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Vapers Digest 4th September

Kevin CrowleyPosted on Posted in Latest News

Friday’s News at a glance:

Enough is Enough ~ Experts React to Cochrane Findings ~ The Antis Assemble ~ The Medicinal Effects of Nicotine ~ Arielle Selya: The scientist who challenged the gateway theory ~ Jamil Jivani, Free the ZYN Is Not Enough ~ UK nicotine pouch sales set to surge 51 per cent to £579m ~ Doctor, economist and ex-Border Force chief tell Albanese to adopt the Coalition’s tobacco policy ~ Australian Senate committee calls for wider legal vape sales and tobacco tax freeze ~ Part One: From Pesticide to NRT: A Regulatory History of Nicotine ~ Altria sues FDA over tobacco product review system ~ Generational Tobacco Bans Face Growing Community Opposition ~ Coalition unveils plan to slash tobacco tax, legalise and regulate vapes ~ Flavour name restrictions could push ‘half a million adult vapers back to smoking’ ~ New HMRC October vape tax and what it means for 5 million users ~ Coalition to legalise vapes and slash cigarette tax in major crime crackdown ~ Trump Names Darrell Scott as CDC Tobacco Health Adviser, Citing Tobacco Risks and Harm-Reduction Solutions

Two From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes

Enough is Enough

‘Enough is Enough’ says The UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) as it launches its ten-point ‘fair deal for vaping’. The campaign comes amid a raft of new policies and proposals and calls on the Government to commit to its 10-point plan, including measures to protect young people and tackle illegal sellers, while preserving vaping as a vital quitting tool for smokers and supporting the legitimate retailers helping adults make the switch.

Experts React to Cochrane Findings

Harm reduction experts have responded to the findings from the latest Cochrane Reviews update looking at tools for smoking cessations which found vaping to be the best approach to quitting tobacco. The new analysis is part of an ongoing living systematic review that is updated as new evidence becomes available.  This update has examined 80 randomised controlled trials involving 29,861 participants – including nine new trials which weren’t in the last version of the review.

The Antis Assemble

Alan Gor

The Coalition had barely announced its new tobacco and nicotine policy before Australia’s tobacco-control establishment assembled to condemn it.

The proposal is certainly bold. A Coalition government would reduce tobacco excise by 80 per cent for an initial two-year period, cutting the excise on a packet of 20 cigarettes from approximately $30 to $6. It would legalise and regulate adult access to vaping products and nicotine pouches, apply comparatively low taxes to those safer alternatives, spend another $200 million on coordinated enforcement and commit $60 million to public education about smoking and the organised crime behind illicit tobacco.

The Medicinal Effects of Nicotine

Mitchell B. Liester M.D., Psychology Today

Nicotine has a bad reputation. This reputation comes from its association with cigarettes, and the fact that millions of people die every year from the adverse health effects of smoking cigarettes. But cigarettes have been adulterated to be more addictive, and nicotine itself, when separated from cigarettes, is a different story.

Nicotine is a small molecule that fits into brain receptors called “nicotinic receptors.” These receptors are involved in attention, memory, and mood. Because of this, scientists have spent decades testing nicotine patches, gum, and lozenges as possible treatments for brain-related diseases.

Arielle Selya: The scientist who challenged the gateway theory

SnusForumet

In this instalment of our Harm Reduction Heroes series, Snusforumet talks to Arielle Selya, the American scientist who set out to investigate whether vaping leads young people to smoking – only to find the data pointing in another direction.

Arielle Selya didn’t set out to become a tobacco harm reduction advocate.

Quite the opposite.

When e-cigarettes began attracting serious attention in the United States around 2014, Selya was a young academic specialising in adolescent smoking and nicotine dependence.

Like many researchers around her, she found the emerging “gateway” theory entirely plausible: young people would start vaping, become dependent on nicotine and eventually graduate to cigarettes.

So she decided to test it.

Jamil Jivani, Free the ZYN Is Not Enough

The Nicotine Project

Jamil Jivani pisses me off. There. I said it.

And while I could write an entirely different Substack about his obvious fascination with what is happening south of the border, his relationship with J.D. Vance and his outside looking in negotiator of USMCA that is not what has me angry today. This is about nicotine. This is about his Free the ZYN campaign.

Three From Clearing The Air

UK Nicotine pouch sales set to surge 51 per cent to £579m

Tim Hong

UK nicotine pouch sales are forecast to climb by almost 51 per cent this year.

The market was worth an estimated £384 million in 2025 and is expected to exceed £579 million by the end of 2026, according to Euromonitor figures.

That would represent an increase of at least £195 million in a single year, although the market remains much smaller than UK cigarette sales, which reached £11.7 billion in 2025.

Doctor, economist and ex-Border Force chief tell Albanese to adopt the Coalition’s tobacco policy

Tim Hong

Three Australian experts wrote to the Prime Minister on Thursday urging him to implement his opponent’s tobacco policy.

