Vapers Digest 3rd April
Friday’s News at a glance:
APPG Calls for Evidence-Based Legislation ~ The meaninglessness of claiming tobacco/nicotine is addictive ~ Nicotine Isn’t the Enemy. Smoking Is. ~ They Already Told You Their Conflicts. You Just Weren’t Meant to Notice ~ What’s With All The Smoking is Cool Again Headlines? ~ Strasbourg as leverage: Swedish S&D escalates response to France’s pouch ban ~ Sweden crosses smoke-free milestone as daily smoking hits 3.7 percent ~ Before the Numbers ~ Banning Vaping in Public Places Is Disproportionate, Unscientific and a Waste of Taxes ~ WVA slams TPD Evaluation Report as complacent and biased ~ Sweden Is Now Smoke-Free. The EU Is Pushing Policies That Would Make That Impossible ~ In France, Nicotine Pouch Users Now Face Prison ~ The EU’s Bloomberg Report Part 1 ~ The EU Bloomberg Report Part 2 ~ Russia backs plan for full vape ban ~ “Plainly absurd and wholly unacceptable” – Swedish Socialists demand Strasbourg travel ban ~ Cherry-picking science: How Brussels buried the data that works ~ Exclusive: US nicotine pouch fast-track scheme slowed by worries over youth, new users ~ New York’s Governor Seems Indifferent to the Health Consequences of a Steep Tax on Nicotine Pouches ~ ‘Hungry for funding’: Questions raised over Australian vaping study ~ Australian vaping study: Former WHO expert raises questions over cancer claims ~ Concern vaping study will drive people back to cigarettes
APPG Calls for Evidence-Based Legislation
Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
The Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Responsible Vaping, Euan Stainbank MP, has called for more evidence-based regulation on vapes. The All-Party Parliamentary Group says it seeks to raise awareness of benefits of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, “as adults who switch from tobacco to vapes are around twice as likely to stop smoking, gaining an average of 5-15 additional years of life when quitting cigarettes”.
The meaninglessness of claiming tobacco/nicotine is addictive
Carl V Phillips, PhD, Carl V Phillips’s epistemic musings
My 15yo recently asked me why people use the word “addicted” when they clearly just mean “likes it a lot”. I told him I would provide an answer to this very astute question for him on Substack because, apparently, I am weird.
The first layer of the answer is that the use of the word “addictive” is almost always a motte-and-bailey rhetorical tactic. That metaphor refers to what we call a particular style of ancient/medieval castle fortification consisting of a stronghold building at the center (the motte) surrounded by a fairly large area of palisade-fortified courtyard around it (the bailey).
Maria Papaioannoy, The Nicotine Project
In Canada today, it’s easier to buy cigarettes than nicotine pouches. That should trouble anyone who cares about public health.
For decades, we have fought a war against smoking. Combustion kills. Smoke kills. That much is settled science.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped distinguishing between nicotine and how it is delivered. Public debate now treats all nicotine products as if they carry the same risk as cigarettes, even though the harm from smoking comes from inhaling toxic chemicals created by burning tobacco.
They Already Told You Their Conflicts. You Just Weren’t Meant to Notice
Alan Gor
In one of my Substacks, I argued that “conflict of interest” in tobacco control has been quietly redefined to mean one thing only: industry. Everything else, career incentives, ideological commitments, institutional loyalties, has been recast as either benign or irrelevant. The result is a field that believes it has solved the problem of bias simply by locating it in the “other.”
Now consider the latest Australian study making headlines.
What’s With All The Smoking is Cool Again Headlines?
Joseph Hart, The Daily Pouch
Have you noticed an uptick in articles claiming that smoking is cool again? Well, you’re not alone. I’ve read a lot of pieces from a variety of publications over the last few years that suggest things such as smoking is on the rise among youths, and that it is once again becoming a trendy counterculture symbol.
Let’s take a deep dive into the topic to see what is happening.
Strasbourg as leverage: Swedish S&D escalates response to France’s pouch ban
Pouch Forum
The political reaction to France’s ban on nicotine pouches has now taken a decisive turn. What began as concern over proportionality and internal market implications has evolved into coordinated political action at the highest EU level.
According to reporting in Aftonbladet, the entire Swedish S&D delegation, including MEP Johan Danielsson S&D, has formally intervened. In two parallel letters addressed to Roberta Metsola and Ursula von der Leyen, the delegation raises serious concerns about the French measure and its wider implications.
