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- Category: February 2022
I will outline here, as I have done in Parliament, that one easy win in the battle to keep the UK healthier, is a re-doubling of Government efforts to reduce the number of smokers. Cigarettes remain the largest cause of preventable deaths in the UK. Whilst it may have fallen down the list of government priorities, we have set ourselves an ambitious target of being a smoke-free nation by 2030. Sajid Javid, as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, seems to be focused on finding out what will work to help smokers to switch, and ideally quit.
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- Category: February 2022
On February 7, City Council members in Portland, the largest city in Maine, voted unanimously to ban the sale of flavored “tobacco products.” The amendment bars the sale of all flavored nicotine products, including vapes. It does not exempt menthol. And it explicitly prohibits flavored products that use synthetic nicotine, like Puff Bar.
It will take effect on June 1, the same day as a similar ordinance in Bangor, another city in Maine. Maine’s state-level legislators, meanwhile, are pushing for a statewide flavor ban, which could come to a vote in early spring.
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- Category: February 2022
Anti-smoking advocates are arguing against a proposal that would reduce Indiana’s new tax on electronic cigarettes before it even takes effect.
The proposal approved by the Republican-dominated state Senate last month would cut the 25% tax charged on cartridges such as Juul devices to 15%.
The Legislature approved the higher rate last year to start July 2022.
Health groups urged a House committee on Thursday to keep the 25% rate, saying they believed vaping devices should face taxes similar to cigarettes to discourage young people from using them.
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- Category: February 2022
Thousands of vapors are awaiting their fate in the marketplace as the FDA works past a court-ordered deadline to review whether their benefits to adult smokers outweigh the risks of teen addiction.
The Food and Drug Administration is still assessing 55,000 premarket applications for e-cigarettes from Juul Labs. Inc. and other companies that are currently on the shelves, an FDA spokesperson told Bloomberg Law. The agency was tasked with deciding, by Sept. 9, 2021, how to regulate nearly 6.7 million of these products after expanding its authority over tobacco.
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- Category: February 2022
With the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Act going into force, New Zealand’s general retailers including service stations, supermarkets and convenience stores, are only allowed to to sell three vape flavours: menthol, mint, and tobacco.
“It’s crazy that Kiwis desperate to quit cigarettes can walk into a service station and buy any cigarette brand under the sun. They can’t, however, access the most popular vapes flavours. It makes no sense when vaping has been proven to be 95% less harmful than smoking,” said Jonathan Devery, co-owner of the largest Kiwi-owned vape companies, Alt New Zealand and VAPO.
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- Category: February 2022
Swiss MP Lukas Reimann explains how a chance encounter with Swedish snus helped him kick a 20-year smoking habit, legalise snus in Switzerland, and become an outspoken ambassador for smokeless nicotine products. [...] In the decade since he transitioned from cigarettes to snus, Reimann has tried to introduce snus to other friends struggling to quit cigarettes.
“They’ve tried medicine, therapies, even hypnosis. And nothing helped. And then I gave them this small can and they’ve told me, ‘I’ve stopped smoking! Thank you so much!’” he explains.
The committed libertarian believes smokers don’t want to be seen as “sick patients”. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
Voters have agreed to limit advertising for tobacco products that may be seen by young people in Switzerland.
On Sunday 56.6% of voters supported the “Yes to the protection of children against tobacco advertising” people’s initiative. A majority of the country’s 26 cantons also backed the proposal, allowing it to pass.
People living in French- and Italian-speaking cantons and urban areas supported the call for tighter advertising restrictions. A number of German-speaking cantons from central and eastern Switzerland were against the initiative.
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- Category: February 2022
The House of Representatives and the Senate of the Philippines approved on third Reading the Vaporized Nicotine Product Bill to regulate the manufacture, sale and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products
[...] All 79 CoEHAR researchers expressed their support to government decision through a letter sent to the President of thePhilippines, in which we read “harm reduction in the context of tobacco control is a key instrument for disease prevention. There are preventable cancer and cardiopulmonary deaths, due to the underutilization of tobacco harm reduction strategies”.
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- Category: February 2022
According to a new report, “The Case for Flavours,” by prominent tobacco harm reduction researcher Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos, flavour bans effectively equate to a form of prohibition, which would fuel the growth of a massive black market and spur a deadly rise in cigarette smoking.
In this episode of RegWatch, hear Dr. Farsalinos discuss his multidimensional review of the use of flavours in nicotine vapes and learn what he recommends regulators should do instead of banning flavours.
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- Category: February 2022
More deaths in the US are attributed to cigarette smoking each year than to any other preventable cause. Approximately 34 million people and an estimated 14% of adults in the US smoke cigarettes. If they stopped smoking, they could reduce their risk of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and potentially gain up to 10 years of life. Tobacco smoking is a chronic disorder maintained by physical nicotine dependence and learned behaviors. Approximately 70% of people who smoke cigarettes want to quit smoking. However, individuals who attempt to quit smoking make an average of approximately 6 quit attempts before achieving long-term abstinence. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
The majority of Malaysians believe that the recently announced policy of prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products, including vape, to those born after 2005 would fail.
