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- Category: January 2022
A new study by the American Consumer Institute highlights the dangers of overregulating e-cigarettes and vaping products. Co-authored by Steve Pociask and Liam Sigaud, the report investigates the empirical evidence surrounding the consumer risks and benefits of using e-cigarettes and vaping products compared to using combustible tobacco products.
The reports assets that vapor products are significantly safer than smoking and more effective than other nicotine-based smoking cessation treatments in getting smokers to quit cigarettes.
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- Category: January 2022
The week of Jan. 16 is Canada’s National Non-Smoking Week — disappointingly necessary for a 46th year. More than two generations after the immense dangers of smoking were made crystal clear to society, smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death in Canada and worldwide, killing seven million annually, including 45,000 Canadians. This is more deaths than those caused by alcohol, drugs, car accidents, murder, suicide and AIDS combined. The Smoke-Free Generation (SFG) is a concept that has been in discussion among health advocates since proposed by a professor in Singapore in 2010. [...]
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- Category: January 2022
Long lines in front of liquor and pot outlets, telecommuting workers worrying about their mental health, young parents trying to cope with home schooling—for two years now, the news has been full of people struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
But have social isolation, financial difficulties and psychological distress really resulted in an increase in the use of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes and e-cigarettes, as news reports suggest?
In general, no, except among the less educated and socially isolated, according to a Canadian-led study published in The Lancet Regional Health—Americas.
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- Category: January 2022
[...] the American Consumer Institute (ACI) released a report, co-authored by Steve Pociask and Liam Sigaud entitled “How Regulations Endanger the Public Health: A Review of the Evidence on E-Cigarette Risks and Benefits, and Policy Missteps.”
With some lawmakers looking to impose restrictions, bans, and excessive taxes on these products, this report investigates the empirical evidence surrounding the consumer risks and benefits of e-cigarettes and vaping products relative to smoking tobacco. [...]
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- Category: January 2022
The city of Portland soon could join other municipalities nationwide in banning the sale of flavored tobacco products as part of an effort to address an increase in youth tobacco use and prevent youth and other marginalized groups from becoming addicted.
The City Council will give initial consideration to a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products Wednesday and could vote on the proposal next month.
“Addiction or usage among kids is off the charts,” said Councilor Tae Chong, [...] “Use of cigarettes has gone down – but with flavored tobacco, it’s spiked. It’s almost like kids have replaced flavored tobacco over cigarettes.”
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- Category: January 2022
It often takes a long time for health policy influencers, advocates, and proponents to admit fault.
When it is about topics such as diet fads, saturated fats, food pyramids, and sugar consumption, long-held consensus beliefs and government actions later proved erroneous have had a lasting negative impact.
But nothing has been more egregious and harmful in our current age than the public health lobby’s persistent denialism of the harm reduction value of nicotine vaping products and other alternatives to cigarettes.
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- Category: January 2022
Surge Vapor has introduced new ultrasonic technology to improve the vaping experience.
Typical vaping devices use a coil made of resistance wire. The wire is heated with an electrical current, turning e-liquid into vapor. Due to the heating process, traditional coils need to be replaced frequently and can produce unpleasant “dry hits” or burnt flavors.
To address this problem, the Surge engineering team developed an ultrasonic vaping chip. Vibrates 3 million times per second, the chip splits e-liquid into a cloud of vapor without using a traditional heating wire.
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- Category: January 2022
Vaping cocaine might sound like something no scientist would recommend — but a pair of European researchers want to make it reality, and it could actually help people who struggle with stimulant addiction.
In a paper recently published in the journal Drug Science, Policy and Law, toxicologist Fabian Steinmetz and addiction research professor Heino Stöver conceptualized a cocaine e-cigarette. The authors say such a device could mitigate the harms of smoking cocaine by reducing the risk of overdose and death, and may help people eventually find treatment when and if they’re ready. [...]
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- Category: January 2022
Illicit tobacco is a scourge that has hurt independent retailers for many years, not to mention society as a whole. As well as taking away valuable sales and profits from honest suppliers and retailers, the sale of illicit tobacco products funds other illegal activities, puts sub-quality and even toxic products into circulation, and makes underage smoking a far harder problem to police and reduce. Retail Express has been working tirelessly to support retailers and police forces fighting illicit tobacco, and, last year, launched the ‘Stubbing Out Illicit’ campaign, [...]
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- Category: January 2022
A major study into helping new mothers stay smoke-free is being launched in Norfolk.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are looking to recruit both pregnant women and new mums to test a new support package.
Working with women, their partners, and health professionals at the Norfolk Health Visiting Service, the UEA has launched BabyBreathe. Lead researcher Prof Caitlin Notley, from the university's medical school, said: “At the moment there is no routine support available to encourage new mums to stay smoke-free after childbirth.
