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Vapers Digest 9th October

Kevin CrowleyPosted on Posted in Latest News

Friday’s News at a glance:

Display Ban Slammed ~ Ash Celebrates Countdown ~ New Briefing Paper from GSTHR ~ Risk-Proportionate Regulation, Please ~ Eight Ministers Want to Freeze Europe’s Smoke-Free Future ~ New data: e-cigarette use in India keeps growing despite the vape ban ~ Eight nations trying to ‘export their tobacco control failures’ across Europe ~ Smoke-Free or Choice-Free? Eight Governments Push Europe Toward a Nicotine Freeze ~ Eight EU countries demand nicotine ‘market freeze’ ~ The Royal College of Physicians Appears to be “Perpetuating Smoking” ~ 3 Lessons from the New Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction Paper ~ Considerate Pouchers responds to health ministers’ call to ban nicotine pouches ~ The growing gap between Australia’s policies on nicotine and reality ~ Estonia’s smoking rate falls by more than a quarter as vaping more than triples ~ ‘Punishing adults quitting smoking’ – Louth-based vape shop owner heavily critical of Budget 2027 ~ Government approach to vaping ‘baffling’, in light of new ONS figures, says trade body ~ Special Report | From New York to Washington: How FDA’s Tobacco Center Is Reworking Product Review ~ Rule Reset | FDA Signals Major Overhaul of PMTA Process | RegWatch ~ Is Regulation Ignoring the Evidence? The Challenge of Better Regulation

Four From Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes

Display Ban Slammed

The Association of Convenience Stores has called on the Government to scrap its plans to introduce a tobacco-style display ban on vape and nicotine products, criticising the proposals as “unnecessary”, “burdensome” and likely to cost retailers many millions of pounds – a cost that would be passed directly onto you, the vaper.

Ash Celebrates Countdown

Anti smoking (and increasingly anti-vaping) charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is celebrating the 100-day countdown to a smokefree generation. It says that new data shows 62% of 11 to 17-year-olds who have ever smoked regret it, “while two-thirds of young people support the landmark Smokefree Generation law that will protect future generations from ever starting”.

New Briefing Paper from GSTHR

A new Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction Briefing Paper, ‘Emerging transitions’, looks at three countries showing signs of harm reduction in action: South Korea, Ireland and Estonia. It finds they all show emerging but different shifts away from cigarettes, coinciding with a rise in the use of safer nicotine products. The Paper considers these trajectories, how they differ and their implications for global harm reduction progress.

Risk-Proportionate Regulation, Please

Global health experts urge the UK government to preserve risk-proportionate vaping regulation in their submission to the consultation. The tobacco harm reduction (THR) experts warned ministers that treating vapes like cigarettes risks undermining adult smoking cessation while doing little to protect children.

Eight Ministers Want to Freeze Europe’s Smoke-Free Future

K. Farsalinos, MD, MPH, PhD, Science & Public Health

On 6 October 2026, health ministers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia, and Spain sent a joint letter to Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi. They framed it as a wish list for revising the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and the Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD), claiming it paves the way for a smoke-free generation by 2040. In reality, it is the exact opposite. If adopted as written, this letter would fail to deliver a smoke-free Europe. Instead, it would shield cigarettes from competition, hand a ready-made market to criminals, and leave millions of smokers with a single legal nicotine product: the one that kills them.

New data: e-cigarette use in India keeps growing despite the vape ban

Association of Vapers India

New market data shows India’s e-cigarette market was worth ₹22,000 crore (about $2.3 billion) in 2025 and is still growing, seven years after PECA banned it. The ban hasn’t stopped vaping in India. It has handed the trade to a black market that checks no IDs and pays no tax.

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Eight nations trying to ‘export their tobacco control failures’ across Europe

Smoke Free Sweden

International health experts have condemned a move by eight European nations to impose an EU-wide freeze on new nicotine alternatives as “a dangerous and misinformed attempt to export their own failures” at tobacco control.

The countries calling for the ban have daily smoking rates up to almost EIGHT times higher than Sweden’s, where a pragmatic approach to safer alternatives to cigarettes has helped bring smoking below the internationally recognised 5% smoke-free threshold.

Smoke-Free or Choice-Free? Eight Governments Push Europe Toward a Nicotine Freeze

POUCHFORUM

Eight EU governments — the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia and Spain — have written to Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi demanding a much more restrictive approach to the forthcoming revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD).

Eight EU countries demand nicotine ‘market freeze’

Snusforumet

Eight EU countries want Brussels to impose a “market freeze” on new nicotine products, tighten restrictions on those already on sale, and allow national bans on nicotine pouches.

The demands come in a joint letter to Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi, dated 6 October and published by the Dutch government.

Two From The Daily Pouch

The Royal College of Physicians Appears to be “Perpetuating Smoking”

Martin Cullip

In what is an astonishing about-turn, the UK’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has advocated for policies which are the polar opposite to its previous guidance.

