Another Thai Crackdown ~ NASUWT Claims Evidence of Vaping Crisis ~ Rethinking Bloomberg’s Tobacco Control Influence: A Global Critique ~ Why Are Smoking Rates Rising in Parts of England? ~ Leaked EU Document Reveals Plan for Heavy Taxes on Nicotine Pouches ~ A full guide to vape aerosols Post 4. ~ U.S. HHS and Court News ~ Tariffs on Chinese Vapes Will Hit 79% ~ Commentary: Sen. Ashley Moody’s Vape Misinformation Hurts Public Health ~ The King of Denial: An FDA Honcho’s Legacy of Ashes ~ Thoughts on the Staff Cuts at the Center for Tobacco Products ~ The Supreme Court Blesses the FDA’s Rejection of Flavored Nicotine Vapes ~ 20 Million Americans Are Hoping Trump Will Save Vaping ~ Teenager pepper sprayed over vape in his backpack ~ Detecting Vapes: Examining strategies schools are using to try to stop teen vaping ~
The Thai government has followed its crackdown on ecigs by announcing yet another crackdown on vapes. Part of this new crackdown has been the launch of an app where people can dob in anybody they see vaping. Meanwhile, another government department has recommended legalising the sale of e-cigarettes due to the fact that the endless crackdowns have failed to achieve anything. No wonder the public is confused.
The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers – The Teachers’ Union (NASUWT) says that new data from a survey it’s conducted suggests that vaping continues to be a problem in schools. The Union says 54.4% of teachers reported that pupil vaping is a factor in issues of school safety and behaviour. The data was released just before the third reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in order to influence politicians.
Dr. Ziauddin Islam, Lindsey Stroud, The Opinion Pages
In February, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control(FCTC) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the world’s first public health treaty. Ratified in 2005, the FCTC now includes 183 countries and the European Union and was designed to reduce tobacco use. However, over time, it has evolved into a vehicle for Michael R. Bloomberg’s prohibitionist agenda, implemented under the banner of philanthropy.
The FCTC relies heavily on the MPOWER strategy, a WHO initiative pushed and funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. It emphasizes taxation, advertising bans, and smoking restrictions, while disregarding tobacco harm reduction and consumer-driven innovations – such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products (HTPs), and nicotine pouches – that have led to notable smoking declines in several countries but face growing restrictions elsewhere.
Smoking rates have gone up in parts of England, according to new research—something that hadn’t been seen in almost 20 years. The country has been regarded as a tobacco harm reduction success story, so what’s going on?
In abig regional divide, smoking rates declined by nearly 10 percent in the North of England from 2020-2024, the study found—but rose 10 percent in the South. The national average, which stood at 16.5 percent in 2024, essentially didn’t budge during that period.
What This Means for Consumers, Public Health, and the Fight Against Illicit Trade
A recently leaked document from the European Commission (EC), first reported by Snusjournalen and picked up by The Vaping Post, has stirred alarm across Europe. The confidential paper, originating from the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD), proposes a “substantial” EU-wide tax on nicotine pouches (NPs). While still unofficial, the potential impact of such a policy is already being felt.
This is the fourth Substack post of a series of posts describing vaping aerosols, their properties, their optimal regime of operation and comparisons with tobacco smoke and other aerosols. Understanding how vape aerosols form, operate and can be tested provides the knowledge to understand their pleasurable usage, their toxicity profile and relative safety with respect to tobacco smoke and other aerosols and pollutants. Without being “experts” this knowledge reassures our confidence on the role of vapes in harm reduction and serves us to counter ignorant and malicious disinformation.
Over the past few weeks, it has been a wild ride from #NIHobbling with grant cuts to #HealtHobbling via HHS staff cuts to the latest from SCOTUS and other legal battles!
My heart breaks witnessing the cruel cuts of jobs and funding. My anxiety meter has been on “high” for weeks. I worry how this chainsaw method of cutting expenses is going to harm the health of people all over the world, diminish the credibility of the United States, and send us back in time to when marginalized people were ignored or targeted in abusive ways.
