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- Category: February 2020
To reduce electronic cigarette use, some U.S. states and localities have added vaping restrictions to established smoke-free indoor air laws. Yet, if smokers use e-cigarettes to quit, such restrictions could have the unintended effect of attenuating the original smoke-free air policy's effects on smoking. This study estimated changes in current smoking, past-year smoking cessation, and recent vaping following the introduction of smoke- and vape-free air laws.
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- Category: February 2020
Public Health Law Center Executive Director D. Douglas Blanke, J.D., spoke as part of a panel on e-cigarettes and nicotine addiction during the National Governors Association 2020 Winter Meeting.
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- Category: February 2020
A new study shows 4 in 10 cancer deaths are attributable to cigarette smoking in parts of the South region and Appalachia. For this study, appearing in Cancer Causes & Control, Farhad Islami, [...] examined the proportion of cancer deaths from 2013 to 2017 attributed to cigarette smoking in 152 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (MMSAs).
Data show the proportion of cancer deaths attributable to cigarette smoking was greater in men than in women in all evaluated MMSAs. In both sexes combined, the proportion of smoking-related cancer deaths ranged from 8.8% in Logan (Utah-Idaho) to 35.7% in Lexington-Fayette (Kentucky). [...]
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- Category: February 2020
Vaping alters the bacteria in the mouth, making e-cigarettes users more prone to inflammation and infection than non-smokers, new research suggests.
Researchers say their study is the first to demonstrate vaping changes the oral microbiome – the community of bacteria and other micro-organisms, adding to the limited understanding of the safety of e-cigarettes. Senior author Xin Li [...] said: “Given the popularity of vaping, it is critical that we learn more about the effects of e-cigarette aerosols on the oral microbiome and host inflammatory responses in order to better understand the impact of vaping on human health.”
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- Category: February 2020
A crackdown is coming on Australians who illegally import nicotine vaping products online, in a move set to reignite debate over whether e-cigarettes are helpful for smokers who need help to quit.
Despite laws prohibiting the importation of nicotine vape liquids - except under a little-used scheme that requires a prescription - there has until now been little obstacle to buying it online, with thousands of vapers - including those aged under 18 - importing it without obstruction.
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- Category: February 2020
The South African government may start taxing e-cigarettes and plastic straws as it ramps up green and health taxes to boost revenue and change behavior. [...] The government will start taxing heated tobacco products immediately and intends to introduce a levy on electronic cigarettes next year. “Globally, policymakers are looking at regulating and taxing these products due to concerns about their health effect,” the Treasury said. [...]
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- Category: February 2020
Malawi has passed a bill decriminalising cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes, almost five years after a motion to legalise industrial hemp was adopted.
The country follows in the footsteps of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho, neighbouring south-east African states that have legalised medicinal cannabis, as well as South Africa, where medicinal and recreational use was decriminalised in 2018.
“Today is a very glorious day for me personally and, I think, for the entire nation,” said Boniface Kadzamira, the former MP who tabled the topic in 2015, following the successful passage of the bill on Thursday.
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- Category: February 2020
In the wake of last year’s EVALI lung injury outbreak and a raft of legislative and media reactions to perceived threats to youth, an intriguing question is being asked about one potential cause of the exaggerated-but-real rise in nicotine vaping among teens who don’t smoke. Are anti-vaping advertisements inadvertently promoting product recognition and uptake among youth?
In a December report for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Senior Fellow Michelle Minton argued that anti-vaping campaigns portraying e-cigarettes as a deadly youth epidemic have the opposite effect to that intended. [...]
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- Category: February 2020
The government insists it never interfered with state agencies to favour Philip Morris (Thailand) Ltd (PMTL) by lobbying public prosecutors not to press a new charge against the company.
On the fourth day of the no-confidence debate, the opposition raised the dispute between Thai agencies and tobacco company Philip Morris to grill the government.
Saranwuth Sarankate, a Pheu Thai Party MP for Uttaradit, accused Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai of being involved in efforts to help the company. [...]
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- Category: February 2020
Changing regulation and a lung injury outbreak last summer have soured the market for electronic cigarettes, a fortuitous development for nicotine pouch manufacturer Swedish Match (OTC:SWMAF), which is in the midst of a capacity expansion push.
Although cigars actually account for the bulk of the cigarette alternative's revenue, nicotine pouches are the fastest-growing segment in the tobacco market, and Swedish Match is looking to capitalize on it by adding to its ZYN brand's potential.
