Vaping Digest November 29th

Friday’s News at a glance:

Reports of US lung disease outbreak and links to vaping – Banning e-cigarettes is not the answer – Superjunk Science – Ross Responds – Stronger Liions – Salty Study Slammed – ‘Illegal vaping oil factory’ revealed – Innovate, don’t just ban wholesale – Vaping: is convenience blowing its chance? – Nova Scotia to announce changes to regulations – Vaping isn’t the demon Canada’s health sector wants you to think it is – Why ‘vaping voters’ rattled Trump’s White House – Online sales ban hits China’s vaping industry – Retailers pushing for legalised nicotine vaping – Jacinda Ardern says vaping laws must protect young people – Nicotine Science and Policy Daily Digest

Reports of US lung disease outbreak

And links to vaping – So what does it mean for the UK and our pragmatic approach in Sheffield?

Sarah Hepworth & Greg Fell – Smokefree Sheffield

Following reports of an outbreak in the US of serious lung disease and recent deaths linked to vaping the US Centre Disease Control (CDC) have discouraged people from vaping and there are moves to ban them in various US states such as San Francisco. Countries across the world such as Australia have already followed this line. The debate on e-cigarettes for and against is at its height and has become even more polarising than before. So what should we make of the US position and what does it mean for the UK?

A full investigation is not yet available but early indications are that these cases in the US have been linked to people using illicit vaping fluid bought on the streets or homemade, with many containing cannabis products like THC or synthetic cannabinoids like Spice, and others i.e. Vitamin E acetate oil.

Banning e-cigarettes is not the answer

Regulations must be based on market specific risk proportions:

Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos – Daily News Egypt

Once e-cigarettes enter the market, the population will immediately drop cigarettes for vaping, and governments will lose out on a huge source of tax revenue

It’s clear that US cases of acute lung injury happened because of using illegal marijuana products

Debates about the dangers of smoking and the rise of e-cigarettes as a substitution have been ongoing for a while. While some countries openly allow the traditional tobacco cigarettes, e-cigarettes have been restricted.

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Superjunk Science

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

Bucknell University, a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, is proudly crowing over a “ground-breaking study” produced by its chemical engineering and chemistry students. The simple truth is that this work is the most horrendous piece of vape-related junk science to have been released all year.

“Bucknell student and faculty researchers are now adding to the mounting evidence that e-cigarette use, or vaping, may be hazardous to your health. With what began as an undergraduate research project, the group published a groundbreaking [SIC] study finding that carbon monoxide (CO) can be produced when e-cigarettes are used at higher power settings,” boasted the Bucknell PR department.

Ross Responds

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

Yesterday, POTV covered the letter from sixteen paediatric healthcare professionals that was published in The Guardian. They claimed that “we cannot sit back and accept a blanket message from Public Health England that vaping is 95% less harmful than tobacco smoking”. The errors and guesswork have been called out in a response from Louise Ross, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and Vice Chair of the New Nicotine Alliance.

Louise Ross writes: “The letter from 16 paediatric professionals (Vaping poses serious threat to children, 27 November) is an argument based on error and supposition, starting with the claim that ‘nobody knows exactly what substances are in these liquids’. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency knows exactly what’s in them, and UK products are highly regulated.

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Stronger Liions

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

Materials scientists at Deakin University say they have proven that liquid solvent-free solid state batteries can easily be made, paving the way for a future free from batteries catching fire or exploding if they get too hot. They also say that this could double the capacity for Li-ion cells.

Research fellows at Deakin’s Institute for Frontier Materials Dr Fangfang Chen and Dr Xiaoen Wang say their discovery means that lithium-ion batteries found in everyday items like mobile phones, computers and vehicles would no longer pose a fire risk because the highly volatile liquid electrolyte currently used in them would be replaced with a solid polymer material.

Salty Study Slammed

Dave Cross, Planet of the Vapes

“Vaping is now a multibillion dollar industry that appeals to current smokers, former smokers, and young people who have never smoked,” says an American research team. They are concerned about vaping’s efficacy and potential for harm. Defying all logic, they say there’s “insufficient evidence” to say that vaping presents less harm than smoking.

Striking an evangelical pose from the outset, Gott et al. preach that “The lungs are a physiologic marvel”. Then, to demonstrate what a balanced and thoughtful piece of work they created, the authors then describe vaping by beginning “with a brief history of traditional cigarettes.”

Study Finds Nearly All Minnesota Patients

With Vaping-Related Lung Injuries Used Illegal THC Products Containing Suspect Additive

Jacob Sullum, Reason

A new study of vaping-related lung injuries in Minnesota by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reinforces the case against vitamin E acetate, a diluting and thickening agent found in black-market THC products. The study, published yesterday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also provides evidence that use of the additive is a relatively new phenomenon, which might explain why cases like these were not reported until recently.

In light of the accumulating evidence implicating illegal cannabis products in the lung disease outbreak, which as of November 20 included 2,290 cases and 47 deaths, the CDC has modified its advice about vaping.

