- Details
- Category: February 2022
A growing number of GPs are prescribing nicotine vaping products to people who want to quit smoking after restrictions around the importation of e-cigarettes were tightened and large fines introduced for illegally selling or importing the products. [...] But there are claims that gaps in the system have allowed some telehealth doctors to provide 12 months’ worth of prescriptions to patients.
Data from the Department of Health shows the number of GPs approved as authorised prescribers of nicotine vaping products rose from 27 in July 2021 to 354 in October that year and 618 in January.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Earlier this month, China's tobacco regulator issued draft vape laws which amend the tobacco monopoly law in place to include e-cigarettes, allowing the government the opportunity to revolutionize global tobacco harm reduction. The tobacco authority added that it will establish a “unified national electronic cigarette transaction management platform” that all licensed e-cigarette wholesalers and retailers must sell products through,” while tax collection and payment of e-cigarettes, “shall be implemented in accordance with national taxation laws and regulations.”
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The cost of smoking to London is £3bn a year, according to new analysis, with numbers of smokers varying across the city. The finding comes from the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), which puts the figure £800m higher than previously estimated. It found £308m is spent on healthcare, £150m on social care, and £41m on fires caused by smokers. Lost productivity costs London £2.5bn a year, a figure which takes into account smokers’ increased likelihood of missing work and earning less due to ill health.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Market players are launching several e-liquid flavors in the market to fulfill to the evolving preferences of people, tobacco-free formulation and availability of several flavors, the increase in the non-smoker's group essentially drives the market. E-liquid, also called e-juice or vape juice, is the liquid mixture of nicotine, base liquid, and (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The extended interview with David Sweanor, talking about smoking cessation policy.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
On Tuesday, I received e-mails from groups that oppose a Senate bill awaiting the President’s signature. In particular, the groups want the President to veto the proposed legislation that will allow more youngsters to “vape,” or use what are officially known as electronic nicotine and non-nicotine delivery systems as well as heated tobacco products. It is my understanding that both the Department of Health and the Department of Education are actually opposed to the vaping bill. Not that they oppose regulating vaping per se, but they question some provisions of the proposed law that seems to make vaping (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The science on flavour bans appears to be hardening. Studies show if flavour bans are implemented, many vapers would likely return to smoking. And according to Dr. John Oyston, if Health Canada pushes a flavour ban into force, it could be “a public health disaster.”
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The use of tobacco products is proven to be the largest avoidable risk in the European Union. According to the latest Eurobarometer report, 23% of the respondents continue to smoke cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, or a pipe while in total tobacco use results in 700,000 deaths each year. It is also proven that around half of the smokers die prematurely, resulting in the loss of an average of 14 years of life per smoker. In addition, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable cancer, with around 27% of all cancer and 80% of lung cancer deaths attributed to tobacco use.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday announced a partnership aimed at raising awareness on the environmental and health impacts of microplastics in cigarette butts, the most discarded waste item worldwide. UNEP and the Secretariat of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) will launch a social media campaign to highlight the issue.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Most enclosed public places and workplaces in Northern Ireland are smoke free. It is against the law to smoke in these places. You could be fined for smoking in enclosed public places. From 1 February 2022, new regulations to further protect children and young people from the dangers of second-hand smoke make it an offence to smoke in a smoke-free private vehicle. Under the smoke-free regulations in Northern Ireland, it is against the law to (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The intended vaping tax would represent a major blow to South African vaping consumers and smokers seeking less harmful alternatives to smoking. Such a tax would make smokers less likely to make the essential switch to less harmful alternatives due to price. On 15 December 2021, the treasury published a discussion paper titled Taxation of Electronic Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS), after the minister of finance said in his 2020 February budget speech that the treasury would start the process to introduce an excise duty on electronic vapour products. In the paper, treasury notes that though the market for ENDS is still in (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The CEO of Philip Morris International (PMI) Jacek Olczak, says that cigarettes should be placed in the same category as petrol cars, which are to be outlawed as of 2030. The chief executive said the company can envision “the world without cigarettes … and actually, the sooner it happens, the better it is for everyone’, and has called on the UK government to ban cigarettes within a decade, alongside petrol cars. He added that the move would end the confusion regarding safer nicotine alternatives, which some smokers still believe are “worse than cigarettes.”
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Little is known about sociodemographic and macro-level predictors of persistent smoking when one has developed a health condition that is likely caused by smoking. We investigate the impact of gender, education, and tobacco control policies (TCPs) on persistent smoking among older Europeans. Although women are less likely to smoke than men, they were more likely to smoke persistently. The effects of education and general TCPs on persistent smoking were significant for (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
In this episode Assistant Professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and Dr Nicola Lindson discuss the emerging evidence in e-cigarette research and interview Dr Sharon Cox. Dr Sharon Cox discusses her team’s multi centred cluster randomised controlled trial based in homeless centres in the UK. In this study people experiencing homelessness who smoke are being offered e-cigarettes or usual care.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
The Smoking in England research team at University College London have released the latest findings about vape trends in England. The team say: “Electronic cigarette use has become prevalent in many countries. In England, electronic cigarettes are currently regulated as consumer products. It is important to track use of electronic cigarettes and assess how far they appear to be promoting or detracting from reduction in prevalence of cigarette smoking.”
- Details
- Category: February 2022
On January 20th, 2022, the virtual Harm Reduction Exchange took place with two panels of discussions that were held around the hot topic of Harm Reduction. It is now scientifically known that what kills people is not nicotine but the combustible toxicants in the cigarette. Michael Russell, who is considered as the father of Tobacco Harm Reduction, used to say: “People smoke for the nicotine, but they die from the tar”.
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Due to the stressful working environment faced by many Malaysians, it is not a surprise that some resort to the consumption of harmful products as a means of coping with their current lifestyle. In 2019, a total of 12 billion sticks of illicit cigarettes were sold, where Malaysia made up a staggering 62 per cent of worldwide sales of illegal cigarettes in that year. Therefore, imposing tough-on-harm policies may signify a detachment from the challenges and pressures faced by the (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
In September, fifteen past presidents of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) wrote a letter calling for more balance and understanding of the benefits and risks of vaping. In a late response, thirteen researchers have asked for academics to move away from characterising scientists as “opponents” or “supporters” of e-cigarettes. Planet of the Vapes has featured some of these (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
A federal appeals court on Monday weighed whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration wrongly barred a flavored e-cigarette manufacturer from marketing its products, in a case that could curtail the regulator's efforts to combat youth vaping. The FDA had viewed e-cigarettes as having some promise to help adult smokers transition from conventional cigarettes, but (...)
- Details
- Category: February 2022
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health (MOH) clarified that its proposed smoking ban for everyone born after 2005 does not only cover cigarettes and tobacco products, but also vape, e-cigarettes, and heated tobacco products. Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin announced at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) executive board meeting in Geneva about Malaysia’s plans to prohibit the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products to people born after 2005 in a bid to outlaw smoking for the next generation. This means that Malaysians who are 17 years old today will not be able to legally buy tobacco, vape, or e-cigarettes next year when they turn 18, the current legal age for smoking in Malaysia, or ever, in their lifetime.