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- Category: February 2020
President Rodrigo Duterte is now banning the use of unregistered vape in public and enclosed places nationwide.
Duterte signed Executive Order 106, amending EO 26 that prohibits smoking of cigarettes in enclosed areas such as schools, elevators and stairwells, fire hazard locations, medical facilities.
Vaping is no longer allowed except in designated smoking areas, which may be an open space or area with proper ventilation, the order read.
EO 106 also regulated the sale, manufacture, marketing, distribution and importation of unregistered electronic nicotine devices and other novel tobacco products, [...]
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- Category: February 2020
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that has so far killed more than 2600 people in China has had limited impact up to now in the vaping industry around the world, but severe movement restrictions have led to fears of disruption.
Dimitris Agrafiotis, executive director of the Tennessee Smoke-Free Association and chief executive of Global eVapor Consulting, has found cause to worry about supply chain disruptions.
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- Category: February 2020
A sweeping tobacco bill slated for a House vote this week is reviving interest in limiting the levels of nicotine in cigarettes and other products — an idea the FDA first proposed three years ago that's largely fallen off the Trump administration's regulatory agenda.
Nicotine caps aren't actually in the legislation which would ban flavored tobacco, including menthol. But the way in which the Democratic bill goes further than the Trump administration's dialed-back vaping ban is focusing attention on what public health advocates say is a broader White House retreat from regulating tobacco [...]
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- Category: February 2020
Turkey on Feb. 25 banned the import of e-cigarettes and related products, announcing the decision in the country’s Official Gazette.
The ban covers all kinds of products used for electronic smoking, including e-cigarette devices, accessories, spare parts and solutions.
It also applies to e-cigarette products that use heating or incineration, including electronic hookahs, regardless of nicotine content.
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- Category: February 2020
In this episode of RegWatch Dr. Rodu discusses events behind the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) retraction of a major study by authors Stanton Glantz and Dharma Bhatta of the University of California San Francisco that purported to show nicotine vaping led to an increase in heart attacks. The study fueled national panic over vaping and Dr. Rodu led the effort questioning the work.
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- Category: February 2020
Juul has applied for a patent regarding a device, supposedly powered by artificial intelligence, that the company says could help users quit nicotine by restricting daily consumption and gradually weaning them off the product. The e-cigarette company applied for the patent last summer, and the application was recently made public, [...]
The patent application describes a device that would work “in communication” with a vaporizer (used to vape nicotine) and would alternate nicotine and a similar, non-nicotine product, such as citric acid, to gradually reduce the user’s nicotine intake. [...]
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- Category: February 2020
The health risks of e-cigarettes have come into focus after the deaths of several “vapers” due to lung injury in the USA recently. These health risks were discussed in press reports on eight young people who were poisoned in Bremerhaven in October 2019. Patients suffered from convulsive seizures, impaired consciousness and memory, and heart palpitations.
According to a preliminary assessment from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the prohibited use of synthetic cannabinoids in e-liquids can be assumed with high likelihood as reason for the observed symptoms. [...]
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- Category: February 2020
A quarter century ago, a man named Steve Parrish was the ugly voice of the tobacco industry. The tobacco wars were raging: States were suing the cigarette companies, whistle-blowers were leaking damning documents to the media and David Kessler, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, was trying to regulate tobacco products. Parrish was a senior executive at Altria at the time, and his job was to strike back. He would go on television and hurl insults at Kessler. He would insist that cigarettes weren’t addictive. He would denounce the mounting lawsuits in strident language.
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- Category: February 2020
Cancer Council Tasmania is an organisation that provides information supported by evidence. It was disappointing to read Senator Eric Abetz's view that it makes good sense to wean smokers onto vaping (The Examiner, February 25). There is no evidence to support his claims. The short and long-term health effects of e-cigarettes are currently being researched. It took many years for the harms of tobacco smoking to be understood, so why are we rushing in to support the legalisation of vaping when there is insufficient evidence on understanding the impacts and harms, or not, of vaping.
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- Category: February 2020
More than one in 10 people will still be smoking in 2034 despite a Scottish government commitment to stub out the habit by then, health campaigners say.
Ministers have set a goal of creating a "tobacco-free generation", with 5% or less of the population smoking in 14 years' time.
However, Cancer Research UK has warned that deadline could be missed by up to 16 years in the poorest communities.
The Scottish government said smoking in Scotland "continues to fall".
Cancer Research UK analysis suggested 12% of adults could still be smokers by 2034 if smoking rates decline as expected.