning Zyn and Threatening To Jail People for 5 Years
Reem Ibrahim, Reason
If you’re planning on packing Zyn for your European summer vacation, you might want to reconsider.
On Sunday, the New York Post reported that France had banned “a number of popular nicotine-based products including Zyn pouches.” Those caught violating the measure could face up to five years in prison and a fine of $436,600.
While other European countries have moved against nicotine pouches, France is the only Western country to criminalize their use.
Two From 2Firsts
Special Report | Russian Vape Compromise Faces First Hurdles
A Russian initiative allowing regional authorities to ban vape sales — initially seen as a compromise alternative to a nationwide prohibition debated for months in Moscow — is already encountering early challenges. Several regions have rushed to introduce restrictions even before the legislation has completed its passage through parliament, prompting pushback from businesses warning that the approach could still destabilise the legal market and create uneven regulatory conditions across the country.
Product｜PMI Expands High-Strength Nicotine Pouch Portfolio With Zyn 16.5mg
According to UK retail industry outlet Better Retailing, Philip Morris International (PMI) has launched Zyn Menthol Ice 16.5mg nicotine pouches in the UK.
The report said the product is the highest-strength nicotine pouch currently available in the Zyn portfolio.
According to the article, Menthol Ice 16.5mg features eucalyptus and menthol flavors. It is now available through PMI Open and will begin rolling out to wholesale channels across the UK from the end of May.
EU tobacco ranking rewards prohibition failures and punishes smoke-free success
Smoke Free Sweden
Europe’s new official tobacco control rankings are “a celebration of failure” that risk entrenching the consumption of deadly cigarettes, according to international health experts.
The report, compiled by the EU-funded Smoke Free Partnership (SFP), rewards countries with strict prohibitions but sky-high smoking rates, while punishing those that are wiping out cigarettes by giving adults access to safer alternatives, such as vapes and nicotine pouches.
Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden, expressed concern that the rankings focus on process rather than actual health outcomes.
US FDA – Tobacco: News
Tobacco Insider
On this day…2015!