Sweden crosses smoke-free milestone as daily smoking hits 3.7 percent
Snusforumet
Sweden can now lay claim to being a smoke-free country, with new statistics showing that daily smoking dropped to 3.7 percent last year.
Since 2013, smoking rates in Sweden have been cut roughly in half, with both daily and occasional smoking falling across all age groups, according to the latest report from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN).
Before the Numbers
Claudio Teixeira, Disobedient Margins
In Barmelweid, the opening address arrived less as an intervention than as the continuation of something already underway. José Luis Castro moved through a familiar repertoire: the protection of youth, caution toward new products, vigilance over a landscape of use and habit in flux. Nothing needed to be argued explicitly. The language rested on a prior recognition, a shared point of departure that no one in the room seemed inclined to question.
Banning Vaping in Public Places Is Disproportionate, Unscientific and a Waste of Taxes
Martin Cullip, The Parliament Politics
In July 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised that his government would “tread more lightly on your lives.” It was a reassuring sentiment recognising that not every social concern requires a new rule, not every risk demands a ban, and not every headline justifies state intervention.
Yet what has followed has been an avalanche of nanny-state micromanagement often with little scientific justification. The recent absurd proposal to ban vaping in public places is a perfect example.
Two From World Vapers’ Alliance
WVA slams TPD Evaluation Report as complacent and biased
Alberto Hernandez
The evaluation of the EU’s tobacco rules celebrates that the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) is successfully reducing smoking despite the EU being on track to miss its 2040 smoke-free goal by 70 years.
The report also opens the door to tighter regulation and outright bans on vapes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches, including flavours and disposables, despite the proven success of Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Greece in slashing smoking rates through these accessible alternatives.
Sweden Is Now Smoke-Free. The EU Is Pushing Policies That Would Make That Impossible
Michael Landl
New data from Sweden’s leading public health research institute, CAN, confirms that daily smoking among adults has fallen to just 3.7%, well below the WHO’s and EU’s 5% smoke-free threshold. Smoking rates have been cut roughly in half since 2013, with declines seen across all age groups and both sexes.
The numbers are striking. Among 18-29 year-olds, daily smoking is down to 2.9 %. Nicotine pouch and snus use among the same age group is 29%. The pattern is clear: as less harmful alternatives became more accessible, smokers switched. Sweden didn’t ban its way to this result, but rather it gave people options.
In France, Nicotine Pouch Users Now Face Prison
Jim McDonald, Vaping 360
The controversial French ban on nicotine pouches begins today. France is now the only European country to prohibit not just the sale of the popular oral nicotine product, but also personal possession and use—and to back up the ban with criminal penalties.
The ban was not passed by France’s parliament, but rather imposed by health ministry decree. The new rule, which classifies nicotine in oral consumer products as a dangerous “toxic substance,” also covers all consumer nicotine gums, lozenges, and other oral products.
Two From David Zaruk, Peter Beckett, Firebreak
The EU’s Bloomberg Report Part 1
Brussels has today received a report evaluating whether the EU needs to update its rules on tobacco and nicotine. Far from a dispassionate review of the evidence, what we have is a document essentially written by anti-harm reduction activists that will be used as a permission structure by the European Commission to do what it wants to do anyway: ban as many safer nicotine products as it can get away with. The Health Commissioner himself is already gaslighting stakeholders. He must know that when he says that new nicotine products are just as bad as smoking, he is lying.
The EU Bloomberg Report Part 2
In Part 1, we looked at how the European Commission tender for a Single Framework Contract for Support Actions in the Field of Tobacco Control, the main source of policy guidance for the upcoming revision of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive, was badly managed and should have been rerun. We looked at and how the consortium partners, who were essentially representing the views of an American billionaire, should have been excluded. The second part will examine the conflicts of interest of the consortium members and how this issue was dealt with.
Two From Clearing The Air
Russia backs plan for full vape ban
Tim Hong
Russia has taken a major step toward banning vapes, after a government commission backed plans to prohibit their production, import and sale.
The State Commission for Combating Illicit Trafficking in Industrial Products, chaired by Denis Manturov, supported the proposal on March 25, according to reports.