According to a dipstick survey by the Retail and Trade Brand Advocacy Malaysia Chapter (RTBA Malaysia), 85 per cent of those surveyed said the ban would not work and would create a black market for cigarettes and vape.
Respondents to the survey also said that the ban would be difficult to enforce and ultimately impact Malaysia's legal and local businesses.
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- Category: February 2022
I made it to 25 without smoking a cigarette, despite attending high school in France, where the end of a three-hour philosophy lecture was signalled by kids rolling their smokes, and asking their professors to borrow papers.
If there was a time in my life where peer pressure to take up the “social” habit peaked, this would have been it. That, or the first few weeks of university in Wellington, when I came out, and subsequently started hanging out at Ivy Bar. Gays of my generation and older will remember the underground smokers out the back of the dance floor. It was the best place to meet people.
One pandemic later, I am a daily vaper.
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- Category: February 2022
Tens of thousands of nicotine vapes illegally being sold to children have been seized by state health authorities over the past 18 months as doctors raise concerns about rising uptake among school students.
Between July 2020 and December 2021, NSW Health seized more than 100,000 illegal vaping products, with a street value of more than $2 million. Since October, it has been illegal to sell e-cigarettes, commonly known as vapes, or e-liquids containing nicotine to a person without a doctor’s prescription.
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- Category: February 2022
There is an epidemic beyond COVID that grow among our youth — tobacco and nicotine addiction. Flavored e-cigarette use has increased dramatically among middle and high school students. Yet Connecticut is shirking its responsibility in not banning flavored e-cigarettes. Every state surrounding Connecticut has already passed these protections for their kids. When will we? As executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, I believe it’s time to ban them. Although e-cigarettes (or vapes) are newer to the market, they may have already harmed countless students’ ability to learn and thrive. [...]
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- Category: February 2022
It’s common sense: When you tax a product, people buy less of it. So, when you heavily tax a potentially life-saving product such as e-cigarettes and vapes, fewer people use it, meaning, sadly, that more people continue to smoke cigarettes and die prematurely as a consequence. Traditionally, such “sin taxes” are levied on harmful goods such as old-fashioned cigarettes in an effort to discourage their use. But as part of a broader, misguided war on vaping, some states have recently started applying heavy taxes on e-cigarettes, as well. A 2019 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research looked into these taxes and found troubling consequences.
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- Category: February 2022
Northern Ireland has banned smoking in a car with children, bringing its laws in line with other regions of the United Kingdom, reports the BBC.
Violators face fines of up to £2,500 ($3,391), but police will be taking an educational, advisory and non-confrontational approach when enforcing the new legislation until the end of February 2022.
It is already illegal to smoke on public transport or to smoke in work vehicles used by more than one person in Northern Ireland.
Chief Inspector Graham Dodds said people caught smoking in cars with children would initially be given warnings rather than fines, giving time for public awareness of the offences to build.
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- Category: February 2022
While vaping isn’t an illegal action in the UK, including behind the wheel of a car, drivers who are distracted by smoke released by e-cigarettes may be prosecuted for lacking in caution whilst driving. Vapes can produce thick clouds if the user chooses, which may produce visual impairment for a driver if, for example, the windows in the car are closed. [...] GoSmokeFree.co.uk surveyed 800 people across the UK to determine their opinions on vaping and driving. Reassuringly and interestingly, 9 in 10 (89%) people who vape said they don’t vape and drive, which drastically reduces the number of distracted drivers on the road in the UK. [..]
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- Category: February 2022
More than one-third of adolescents and half of teens and young adults who vape use the devices for marijuana, a study published Monday by JAMA Pediatrics found.
About 35% of adolescents ages 12 to 14 years report vaping marijuana, compared with 51% of teens ages 15 to 17 years and 54% of young adults ages 18 to 24 years, the data showed. One in four young adults ages 18 to 24 years reported using e-cigarettes, compared with 14% of those ages 15 to 17 years and 3% of those 12 to 14 years, the researchers said.
"Our findings suggest that many adolescents and young adults who use e-cigarettes are vaping cannabis," study co-author Ruoyan Sun told UPI in an email.
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- Category: February 2022
British American Tobacco (BATS.L) on Friday reported a 7% rise in full-year adjusted revenue to 25.7 billion pounds ($34.8 billion), helped by sales of e-cigarettes and oral nicotine.
The world’s second-largest tobacco company also announced a dividend increase of 1.0% to 217.8 pence and a 2 billion pound share repurchase programme for 2022.
It posted a 51% rise to 2.05 billion pounds in adjusted sales of its “new categories” product line which includes e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and oral nicotine. Though the division has yet to turn a profit, BAT said it was on track to report revenue of 5 billion pounds and profitability by 2025.
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- Category: February 2022
A study, published in Tobacco Control, looked at ecigs for quitting smoking.
Prof John Britton, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology, University of Nottingham, said:
“The findings of this observational study of quitting and e-cigarette use in the USA are fundamentally flawed by confounding by severity, whereby the heaviest (most addicted) smokers, having tried and failed to quit using NRT or other treatments in the past, or who have declined to try to quit in the past, then try e-cigarettes.
“This is probably why they conflict with the findings of meta-analyses of the multiple, well-designed clinical trials that have demonstrated that e-cigarettes are effective quitting aids, [...]