Changes to vaping regulations

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is poised to become the next province to tighten rules governing vaping.

Health Minister Randy Delorey says the province will announce new regulations next week.

Last month, Premier Stephen McNeil said his government is looking at regulations that could include a ban on flavoured vaping products.

‘Illegal vaping oil factory’ revealed

After baffled residents smell strawberries for weeks

What is believed to be an illegal vaping factory in Grimsby has been raided by customs officers.

CCTV captured a man running from the rear of the Pizza Plus shop on Cleethorpe Road as they arrived and officers found large vats of vaping oil at the rear of the takeaway.

Today they were taking items away in evidence bags.

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Vaping: is convenience blowing its chance?

Antony Begley

Somewhat alarmingly, the convenience retail market’s share of the vaping market appears to be shrinking rather than growing. Does this represent one of the biggest missed opportunities of all time? And what can the sector do to start reclaiming its fair share?

On paper, the vaping market is tailor-made for convenience stores. Long opening hours and convenient locations alone should have been enough to make the local retailing sector the channel of choice for the UK’s 3.2 million vapers. With such a dominant share of the tobacco category (45% of the market), convenience retailers should have been in pole position to capitalise on the phenomenal growth of the vaping category over the last four or five years.

Retailers pushing for legalised vaping

The executive director the Australian Retail Association, Russell Zimmerman speaks to the media in Canberra to announce that the association has created the Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association, calling for vaping to be legalised a regulatory framework to oversee a safe vaping industry in Australia. “If there is no regulation then we will see what’s happened overseas whereby people are adding products to the vaping that they’re doing and that is causing the issues”, referring to injuries to people’s health. Dr Colin Mendelsohn from the UNSW says there hasn’t been one death from nicotine vaping. “We are talking about reducing the risk by 95 per cent”, Dr Mendelsohn says

Innovate, don’t just ban wholesale

Star Online

FOR the past few months, there has been a lot of news about how vaping products have resulted in several deaths, most in the United States. Since then, several countries – China, India and Singapore – have placed a blanket ban on all vaping and e-cigarette-related products.

It is easy to claim that these “vaping-related deaths” are the result of these evil vaping devices causing havoc in society. But taking a few seconds to read beyond the headlines reveals that these deaths were not caused by vaping devices, but from the tampering of vaping cartridges and the usage of THC oil, a substance found in marijuana, instead.

Why ‘vaping voters’ rattled White House

Steven Shepard

When the vaping industry and its allies launched a major push to dissuade President Donald Trump from banning flavored e-cigarettes this fall, they pointed to a newly identified demographic group: vaping voters.

Battleground state polling conducted for the industry by one of the president’s trusted campaign pollsters suggested a ban could tip the balance against the president — 96 percent of vapers said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to ban flavored e-cigarettes.

Vaping isn’t the demon…

Canada’s health sector wants you to think it is

Vaping-related illnesses is what happens when an unregulated market in the U.S. is allowed to spin out of control. Look to the U.K. for the real picture on vaping.

All signs point to the use of black market vape pods containing THC as the cause of the rash of vaping-related lung illness that swept the U.S. in recent months.

The Centers for Disease Control in the United States has studied the lungs of more than two dozen of the 47 mostly young men who died from vaping-related illnesses and found a chemical called vitamin E acetate in all of them.

Vaping laws must protect young people

Jacinda Ardern – Derek Cheng

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the rules around vaping will aim to stop children from taking it up and will be finalised soon.

Her comments follow principals from high-decile schools saying that at least a third of their students are trying vaping, while health groups say that regulation is urgently needed.

Ardern said Government regulation on vaping would be announced soon. The goal was to ensure smokers can easily transition to vaping, which is reportedly 95 per cent less harmful than cigarette smoking, but not make it so accessible and appealing that non-smokers start vaping.

Online ban hits China’s vaping industry

But don’t expect it to disappear with a puff of smoke – Zhuang Pinghui

This story is part of an ongoing series on US-China relations, jointly produced by the South China Morning Post and POLITICO, with reporting from Asia and the United States.
The vaping industry has suffered a series of setbacks around the world following a spate of deaths in the United States.
A number of governments are now considering or implementing bans even if Donald Trump has wavered over whether to introduce similar measures in the United States.

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On this Day…2018

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

Caught red-handed

Christopher Snowden, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist

I spotted this tweet by a chap called Nason Maasi yesterday. He works with Mark Petticrew and Martin McKee at the LSHTM and his view of business is informed by their conspiratorial, Marxist way of thinking.

The facts according to ASH

Christopher Snowden, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist

It must be a nice feeling to know that you can get away with saying whatever you want no matter how untrue it is. That’s been Deborah Arnott’s fortunate position as the head of ASH for many years now. The facts are whatever she wants them to be.

At the moment she wants Scotland to ban smoking in prisons. This has been a disastrous policy in England and Wales so, writing in The Sun, she simply changes the facts.

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