In 2016, the RCP’s report, “Nicotine without smoke”, was ground-breaking. Recognising that the harm from smoking came from combustion. Following on from Dr. Michael Russell’s contention that “people smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar,” it emphasised the importance of moving people away from combustible tobacco use and onto products which deliver nicotine in a far safer form.

3 Lessons from the New Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction Paper

Joseph Hart

Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction has released a new paper titled The Next Wave of Tobacco Harm
Reduction? The paper focuses on heated tobacco products (HTP), vaping and other non-combustible  nicotine products. It looks at how people are moving from smoking to alternative nicotine products in South Korea, Ireland and Estonia.

Considerate Pouchers responds to health ministers’ call to ban nicotine pouches

Juan Taborcia, Considerate Pouchers

Considerate Pouchers today criticised a joint letter from eight EU health ministers asking the European Commission to allow national bans on nicotine pouches.

The letter, dated October 6th and led by Dutch Health Minister Sophie Hermans, is co-signed by the health ministers of Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia and Spain. It calls on Health Commissioner Olívér Várhelyi to use the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) to let member states ban nicotine pouches outright, freeze the entry of any new nicotine products into the EU market, and impose strict nicotine limits, a broad flavour ban and plain packaging across all products.

The growing gap between Australia’s policies on nicotine and reality

Estonia’s smoking rate falls by more than a quarter as vaping more than triples

Ali Anderson, Clearing The Air

The figures come from a new briefing by the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR), which examines changing nicotine use in Estonia, Ireland and South Korea.

In Estonia, the proportion of adults who currently smoked fell from 26.1 per cent in 2020 to 19 per cent in 2024. That is a fall of 7.1 percentage points, or around 27 per cent compared with the 2020 level.

‘Punishing adults quitting smoking’ – Louth-based vape shop owner heavily critical of Budget 2027

Daniel Mulhern, Ireland Live

Louth-based vape shop owner Eoin O’Boyle has criticised the government’s decision on an increase in tax on vapes.

O’Boyle owns OB Vape in Drogheda and has run his family business there for 8 years.

“The 20 cent is only the increase. It goes on top of the 50 cent that came in last November, so from January the tax is 70 cent a mil.

Government approach to vaping ‘baffling’, in light of new ONS figures, says trade body

Tony Corbin, Talking Retail

This is a decrease from 2024 (10.6%), which follows a long-term downward trend.

The proportion of current smokers has fallen by 10.4 percentage points since this data time series began in 2011 (20.2%), based on ONS estimates from the Annual Population Survey (APS).

Those aged 45 to 54 years had the highest proportion of current smokers (12.4%). Those aged 18 to 24 years have had the largest reduction in smoking prevalence among all age groups (18.5 percentage points) between 2011 (25.7%) and 2025 (7.2%).

Special Report | From New York to Washington: How FDA’s Tobacco Center Is Reworking Product Review

2Firsts

The U.S. tobacco and nicotine market has entered a period of notable regulatory change in 2026. In September, Bret Koplow was formally appointed director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products after serving as acting director since 2025. The agency has also issued new policy and enforcement measures, accelerated efforts to improve product review, and granted new marketing orders across both e-cigarette and nicotine-pouch categories. Together, those developments have begun to reshape expectations around which products can reach the legal market and how FDA intends to regulate them.

Rule Reset | FDA Signals Major Overhaul of PMTA Process | RegWatch

Brent Stafford, Regulator Watch

The U.S. vaping industry is on the cusp of monumental change. Following detailed reports by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, FDA has formally announced its intention to evaluate a possible overhaul of the PMTA framework, including new rulemaking to replace the existing system.

In this episode of RegWatch, tobacco control policy expert Cliff Douglas examines the developments driving the shift: mounting legal pressure, new CTP Director Bret Koplow’s embrace of harm reduction, and FDA commissioner nominee Dr. Heidi Overton’s defense of flavored vape authorizations.

Global Forum on Nicotine

Is regulation keeping up with the evidence? As the European Union considers the future regulation of non-combustible tobacco and nicotine products, an important question emerges: is the available scientific evidence being assessed fully, consistently and transparently?

In this Science Lab presentation, Carrie Wade examines the EU’s Better Regulation Framework and the evidence used in the recent evaluation of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). 

On this day…2020!

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

Another Irrelevant E-Cigarette Summit

Dick Puddlecote

Towards the end of proceedings on Friday 17th November, Sarah Jakes of the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) will speak to the fifth E-Cigarette Summit at the Royal Society and describe vaping consumers as “true experts in this field”, but note quite rightly that “yet often their voices are missing from the debate”. It couldn’t be a more timely speech, because for the whole day that precedes it there will be no consumers involved whatsoever.

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