The signatories are Dr Nick Coatsworth, deputy chief medical officer through the pandemic; Richard Holden, Vice-Chancellor’s Professor of economics at UNSW; and Rohan Pike, who founded the Australian Border Force’s Tobacco Strike Team in 2015. They describe a black market that is “unique internationally” and criminal violence that “is fraying our social fabric”.

Australian Senate committee calls for wider legal vape sales and tobacco tax freeze

Ali Anderson

An Australian Senate committee has called for wider legal sales of regulated nicotine vapes and an immediate freeze on tobacco tax rises, warning that the country’s current approach is “facing a breaking point”.

The Liberal-led majority report from the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee made 12 recommendations aimed at weakening a black market increasingly controlled by organised crime.

These include replacing Australia’s pharmacy-only vape system with regulations similar to New Zealand’s, pausing further tobacco excise increases and commissioning an independent review to determine whether the tax should be cut.

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Generational Tobacco Bans Face Growing Community Opposition

Renée M. Covino, Convenience Store News

They are flanked by words like “free” and “freedom,” but generational tobacco bans — also referred to as lifetime tobacco bans and Nicotine-Free Generation (NFG) policies — which prohibit the sale and use of nicotine products to anyone born after a specific date have been dubbed by critics as not only a radical shift in tobacco control, moving from age-based restrictions to cohort-based prohibition, but also a move that lacks sound logic.

Coalition unveils plan to slash tobacco tax, legalise and regulate vapes

Clare Armstrong, ABC News

A future Coalition government would slash the tobacco excise by 80 per cent, legalise and tax vapes and nicotine pouches, and bolster law enforcement to shut down the illicit trade.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor today pledged to reduce the excise on a standard packet of 20 cigarettes from about $30 to $6 if elected, declaring the dramatic price reduction would smash the thriving black market.

Flavour name restrictions could push ‘half a million adult vapers back to smoking’

Pooja Shrivastava, Asian Trader

Proposed flavour name restrictions under the Tobacco and Vapes Act could add up to £4.5bn a year in smoking-related costs, based on the proportion of vapers who could return to smoking, states a recent report, highlighting that most adult vapers say flavour restrictions should only be applied where there is clear evidence of child appeal, not a blanket approach across specific categories.

New HMRC October vape tax and what it means for 5 million users

Rory Poulter, Wales Online

Millions of vapers face higher costs from next month when the Government introduces a new tax on e-cigarette liquid. A new Vaping Products Duty will come into force on October 1, with HM Revenue & Customs imposing a charge of £2.20 for every 10ml of vaping liquid.

The tax will apply to all vaping liquids, whether they contain nicotine or not. That means a 10ml refill bottle will attract £2.20 in duty, while a 2ml pod will carry 44p of duty. The rate works out at 22p for every 1ml of liquid.

Coalition to legalise vapes and slash cigarette tax in major crime crackdown

Jade Gailberger, Herald Sun

The tax on cigarettes would be slashed by 80 per cent, vapes and nicotine pouches legalised and $200m invested in a law enforcement boost under a tough new Coalition masterplan proposed to smash the criminal gangs behind Australia’s deadly tobacco wars.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor will on Thursday unveil his party’s bold four-point plan that aims to inject billions of dollars back into the federal budget, while ending the firebombings, extortion, and violence on our streets.

(PDF VERSION: Coalition to legalise vapes and slash cigarette tax in major crime crackdown )

Trump Names Darrell Scott as CDC Tobacco Health Adviser, Citing Tobacco Risks and Harm-Reduction Solutions

2Firsts

According to Reuters on September 1, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Pastor Darrell Scott will serve his administration as an adviser on tobacco health issues on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee to the Director, or ACD.

Trump said tobacco-related disease has for too long placed a significant burden on American families, including communities that have been overlooked and underserved, and said Scott understands those communities and the challenges they face.

On this day…2020!

A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…

As the PMTA Deadline Looms..

The Vaping Industry Faces Potential Disaster – Michael McGrady

The Family Smoking Prevention & Tobacco Control Act mandates that all new tobacco products must receive a premarket tobacco application authorization to be sold on the U.S. market. Any product without a PMTA approval cannot be legally sold in the United States and is considered “adulterated” or “illicit” under federal statute. Believe it or not, the FDA and economic advisers to President Barack Obama at the time feared that quickly implementing the new tobacco regulations would result in catastrophe for a blossoming vaping industry.

Big Tobacco Is About to …

Dominate the E-Cig Industry – Rich Duprey

The electronic cigarette industry is poised to irreversibly change next week. Manufacturers face a Sept. 9 deadline to submit premarket tobacco product applications (PMTA) to the Food & Drug Administration or face having their e-cigs and e-liquids pulled from store shelves.

Visit Nicotine Science & Policy for more News from around the World

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