Vapers Digest 8th March

Friday’s News at a glance:

UK Vape Tax: What It Means for Vapers – UK To Tax Vaping Products & Industry Reactions – The ‘saint tax’ on vaping – Vaping Products Duty Consultation – Tax on vapes ‘is not a good idea’ – UK Announces Plans for Steep New Vape Tax – The Vape Tax – Experts React to Child Vaping Suicide Link – Fight Vaping Misinformation – A Complete COP Out – More Federal Data on Smoking & Vaping Rates – Senators Threaten C-Stores Selling Disposable Vapes – It’s Critically Important to Tell Women the Truth About Nicotine – Massachusetts keeps arresting people – ACI Releases Groundbreaking Study – Show Them the Numbers – Banning flavoured vapes would promote harm – Colorado Democrats once again kill bill – Insights on Youth Use from JUUL Researcher – Anti-Vape Bills Inundate State Legislatures

UK Vape Tax: What It Means for Vapers

James Dunworth

In a move welcomed by the tobacco industry, UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced a planned ‘vape levy’.

The proposals look to be some of the most severe and complicated in the world, and will (at least) double the cost of vaping for many.

In this post, we’ll take a look at what’s planned, what the likely impact will be and what will happen next.

UK To Tax Vaping Products

And Industry Reactions – Michelle, ECigClick

Sadly it has been announced after the Spring Budget statement today (Wednesday 6th March 2024) that the UK is to tax vaping products.

You can read the full statement here – but I will just focus on the area related to vaping.

The government will introduce a new duty on vaping products from 1 October 2026, with registrations for the duty opening from 1 April 2026.

The rates will be £1.00 per 10ml for nicotine free liquids, £2.00 per 10ml on liquids that contain 0.1-10.9 mg nicotine per ml, and £3.00 per 10ml on liquids that contain 11mg or more per ml.

The ‘saint tax’ on vaping

Christopher Snowdon

Hear me out: is it possible that when Rishi Sunak became UK prime minister he set himself a Brewster’s Millions-style challenge of getting support for the Conservative Party down to zero by the time of the General Election? Does he have brainstorming sessions in Downing Street late at night to identify the dwindling number of people who might still vote for him and discuss how to alienate them? ‘We’ve already lost the people who use disposable vapes, but there are still people who use refillable e-cigarettes’, you can just imagine him saying. ‘How do we needlessly annoy them? I’ve got it! Let’s tax e-cigarette fluid.’

HM Treasury

The government announced at Budget 2024 that it would introduce a new Vaping Products Duty from October 2026. This consultation sets out the proposals for how the duty will be designed and implemented. This duty will be accompanied by a one-off increase in tobacco duties.

In January 2024, the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) announced a range of restrictions it will introduce on vaping products, including on the supply and sale of disposable vapes. This consultation led by HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs builds on these measures, with proposals for how a vaping duty would further tackle the harms of vaping.

Watching a Health & Wellbeing Board meeting online on their Tobacco Control Strategy. Someone says, of vaping, we don’t know what’s in them. Can I recommend this https://t.co/UjmYMJgRyV

— Louise (@grannylouisa) March 7, 2024

My comment on the UK government’s vape tax… pic.twitter.com/zLS6QtICpO

— Clive Bates (@Clive_Bates) March 6, 2024

Tax on vapes ‘is not a good idea’

Dentistry.co.uk

As chancellor Jeremy Hunt prepares to unveil the March budget today, an expert has said the rumoured tax on vape liquids ‘really isn’t a good idea’.

The former head of Leicestershire and Rutland’s Stop Smoking Service Lou Ross said measures that will make vaping more expensive go against the government’s aim for the UK to be smoke free by 2030.

Reported by Planet Radio, she added: ‘Putting a tax on the liquid that people will be using, especially given that they will be people with poor mental health; people in difficult circumstances; living in poverty, is entirely the wrong way to go in my opinion.’

UK Announces Plans for Steep Vape Tax

Jim McDonald

British finance minister Jeremy Hunt announced today that the UK will impose taxes on vaping products for the first time, beginning in two years. The tax, which the government says will reduce youth vaping, will likely lead to fewer smokers switching to vapes, and push some current vapers back to smoking.

