Vapers Digest 3rd October
Tuesday’s News at a glance:
What a ban on e-cigarette flavors could mean for smokers – NYC Dem Pushes Vaping Flavour Ban – Have e-cigs opened the door to a total ban on cigarettes? – Vaping Could Save 6.6 Million American Smokers – Is the government finally starting to see sense on e-cigarettes? – Shutdown Monkey Study Will Likely Still Drive FDA Policy – NSP Daily Digest
What a ban on e-cigarette flavors could mean for smokers
MarketWatch
E-cigarettes come in more than 7,000 flavors. By comparison, traditional cigarettes only come in one of those — menthol. What would happen if regulators were to ban flavors in e-cigarettes?
That’s according to new research by from Yale School of Public Health and the Centre for Health Policy at the Imperial College in London, and distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research. They conducted an experiment with more than 2,000 adult smokers and recent quitters. “Our results are timely and policy-relevant, suggesting which flavor bans are likely to be most effective in protecting public health,” the researchers wrote.
NYC Dem Pushes Vaping Flavour Ban
Steve Birr, DailyVaper
A Democratic lawmakers is using a widely debunked narrative about electronic cigarettes to secure a ban on flavored vaping products in New York City.
Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal introduced a bill in late September to clamp down on the sale of flavored vapor products like bubble gum and strawberry, claiming “that kind of product is meant to appeal to kids” in order to hook youth on tobacco. Rosenthal cites the infamous “gateway” theory that vaping leads to smoking, a narrative that has been widely debunked in numerous studies and ignores federal data showing declines in both youth vaping and smoking rates, reports New York Daily News.
Rosenthal, seemingly unaware about how and why vaping devices are used by adults, said “I don’t know many adults who would like to inhale bubble gum or strawberry vapor.” Clive Bates of Counterfactual, a public interest consultancy and advocacy group, has previously noted that flavored vapor products are key to helping the smoker “disconnect from the taste of tobacco” and ultimately quit.
Have e-cigs opened the door to a total ban on cigarettes?
SciMex
An Australian expert has suggested it may be time to outlaw the sale of combustible tobacco products such as cigarettes. She says the rapid evolution of alternative nicotine products such as e-cigarettes means a total ban is now possible. The commentary comes on the back of a US study, including an Australian researcher, which modeled the health impacts of smokers switching to e-cigarettes. The modelling suggests between 1.6 and 6.6 million premature deaths could be prevented in the US over ten years.
A Menzies School of Health (Menzies) researcher believes a ban on the sale of cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products needs to be considered.
In a commentary published in the international journal Tobacco Control, Dr Marita Hefler said “The ongoing availability of cigarettes is an historical anomaly. Any other consumer product that kills up to two-thirds of its long-term users remaining legal is unimaginable.”
The commentary was published in response to a research paper which found up to 6.6 million premature deaths could be prevented over a ten year period in the US if smokers switched to e-cigarettes.
Vaping Could Save 6.6 Million American Smokers
American Vaping Association
In what could turn out to be a transformative moment in the debate over vaping in America, a research team led by investigators from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is now estimating that vaping could save the lives of up to 6.6 million U.S. smokers over the next 10 years. On the basis of this evidence, the researchers are recommending that public health organizations adopt a strategy of encouraging smokers to switch to vaping to hasten the decline of America’s smoking rate.
Published in the journal Tobacco Control, the study is the first to model the best and worst case outcomes of U.S. smokers switching to vaping. In establishing their variables, the researchers considered a range of factors, including differing estimates on the relative harm of vapor products versus cigarettes, as well as the impact of vaping on cessation, switching, and initiation, including by nonusers.
Premature deaths could be averted in the United States by replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes https://t.co/YTA3tameQm
— Tobacco Control (@TC_BMJ) October 3, 2017
Is the government finally starting to see sense on e-cigarettes?
Benedict Spence, Spectator
This month is ‘Stoptober’, the annual government-backed campaign to persuade smokers to give up tobacco for good. This year, for the first time, the organisers have taken the decision to endorse vaping as an effective tool to help smoking addicts quit.
The move represents something of a volte face by the government, given that it has previously been decidedly lukewarm on e-cigarettes. Earlier this year it placed strict limitations on vaping fluid as part of its Tobacco Products Directive, which prompted criticism that legal vaping could be stifled, and a black market in stronger vaping fluids encouraged.
Shutdown Monkey Study Will Likely Still Drive FDA Policy
Carl V. Phillips, DailyVaper
As previously reported here, the FDA agreed to shut down controversial research in which monkeys were injected with intravenous nicotine. This came following pressure by White Coat Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group devoted to ending wasteful U.S. government animal research, as well as the intervention of primatologist Jane Goodall.
White Coat Waste obtained a copy of the 64-page research protocol via the Freedom of Information Act. They made a copy of that available to The Daily Vaper, which helps clarify the political goals of the research. No reports on outcomes of the research are currently available.
The protocol’s stated timeframe for the research was February 2014 through February 2017. Since the project was shut down in September, one of three possibilities must therefore be the case: (1) The research was already complete by the time the FDA agreed to “end” it, and they kept that fact quiet for public relations reasons. (2) There was a secret extension to the research. Or (3) the research was running substantially overtime, but must still have been at least close to complete. Whichever is the case, we can expect to see the results used by the FDA soon.
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