Vapers Digest 2nd August
Friday’s News at a glance:
Black Market UK – So Many Raids – Are Vapes a Gateway to Smoking? – Support for New Bill Expressed – The Future of Vaping Policy – Nicotine 2040 – Useful idiots – Something to Smile About – A Drop in the Ocean – Playing with Numbers – Vaping Around Kids Is Far Safer for Them Than Smoking – New Zealand Boosts HTPs – RNZ remains on-form – Thinking ’bout THR Newsletter – FDA Regs Deliver THR Monopoly to Big Tobacco – La Presse Makes Inadvertent Argument For Sensible Pouch Regulations – Half of adults who quit smoking used vapes or other nicotine products – Daily Use of E-Cigarettes Linked to Higher Cigarette Quit Rates – The FCTC scuttles home for #COP11 – The Case for Nicotine
Five from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes:
Black Market UK
Warnings were forcibly made to the last government that banning disposable/single-use ecigs, restricting vape flavours, or imposing a punitive tax rise on the most effective eliquids would lead to an increase in illegal activity. Now the scale of the black market for illegal vapes has been laid bare – it is on the rise and has been documented by leading retailer Vape Superstore.
Vape Superstore told Planet of the Vapes that it issued freedom of information requests and used the replies to rank councils across the United Kingdom in terms of those that have the most businesses selling illegal vapes and the highest number of illegal vape seizures for the period from 1st January 2023 to the 29th February 2024.
So Many Raids
Shopkeepers were warned, the government announced a crackdown, but store after store has been found to be selling illicit black-market products. Maybe the store owners felt that Trading Standards wouldn’t act because of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill failing to become legislation before the election – they were wrong.
“To crack down on underage sales, the government will also bring in new fines for shops in England and Wales which sell vapes illegally to children. Trading Standards officers will be empowered to act ‘on the spot’ to tackle underage tobacco and vape sales. This builds on a maximum £2,500 fine that local authorities can already impose,” the government announced in January.
Are Vapes a Gateway to Smoking?
Arielle Selya has produced a considered paper looking at the gateway hypothesis, where proponents argue that vaping leads non-smokers into tobacco use. ‘The “Gateway” hypothesis: evaluation of evidence and alternative explanations’ has been published in Harm Reduction Journal and is reproduced here in part under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Selya says that electronic nicotine delivery systems (vapes) offer “a substantial harm reduction opportunity for adults who smoke and are unlikely to quit.”
Support for New Bill Expressed
Politicians old and new have expressed support for the new Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the House of Commons. Cancer Research UK has welcomed the plan to reintroduce legislation as it revealed that cancers caused by smoking are at an all-time high of 160 cases per day across the UK.
When the Conservative government failed to push the Tobacco and Vapes Bill through at the end of its parliamentary life due to the snap election, Cancer Research UK called it “disappointing” and said it was a “backwards step”.
The Future of Vaping Policy
With a huge turnover in MPs following the general election, the UK has lost a lot of tobacco harm reduction expertise – but this also presents an opportunity for education for the new MPs. The UK Vaping Industry Association has released ‘The Future of Vaping Policy to Support a Smokefree Britain’ for MPs to consider alongside the Independent British Vape Trade Association’s ‘Responsible Vaping Manifesto’.
“Following Labour’s landslide victory, there has been a near unprecedented change in the number of Members of Parliament. Of the members of the APPG for Responsible Vaping, the only person who will remain as a member of Parliament (of the 15 MP that were members of this group) is Mary Glindon,” says the UK Vaping Industry Association.
Nicotine 2040
Clive Bates
The market for tobacco and nicotine is transforming—how could it look by 2040?
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future,” said the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr. The future is a burial ground for expert reputations, but that should never be a reason to shy away from predictions. Much of what we do today will shape the world in 2040, and our view of how the world should be in 2040 should shape what we do today. So let us consider the evolution of the market for tobacco and nicotine products out to 2040. There’s a lot to think about, so buckle up!