Although the tax will be subject to a public consultation, the government’s spring budget document lays out the current plan in detail, according to The Mirror. The budget says the tax will be £1 per 10 milliliters of zero-nicotine e-liquid, £2/10 mL for e-liquids containing from 0.1-10.9 mg/mL of nicotine, and £3/10 mL on products containing e-liquid in 11 mg/mL or greater strengths.

Four from Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes:

The Vape Tax

The Chancellor is set to present his final budget before the General Election. A key part in the announcement to be made later today (Wednesday), Jeremy Hunt is to announce a tax on vape products. Out of all the mistakes the government is making over vaping and tobacco harm reduction, the New Nicotine Alliance says the proposed tax “would be the most pernicious of all.”

The New Nicotine Alliance said: “It has been widely trailed in the media that the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is planning to implement an extra tax on vaping liquids in the budget on Wednesday. This would be a monumental mistake which just adds to a systematic dismantling of the government’s previous world-leading approach to harm reduction and will cost lives.

Experts React to Child Vaping Suicide Link

Experts have responded to a study published in JAMA Network Open which looks at the use of tobacco products and suicide attempts among children. Covering almost 9000 children, the authors claim they found “statistically significant associations between children’s use of tobacco products and suicide attempts”. Their definition of tobacco products includes vapes.

The study’s authors concluded that their work showed increased risk of suicide attempts, “consistently reported for adolescents and adults who smoke cigarettes, extends to a range of emerging tobacco products and manifests among elementary school–aged children.”

Fight Vaping Misinformation

Smoke Free Sweden is urging policymakers to take urgent action on vaping misinformation to correct the growing levels of misunderstanding. New research has shown that the majority of smokers in England wrongly believe vapes are as harmful as cigarettes. Year on year this situation has been getting worse and caused ASH UK to speak out about it a year ago.

The research, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, looked at survey responses from 28,000 current smokers between 2014 and 2023 and found that 57% thought vaping was just as harmful as smoking or more so, despite numerous public health authorities finding vaping to be dramatically reduced in risk.

A Complete COP Out

The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that its Tenth session of the Conference of Parties (COP10) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) concluded by adopting “historic decisions” that will protect the environment and people from “the ravages of tobacco”.

“We have taken an historic decision on Article 18,” said Dr Adriana Blanco Marquizo, Head of the WHO FCTC Secretariat, describing action to strengthen the article of WHO FCTC focused on the protection of the environment and the health of all people.

More Federal Data

On Smoking & Vaping Rates Among American Adults

Brad Rodu, Tobacco Truth

Recently I described how high school vaping rates reported in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) are much lower than those reported in the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) (here). Today I review NSDUH adult vaping rates, compared to those in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which is the CDC’s traditional source for adult smoking estimates.

The chart at left shows smoking and vaping rates among all American adults 18+ years. In 2022, the NHIS estimate of current smokers was 11.6%, or about 29 million.

It’s Critically Important to Tell Women

The Truth About Nicotine – Kim “Skip” Murray

Elaine Keller, a cancer survivor and powerful advocate for tobacco harm reduction, once asked an important question: “Why is your concern about my ‘addiction’ to nicotine more important than my concern about getting lung cancer?”

As we mark Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, gender and health should be a major focus. Combustible tobacco causes health harms like nothing else, and this is one field, among so many, where women’s rights and needs are often sidelined.

Direct Attack

Anti-Vape Bills Inundate State Legislatures | RegWatch (Live)

In the war on vaping, it’s a brutally effective attack that’s unique to the U.S. marketplace.

Known as PMTA registry or directory bills, its new legislation or amendments to existing state law that require manufacturers, distributors, or sellers of nicotine vaping products to attest under penalty of perjury that the products are either authorized for sale by the FDA or are still undergoing the agency’s arduous pre-market tobacco application process.

Senators Threaten C-Stores

Selling Disposable Vapes – Jim McDonald

A group of Democratic U.S. senators, led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, has sent letters to 22 major convenience store retailers and distributors threatening them with legal consequences for selling vaping products that have not received FDA authorization.

The action was announced in a March 7 press release from Durbin—a longtime foe of vaping. The other signatories are Sens. Richard Blumenthal (CT), Sherrod Brown (OH), Bernie Sanders (VT), and Ron Wyden (OR).