In a recent hearing before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) grilled President Trump’s nominee for FDA Commissioner, Dr. Martin Makary, about the e-cigarette marketplace. Relying on misinformation from anti-tobacco and vaping groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Moody perpetuated the false narrative that Chinese-made vapes are “flooding” the U.S. market and accused the FDA of “burying its head in the sand” instead of addressing so-called “chemically ridden” e-cigarettes.
This hearing underscored the stark reality facing tens of millions of adult vapers and smokers: public health groups and Big Tobacco are both working toward the elimination of independent vaping products—one side seeking an outright ban, while the other fights to maintain a marketplace controlled by a handful of corporations. The result? A policy landscape that could wipe out the consumer-driven innovation that made modern e-cigarettes a powerful harm reduction tool.
Vaping products imported from China will soon be subject to a 79 percent tariff rate after the Trump administration announced Wednesday it would add a nearly across-the-board 34 percent tariff on Chinese imports. The tariffs take effect April 9.
Vapes were already tagged with a 45 percent tariff—a combination of an existing 25 percent Trump tariff in place since 2018 that was extended under President Biden, and two rounds of new 10 percent tariffs imposed earlier this year. The new tariff will be added to the existing ones.
In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected an appeals court’s conclusion that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated the Administrative Procedure Act by “arbitrarily and capriciously” refusing to allow continued sales of flavored nicotine solutions produced by Vapetasia and Triton Distribution. The decision effectively approves the FDA’s de facto ban on nicotine vaping products in flavors other than tobacco and menthol, meaning that unfair and irrational policy will continue unless it is reversed by the Trump administration.
Vapetasia, which is based in Las Vegas, and Triton Distribution, which is located in the Dallas area, complained that the FDA had improperly changed the criteria for approving their products after they sought permission to keep selling them.
Joe Murillo, Policy & Progress in Tobacco Harm Reduction
When you spend a career in a particular industry, it can become difficult to separate the personal from the professional. Seismic changes don’t just impact policy structures and business models, they change the lives of real people, many of whom you hold in high regard. Even when downsizing is essential to the continued existence of an enterprise, these decisions come at a very human cost.
That is certainly the case with the significant changes announced this week at the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). So today, I want to use this space to share both how I am thinking about what this means for the future of tobacco and nicotine policy in the United States, as well as how I am feeling about it as an individual who has spent much of my adult life in this space.
This week, Brian King, the imperious former head of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), was unceremoniously cashiered from his post and offered a demotion to a regional government office in rural Alaska—a fitting exile for a man whose career has been a masterclass in public health sabotage.
King’s legacy? Crippling the vaping industry, driving smokers back to deadly cigarettes, sparking a massive black market, and peddling half-truths to a public he swore to protect—all without a shred of reflection or remorse.
With significant personnel changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, federal vapor regulation and policy are in a precarious state. While the departure of a notorious, unelected anti-vaping bureaucrat is welcome news for many, much remains to be done to ensure President Trump’s renewed promise to save flavored vaping becomes a reality.
Despite being available in the U.S. marketplace for nearly two decades, e-cigarettes and nicotine vapor products continue to be demonized by public health groups, policymakers, and large swaths of the public. Yet their presence has coincided with a dramatic reduction in combustible cigarette use among American adults — a far cry from the “Mad Men” era of tobacco advertising dominance.
A teenager is recovering after he was pepper sprayed at Uniontown High School when a vape pen was found in his backpack. KDKA’s Ricky Sayer spoke with his family about the incident.
The Centers for Disease Control attributes that decline to a significant drop in the number of students using E-cigarettes, down about half a million from 2023 to 2024.
Despite that progress, E-cigarettes remain the most commonly used tobacco product among young people in grades six through 12.
Experts say it means there’s more work to do, and it will take a team effort from regulators, educators, and parents.
Approximately 2.8% to 3.2% of US adults are current e-cigarette users, with a majority being current cigarette smokers or former cigarette smokers.1 The most common use for e-cigarettes is to quit smoking, but e-cigarette use may continue even after discontinuation of combustible cigarettes.2 Furthermore, those who initiate e-cigarettes to quit smoking may not be successful, leading to dual use of both tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes, which increases potential health harms.
E-cigarettes may be more effective in helping smokers quit than nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gum, according to University of Queensland research
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