Useful idiots
Simon Clark
In exactly one month Hazel Cheeseman, currently deputy chief executive of ASH, will step up and become CEO.
I’ll have more to say when that moment arrives but today, following the publication of a survey that ‘estimates’ that ‘almost one million youngsters have tried vaping this year’, Cheeseman is quoted saying:
“E-cigarettes must be strictly regulated so their use is limited to the purpose they were created for, as an effective quitting aid for adult smokers.”
[DE] LNRSchG BaWü – vapers get active!https://t.co/2GkIzGTq2J
— European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (@europethra) August 2, 2024
Two from Stefanie Rossel, Tobacco Reporter:
Something to Smile About
In the context of smoking-related issues, oral health has long been neglected. According to Riccardo Polosa, founder of the Center of Excellence for the acceleration of Harm Reduction (CoEHAR) in Italy, this can be explained by several factors. “Smoking is primarily linked to fatal systemic conditions such as cancer, heart disease and respiratory problems, which tend to overshadow its effects on oral health,” he says.
In addition, until recently, dentists were less aware of the detrimental impact of smoking on oral health, particularly in managing gum disease, tooth loss and dental implant procedures. What’s more, because oral health is influenced by multiple factors, including diet, oral hygiene practices and genetic predispositions, it is difficult to isolate smoking as a culprit.
A Drop in the Ocean
On June 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first time authorized nontobacco-flavored vape products through its premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) pathway. The agency issued marketing granted orders (MGO) for two Njoy Ace menthol flavor pods and two disposable e-cigarettes, Njoy Daily Menthol 4.5 percent and Njoy Daily Extra Menthol 2.4 percent. The news was hailed as a “significant decision” and a “watershed moment for the sector” that will have a “huge and significant impact” on the global reduced-risk products market.
Playing with Numbers
Cheryl K. Olson
“The paper seems like a joke.” That’s what Harvard researcher Miguel Hernan said recently to the journal Science about a report linking e-cigarettes and strokes.
The article was concocted by a dubious research group, founded to help young international medical school graduates get coveted authorship credits. Its analysis of U.S. government survey data claimed that respondents who vaped had a higher risk of stroke, at younger ages, than those who smoked. Its glaring flaws included inflating the number of survey takers by tens of thousands and failing to correct for the relative youth of vapers.
Two from Kiran Sidhu, FilterMag:
Vaping Around Kids Is Far Safer for Them
Children absorb far less nicotine from people vaping around them indoors than they do from secondhand smoking, researchers found, suggesting that any secondhand absorption of other components of vapor is also likely to be very low.
Countries with substantial uptake of vaping have seen accelerated declines in the cigarette smoking which costs millions of lives each year. Yet valid concerns about passive smoking have often morphed into largely media-driven alarm over passive vaping—despite no good evidence that it is harmful.
New Zealand Boosts HTPs
For Harm Reduction
New Zealand has halved its excise tax on heated tobacco products—a move which many experts say boosts the country’s emergence as a world leader in tobacco harm reduction.
Heated tobacco products (HTP), devices that heat tobacco sticks enough to produce nicotine-containing vapor, but without the combustion that produces deadly smoke, are substantially safer than cigarettes.
RNZ remains on-form
Eric Crampton
There are a few basic bits of reality that I’d hope we could agree on. Minister Costello has set a lower excise rate for heated tobacco products as a bit of a trial to see whether it proves successful in encouraging remaining smokers to flip to something less harmful.
Even without any change in tobacco excise, a smoker shifting to an HTP will result in a drop in tobacco excise. Or at least I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure that a heated tobacco stick contains less tobacco than a cigarette does. And I’m pretty sure that heated tobacco draws the lower excise rate that applies to cigarillos and the like. The combination of the two means less excise in a heated tobacco stick than in a cigarette.
Thinking ’bout THR Newsletter
Kim “Skip” Murray
In loving memory of the many loved ones I’ve watched die from lung cancer…
Today is World Lung Cancer Day. I am still in a place that is keeping me from doing much writing, so I am going to share a piece from last year as a substitute.