The move would cover vapes, refill liquids and other electronic nicotine devices, although the final scope of the ban is still being decided.
“Plainly absurd and wholly unacceptable” – Swedish Socialists demand Strasbourg travel ban
Alastair Cohen
Swedish Socialists in the European Parliament have demanded that MEPs not travel to Strasbourg while French law levies potential five year prison terms for anyone found in possession of nicotine pouches. The French plan was first reported by Clearing the Air.
A letter proposing the travel pause – seen by Clearing the Air and published here – was sent by all five Swedish members of the Parliament’s Socialist Group to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
Cherry-picking science: How Brussels buried the data that works
EUReporter
The European Commission has just published its evaluation of the Tobacco Products Directive — the legal document that will shape tobacco and nicotine policy across the EU for the next decade. It is supposed to be an honest assessment of what has worked, what has not, and what needs to change. The headline finding: smoking across the EU has fallen by 14% since 2012. Brussels is celebrating this as a major achievement, writes Michael Landl, director at World Vapers Alliance.
Exclusive: US nicotine pouch fast-track scheme slowed by worries over youth, new users
Emma Rumney, Patrick Wingrove, Reuters
Popular nicotine pouch products have yet to be cleared for sale in the United States despite a fast-track Food and Drug Administration scheme, as agency scientists hesitate to authorise them due to potential risks to new users, including children, three sources told Reuters.
New tobacco products like pouches, which users insert under their lip to get a nicotine buzz, must be authorised by the FDA in order to be legally sold in the U.S., the world’s largest market for smoking alternatives worth some $22 billion.
New York’s Governor Seems Indifferent to the Health Consequences of a Steep Tax on Nicotine Pouches
Jacob Sullum, Reason
By pushing a 75 percent wholesale tax on nicotine pouches, New York State Budget Director Blake Washington says, Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to address “a public health concern.” That rationale is absurd on its face, since this tax would sharply raise the cost of a nicotine product that is far less hazardous than cigarettes, perversely discouraging smokers from making a switch that could save their lives.
Two From Matt Heath, Tyler Adams, NewsTalkZB [Editor Note: These are both audio]
‘Hungry for funding’: Questions raised over Australian vaping study
There’s been pushback against the recently-released Australian study linking vape use to cancer.
The study from New South Wales University finds e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung and oral cancers, but other experts have released their own research questioning the claims.
The Afternoons duo unpacked the studies.
Australian vaping study: Former WHO expert raises questions over cancer claims
There’s concerns an on-the-fence smoker may not switch to vaping, after an Australian study suggested it causes cancer.
The new research from New South Wales University finds nicotine-based vapes are likely to cause it in the lung and mouth.
Former World Health Organisation director, Robert Beaglehole, labels that misleading – saying it’s proven to be less harmful.
He says the likes of apple and orange juice are linked to cancer, because of the other factors, not the juice itself.
He says it grabs headlines.
Concern vaping study will drive people back to cigarettes
Morning Report, RNZ
While vapes may cause cancer – as a recent Australian review of evidence concluded – they remain a far less dangerous vice than traditional cigarettes, a local anti-smoking lobby group says.
Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) looked at eight years of prior research between 2017 and 2025 – including human and animal studies, case reports and chemical analyses.
Lead author Bernard Stewart said it provided “by far the strongest evidence” vapes – like cigarettes – could cause lung and oral cancer. He said it could no longer be considered “safer than smoking”, urging a wider crackdown on black market products and more public awareness of the dangers.
But Ben Youdan, director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), worries the findings will promote the view that vaping is just as bad for you as smoking.
The “Moral Panic” of the Nicotine “Folk Devils”
Michael McGrady, Inside Sources
South African criminologist Stanley Cohen authored the study Folk Devils and Moral Panics in 1972. Cohen examines the media controversies around the clashes between “mods” and “rockers,” two separate British youth subculture groups formed in the early 1960s. The study comments on a violent confrontation between the two groups at a beach in a Southern England seaside town in 1964.
Some FDA Claims About Teen Vaping Confirmed, Others Evaporate
Brad Rodu, Tobacco Truth
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just released the 2018 data for the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). My analysis confirms the FDA claim of a substantial increase in vaping among high school students. However, I also discovered some information that challenges the FDA commissioner’s narrative (here) that this “threatens to hook an entire generation of kids into a lifetime of addiction.”
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