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- Category: April 2021
Mexican lawmakers missed the Supreme Court’s deadline to legalize marijuana by April 30, and they didn’t ask for another extension. Now there is talk about a special session after June’s elections—but the court could issue a new ruling striking down criminalization in the meantime.
The Louisiana House of Representatives voted to legalize medical cannabis flower under the state’s existing limited program. The body also advanced a bill to prepare for broader recreational marijuana legalization as well as separate hemp regulation legislation.
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- Category: April 2021
The World Health Organisation can sound pretty negative on vaping at times.
So it might surprise you that harm reduction (such as switching from smoking to vaping) is embedded in its tobacco control charter.
It might surprise you even more to find that one of the biggest influences on WHO policy is from an individual in a country that has not ratified the WHO tobacco framework.
You’ll also see, at times, a disconnect between the WHO’s statements and its policies. That’s because WHO officials might guide (or at least try to guide) policy, but they don’t actually make it.
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- Category: April 2021
If it doesn't look like avocado toast, you can't have it. That's the message I get loud and clear from Uncle Sam when I read story after story about the Food and Drug Administration's latest foray into stopping ordinary Americans from doing what ordinary Americans like to do.
Take the latest news that the FDA is thinking about requiring tobacco companies to lower the nicotine in all cigarettes sold in the United States. Its goal is to fight nicotine addiction. The paternalists at the FDA are also considering whether this proposal should be paired with a ban on menthol products.
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- Category: April 2021
We often default to thinking of misinformation and disinformation as phenomena that thrive mainly in the online world, with fake news and conspiracy theories occasionally spilling over into real life. By viewing these primarily as “digital” threats, however, I fear that we sometimes overlook their broader real-world consequences.
Misleading or false information, whether online or offline, has a very real impact on people’s perceptions and behaviors. At best, it leaves the public confused. At worst, it erodes their trust in facts, science, and expert guidance and can lead them to make unwise choices.
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- Category: April 2021
The new Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill, was first announced last May by Deputy Health Minister Joe Phaahla, and is currently being reviewed. The Bill is expected to propose stricter e-cigarettes and vaping regulations, and restrictions on the use, marketing, and sales of certain tobacco products in South Africa. Moreover, it would set in place a provision allowing the government to implement a “100% public cigarette ban”. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
Smokers attending emergency departments will be given free e-cigarettes and taught how to use them, in a trial designed to help people quit.
Patients will be offered a device, enough e-liquid supplies for a week, and referral to local smoking-cessation services, alongside medical advice.
Hospitals in Norfolk, London, Leicester and Edinburgh will participate.
E-cigarettes are not available on the NHS, other than in trials, but health experts say they can help people quit.
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- Category: April 2021
New Taipei, April 29 (CNA) Legislation banning the sale of e-cigarettes in New Taipei City cleared the city council Thursday, making it the first of Taiwan's six special municipalities to ban the sale of vaping products.
The New Taipei ordinance on the management of novel tobacco products prohibits the manufacture, importation, sale, display or advertising of vaping devices and heated tobacco products and components unless one has a government drug or medical device permit to do so.
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- Category: April 2021
Finland is seeking to tighten its already tough restrictions on public smoking and tobacco advertising in the next few years, in line with the national goal to phase out the habit almost completely by 2030.
The Nordic country's Ministry of Social Affairs and Health said that the proposal unveiled Monday will further tighten restrictions on outdoor smoking. This would include places such as bus stops, public beaches, children’s playgrounds and some outdoor terraces becoming completely smoking-free.
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- Category: April 2021
After keeping its distance from cannabis, Marlboro-maker Philip Morris International Inc. is beginning to take a closer look at the suddenly hot market.
The company is assessing factors like the toxicity of cannabis, efficacy and differences between pharmaceutical and consumer options, Chief Executive Officer Andre Calantzopoulos told Bloomberg News [...] The company is still analyzing the industry because the market is so young and there isn’t robust regulation yet, he said. “We are doing all this work and will determine one day what avenues to pursue,” he said in an interview. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the United States, is facing a twin crisis – it’s at once the epicentre of America’s opioid crisis and the site of a significant HIV outbreak. The situation is particularly tragic because the public health emergency likely could have been avoided, had policymakers looked at the science and endorsed successful harm reduction initiatives rather than vilifying them.
[...] Even in Europe, overall more forward-thinking on public health issues, lawmakers are falling short by failing to integrate reduced-harm products like e-cigarettes into their efforts to stamp out the tobacco habit [...]