Stigma and Misinformation Maintain the Devastating Toll of Lung Cancer.
Wholly Owned
FDA Regs Deliver THR Monopoly to Big Tobacco | RegWatch
It would be a terrible irony if not for the fact that it appears deliberate. FDA’s regulation of the U.S. vaping industry not only delivers big tobacco a de facto monopoly on the legal sale of vaping products, but it also grants them a monopoly on harm reduction.
Yet it decries “tobacco harm reduction” as an “industry term.”Joining us today to dissect this disturbing paradox is eminent scientist and cardiologist Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos. This interview was shot on location in Warsaw, Poland, at the Global Forum on Nicotine.
La Presse Makes Inadvertent Argument
For Sensible Pouch Regulations – Joseph Hart
The Canadian news site La Presse wants you to be afraid of nicotine pouches. However, their recent article merely underlines the need for pragmatic regulation of the harm-reduction product.
La Presse is a Montreal-based, French-language news outlet with a long history. The paper turned 140 this year, and although it’s an entirely online enterprise these days, a little more than a decade ago, it had a circulation of 200,000 physical copies.
Half of adults who quit smoking used vapes
Or other nicotine products – Ali Anderson
More than half of adults in the U.S who successfully quit smoking used vapes or other nicotine products to kick the deadly habit, a new study has found. The research, preprinted in science journal BMJ Yale, shows that 2.9 million U.S. adults stopped smoking for six months or longer from 2021 through 2022.
In the same period, 13.1 million tried to stop but went back to smoking. Among those who successfully quit, 53.9 per cent (1.5 million U.S adults) said they primarily used vapes alone or in combination with other methods.
Daily Use of E-Cigarettes Linked to…
Higher Cigarette Quit Rates – Roswell Park
Adults in the U.S. who used e-cigarettes daily and also smoked combustible cigarettes were more likely to quit smoking than those who smoked but used e-cigarettes less frequently, according to a study led by experts at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. The research, published today in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggests that daily e-cigarette use may help some people quit using combustible cigarettes.
The new work documents a collaborative effort by investigators from Roswell Park, the University of Waterloo School of Public Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada, and the Medical University of South Carolina.
Reluctance to Promote Nicotine Vapes
For Harm Reduction – Global Forum on Nicotine
Tragically, those who should know better—medical doctors, public health officials, and the media—are reluctant to promote nicotine vaping as a tool for harm reduction. Instead, they make a deliberate choice to ignore or avoid acknowledging the truth about vaping. This problem is widespread, including in Latin America. Learn more in this special hybrid English/Spanish episode of GFN Interviews.
The FCTC scuttles home for #COP11
COPWatch
Copwatch has been on ice for a while since analysing what happened at COP10 in Panama (The full review is here, but can be fairly summarised as “not very much”).
In that article, Copwatch expressed regret that we could not inform readers where COP11 would be taking place as no country had applied to host it. We wondered which country might take up the privileged opportunity of hosting “a two week opaque talking shop which attracts no tourists or media interest, nor offers infrastructure benefits, but comes with a $5 million price tag.” The answer came in June as the FCTC instructed delegations to “save the week” of 17-22 November 2025 for a long trip to exotic, windswept and interesting (checks notes), Geneva.
The Case for Nicotine
Barnaby Page
Advocates of tobacco harm reduction (THR) and the industry making THR products are accustomed to fighting battles on multiple fronts—simultaneously contending with the threat of flavor bans, new taxes and misrepresentations of science, for example. But perhaps the most essential battle of all is the one against the demonization of nicotine; it’s possible to imagine vaping continuing to exist without nontobacco flavors, for example (even if it might be a less appealing kind of vaping), and it’s possible to imagine consumers continuing to buy THR products even if taxes hike their price, but it’s not really possible to imagine THR without nicotine.
On this Day…2023
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise….
Learning From the Past
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