Massachusetts keeps arresting people …

For selling flavored e-cigarettes – Jacob Grier

Last week the Massachusetts Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force released its annual report. That probably isn’t exciting reading for most of you, but it’s a really useful document for understanding the impact of prohibitionist tobacco policies. In 2019, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a comprehensive ban on flavored nicotine and tobacco products. Flavor bans are studied by health academics for how they affect consumer behavior, but this annual report is one of the few sources that reveals how these policies affect law enforcement.

ACI Releases Groundbreaking Study

On the Impact of Vaping as a Tobacco Harm Reduction Strategy

The American Consumer Institute (ACI) unveiled a comprehensive study entitled “Transition from Tobacco to Vaping: The Health Impacts by State” by ACI Senior Policy Analyst Justin Leventhal. The report provides a pivotal analysis of the potential for tobacco harm reduction alternative products to significantly reduce smoking-related deaths across the United States.

Evidence suggests that e-cigarettes are nearly twice as effective as traditional nicotine replacement therapies like gums and patches in aiding smoking cessation. Despite this, recent years have seen an increase in regulations, taxes, and outright bans on vaping products, hindering the progress toward a smoke-free future.

Show Them the Numbers

Tobacco Reporter

As tobacco companies seek to market lower harm alternatives to combustible cigarettes, there is one issue that is seriously undermining those efforts—youth use of their products. If you were in any doubt as to the scale of the threat that youth use of tobacco products represents for manufacturers, think Juul, Puff Bar, Elf Bar and disposable e-cigarettes in general. And now, critics of the tobacco industry have a new product in their sight. Fresh from their success in calling for the banning of disposable e-cigarettes, they are shifting attention to nicotine pouches with an increasingly familiar playbook of media alarm, political pronouncements and regulatory action.

DÉJÀ VU

Insights on Youth Use from JUUL Researcher | #GFNInterviews

The UK’s ban on disposable nicotine vapes demonstrates the many misbeliefs surrounding the “gateway” theory are thriving. But isn’t the theory that youth e-cig use is a gateway to smoking de-bunked? According to Dr. Arielle Selya it is and there’s no room for doubt.

Banning flavoured vapes

Would promote harm, not reduce it – Ian Irvine

Health Canada’s 15-person delegation is now back from the World Health Organization’s recent jamboree on tobacco control, held in Panama, a world tobacco smuggling nexus. The WHO has a vaping problem. Obsessive about tobacco but vehemently opposed to harm reduction, it effectively denies overwhelming scientific evidence that e-cigarettes are the most effective cigarette-quitting device ever invented.

Energized and ready, the Health Canada team is turning its attention to discouraging e-cigarettes in this country. Not satisfied that high taxes on cigarettes have led to a 30 per cent illegal share in the market for real cigarettes, it appears intent on doing the same for low-risk nicotine products by entertaining a ban on flavoured e-cigarette products.

Colorado Democrats once again kill bill

To regulate flavored tobacco – John Daley

For the second time in the last three sessions, a bill to regulate flavored tobacco failed in the state’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly. The proposal would have allowed a board of county commissioners to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine products. The House Business Affairs & Labor Committee defeated it on a 6-5 vote on Thursday afternoon.

Several lawmakers on the committee voting against cited concerns about impacts the legislation might have on local businesses, echoing testimony from several vape shop owners who said it would have hurt sales if a county banned flavored tobacco.

On this Day…2023

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

Science Direct, American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Introduction

Understanding the relationship between ENDS use and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other respiratory conditions is critical. However, most previous studies have not fully adjusted for cigarette smoking history.

Cultural change is crucial

To consigning smoking to the past – Martin Cullip, CAPX

This past year promised to be an important one when it came to putting in place properly researched tobacco harm reduction policies. Unfortunately, as another No Smoking Day comes and goes, there is clearly still much progress to be made. For all the talk of a ‘vaping revolution’ paving the way to the first truly smoke-free generation, this shift has yet to materialise. But perhaps the issue is that policymakers are looking for change in the wrong place.

The truth is that traditional tobacco control policies have been predominantly focused on heavy-handed taxation or, if Wes Streeting gets his way, a near total ban on cigarette sales.