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- Category: April 2021
A provision tucked into the Covid Relief bill passed by Congress in December 2020 now has vaping businesses and states regulatory departments scrambling to meet new federal requirements. And in many cases, it will increase the cost of doing business.
“For the vape industry, this was the worst Christmas present ever,” said Avalara excise tax expert John Beaty.
The provision added vaping products sold online and in vape shops to the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (“PACT”) Act, which regulates the sale of tobacco products. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
As lawmakers across the country seek to reduce youth tobacco and vapor product use, many have introduced and passed legislation that regulates, taxes, and in some cases, prohibits the sales of such products.
This analysis includes state specific information on tobacco and vapor product use among adults in youth in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C. Each paper examines smoking rates among adults in the respective, youth use of tobacco and vapor products, and the effectiveness of tobacco settlement payments, taxes, and vapor products on reducing combustible cigarette use.
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- Category: April 2021
[...] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it is committing to advancing two tobacco product standards to significantly reduce disease and death from using combusted tobacco products, the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. The FDA is working toward issuing proposed product standards within the next year to ban menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and ban all characterizing flavors (including menthol) in cigars; the authority to adopt product standards is one of the most powerful tobacco regulatory tools Congress gave the agency. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
Several media reports recently came out quoting a CSIR survey that has gone viral on social media after it claimed that smokers and vegetarians are less susceptible to COVID-19.
According to an India.com report, ever since the second wave of COVID-19 caused chaos in India, a lot of false rumors and misinformation have appeared online. [...] Amidst the viral news, on Monday, the Press Information Bureau while quoting CSIR made it clear that at present, no conclusion can be drawn yet based on the "serological studies" that smoking and vegetarian diet may shield one from COVID-19. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
The Biden administration is planning to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, according to several reports, after years of lobbying from public health groups and civil rights activists who say that the products frequently have been aggressively marketed towards, and disproportionately harmed Black communities. The proposed ban will likely be announced Thursday, according to CBS News, in part because the Food and Drug Administration is under a court deadline to respond to a citizens' proposal to ban menthol products by that day. Any ban will likely take years to take effect, but would be a step forward according to anti-smoking groups.
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- Category: April 2021
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to cap nicotine levels in traditional combustible cigarettes and to ban the sale of menthols as well. The FDA must respond in court by April 29 to a citizens’ petition to ban menthols by disclosing whether it plans to implement such a policy. And the Biden administration is considering a concurrent requirement to limit the amount of nicotine in all cigarettes sold in the U.S. to levels at which they are no longer addictive.
“It would be historic, it would be groundbreaking and it would save millions and millions of lives,” said the American Lung Association’s Erika Sward. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
Smokeless sales, driven by the spitless segment, are trending up at convenience stores with help from ongoing innovation in the segment.
Dollar sales in the convenience channel rose 8.9% for the 52 weeks ending Feb. 27, 2021, totaling $7.37 billion, up from $6.77 billion for the previous year, according to data from NielsenIQ. Unit sales for the same period rolled in flat (0.8%), a dip of 0.1% over the previous year.
“Moist tobacco cans are still king in our stores,” said Lisa Dell’Alba, president of Square One Markets, operating seven stores in Pennsylvania. “We are seeing steady consumption and slight growth in the category.”
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- Category: April 2021
ANGRY MPs have called on the Government to defund the World Health Organisation unless it ends its hostile attitude towards vaping as a way of helping smokers quit. A cross-party committee is furious the WHO is considering branding e-cigarettes as dangerous as smoking - even though scientists insist they are 95 percent safer and have helped millions of Britons kick the killer habit. Leaked papers reveal the organisation, which is already under fire for its COVID-19 response, looks set to urge countries to take an aggressive anti-vaping stance at an upcoming summit. [...]
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- Category: April 2021
On April 22, high-ranking Democratic legislators introduced a bicameral bill that would create the country’s first federal vaping tax.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin—perhaps the most prominent longtime anti-smoking advocate in Congress—joined forces with Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who over the past few years has become one of the vaping industry’s fiercest opponents. [...] If the bill manages to survive the congressional chambers and make it onto President Joe Biden’s desk for signing, it would increase the tobacco tax rate—and place the same tax rate on reduced-risk alternatives like vapes.
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- Category: April 2021
A new study published in The Lancet [...] suggests that smokers given higher-nicotine vaping products consume fewer dangerous carcinogens through continued smoking compared with their peers given lower-strength vapes. The study—funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—looked at how smokers’ use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) could help them cut back on cigarettes.
The participants, aged from 21 to 65, had smoked more than nine cigarettes per day for at least the past year and were not currently using ENDS. [...]