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- Category: January 2022
A systematic review and meta-analysis found that the most effective smoking cessation approach was combining medicine therapies with varenicline. These findings were published in Health Technology Assessment.
Publication databases were searched by researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom through March 2017 and updated February 2019 for randomized clinical trials of smoking cessation lasting ≥6 months. A total of 363 trials with 201,045 participants were included. For the safety review, an additional 53 observational studies comprising 8,783,5403 participants were included.
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- Category: January 2022
Swiss voters will decide on February 13 on a wide ban on tobacco advertising, aimed at protecting young people. Switzerland, home to the world’s largest cigarette companies, has some of the weakest laws against tobacco advertising in Europe. In Switzerland about a quarter of the population are smokers, including around 100,000 aged 15 to 19. The people's initiative, launched in 2018, calls for a ban on “any form of advertising [of tobacco products] that reaches children and young people”. Only tobacco advertising directly targeting adults would be allowed. The initiative also seeks to outlaw sponsoring by tobacco firms.
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- Category: January 2022
Detrás de la Nube (Behind the Cloud) is a documentary that seeks to show from the inside the efforts of different Latin American activists and experts to fight misinformation in the legislative bodies of their countries, provide reliable scientific information on the harm reduction approach to tobacco and nicotine, fight against tobacco lobbies and celebrate saving their lives by quitting smoking and opting for safer alternatives such as vaping.
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- Category: January 2022
Living is risky behaviour. Nothing we do (or don’t do) is free of any risk, so the goal is to manage our risks; to avoid being subjected to unwanted, unknown, and unnecessary risks.
When government regulations and empowered individuals work in tandem great things are accomplished. As witnessed by the huge decrease in the everyday risks people face today compared to the situation a century ago. It should go without saying that consumers have a huge role to play in efforts to lower risks. After all, it is the decisions made by individuals that will do so much to determine overall societal risks. [...]
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- Category: January 2022
It is part of a crackdown on tobacco addiction by Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who enjoys a cheeky fag himself. A white paper in the spring aims to level up health with a world first by approving vapes.
The move comes after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the gadgets late last year.
A Whitehall insider said: “Mr Javid has made it clear he wants to level up health — tackling smoking is part of that. The MHRA opened the door to prescribing vapes.”
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- Category: January 2022
Sixty civil society organizations under the Sin Tax Coalition sent a petition to President Rodrigo Duterte asking him to veto the bills legalizing the sale of electronic vaporizers or vapes and heated tobacco products.
Senate Bill 2239 and House Bill 9007 mandate the lowering of the age limit of access to e-cigarettes and vapes from 21 to 18 years old, the transfer of its regulatory jurisdiction from the Food and Drug Administration to the Department of Trade and Industry, and the manufacturing of multiple flavorings for vape products.
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- Category: January 2022
In December 2021, the New Zealand Ministry of Health published a new tobacco control programme with the goal of reducing smoking prevalence to less than 5% by 2025. The prevalence of current smoking in New Zealand is 10.9%, and the rate of fall suggests that this is a realistic aim. However, the plan goes much further: it seeks, by 2025 to reach 5% or less in all New Zealand population groups. Among the Māori population, for example, this means reducing the proportion who smoke from one in four to one in 20 in just four years. This is an ambitious programme. Will it work?
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- Category: January 2022
England will become the first country in the world to prescribe e-cigarettes on the NHS to help smokers quit as part of plans to increase life expectancy for the poorest.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, believes it is a “moral outrage” that England’s richest people are living for up to a decade longer on average than the poorest. He will announce plans to address the root causes when he unveils his health disparities white paper this spring. It is understood this will include a “vaping revolution” that will allow GPs to prescribe e-cigarettes on the NHS.
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- Category: January 2022
The world-renowned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes itself as “the nation’s leading science-based, data-driven, service organization that protects the public’s health.” It pledges to “base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data.” So why has the CDC refused to admit it was wrong about the deadly disease that it misnamed EVALI?
EVALI stands for “E-cigarette or Vaping use-Associated Lung Injury.” The CDC says that 2,807 people were hospitalized and 68 died from the 2019 EVALI outbreak. But there is no evidence–none at all— that anyone got sick with EVALI from using e-cigarettes.
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- Category: January 2022
It’s 2022, and the new year brings fresh hope to vapers that a win in the war on vaping could be had this year.
There’s always hope. But is it possible?
Should vapers assume the same old arguments made on behalf of vaping over the past decade could finally win the day? Or is it time to take a hard look at those arguments and try to fashion something new?
Joining us on RegWatch to unpack these questions is Matt Culley, Vaping Activist, board member at CASAA, and host of SMM on YouTube.