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- Category: December 2019
Advertising of e-cigarettes is to be restricted in order to limit the exposure of young people to them, Minister for Health Simon Harris has confirmed.
Provision allowing for the banning of e-cigarette advertising near schools and creches, and on public transport, will be added to legislation planned for next year that will introduce a ban on sales of the products to under-18s, he said. [...] The two groups say e-cigarette companies are not telling the truth when they claim sweet flavours such as candyfloss and bubblegum are aimed at adults rather than children.
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- Category: December 2019
In Canada, the government of British Columbia is cracking down on vaping products. The plan is to reduce nicotine content, limit access to flavoured pods, mandate plain packaging with health warnings and raise the tax on vaping products to 20 per cent. The rationale is simple. E-cigarettes have exploded in popularity around the world in recent years, especially among teens. Between 2011 and 2018, the proportion of high school students in the United States that use e-cigarettes increased more than 10-fold to 20.8 per cent from 1.5 per cent.
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- Category: December 2019
Marijuana is one of the most widely used drugs in the United States, with more than one in seven adults reporting that they used marijuana in 2017.
Statistical reports project that sales of cannabis for recreational purposes in the U.S. will amount to $11,670 million between 2014 and 2020.
According to recent researchTrusted Source, smoking a joint remains one of the main ways in which individuals use marijuana recreationally.
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- Category: December 2019
A European health body has said it cannot back vaping as a safe aid to quitting smoking.
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) said it cannot recommend tobacco harm reduction strategies and that there is no evidence alternative nicotine products are safe.
They say a reduced but continued exposure to toxicants is a “bad alternative to quitting smoking” and that harm reduction should be used for a minority of high-risk smokers rather than the general population.
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- Category: December 2019
Electric cigarettes or e-cigarettes aren’t devices designed to help people quit smoking as far as the Philippine E-Cigarette Industry Association (PECIA) is concerned. PECIA President Joey Dulay made this clarification in a letter sent to the Manila Bulletin over the weekend after a story ran last week in the daily insinuating that the group viewed e-cigarettes as “smoking-cessation devices.”
“PECIA and our 250 members do not claim e-cigarettes are smoking-cessation devices. We mandate our members to be responsible entrepreneurs by observing ethical business practices [...]
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- Category: December 2019
I didn’t open a business to make money off of nicotine-addicted teens, but to create a safe space for people like me looking to quit smoking. I discovered vaping in 2008 after smoking cigarettes for 30 years. It was life changing. I had wanted to quit but nothing I tried helped me — not the patch, pills, nicotine gum or the cold turkey route. The first couple of times I tried vaping, I was skeptical it could replace or even wean me off cigarettes. But I found that it helped me accomplish something I never thought was doable — quit smoking entirely.
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- Category: December 2019
Turkey continues its drive against the health risks of smoking as the new rule forces all tobacco products and cigarettes to bear plain and standard packages.
A World Health Organization (WHO) report said that more than 8 million people lose their lives every year because of smoking-related diseases.
Yüksel Denli, the head of the Tobacco and Alcohol Department of Agriculture and Forestry Ministry, said that the new regulation is intended to eliminate the attractiveness of tobacco products and boost deterrent effects of packages by increasing visual health warnings.
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- Category: December 2019
Nearly one in three high school students has reported using a tobacco product recently, according to a new federal survey released on Thursday, evidence that concerns over nicotine addiction among teenagers are not limited to e-cigarettes.
“The data released today on youth tobacco product use are deeply troubling and indicate that past progress in reducing youth use of these products has been erased,” said Brian King, [...] “These troubling rates of use are being driven by e-cigarettes, which have no redeeming aspects among youth.”
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- Category: December 2019
Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Trump, said Thursday that Trump is trying to strike a balance on regulating e-cigarette flavors that preserves the products for adults but keeps them from children.
"He's looking for a way to respect and recognize and accommodate the fact that e-cigarettes have a public health benefit for those legal adult users who are trying to come down from combustibles [cigarettes]," Conway told reporters.
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- Category: December 2019
Nova Scotia says it will become the first province to make it illegal to sell flavoured e-cigarettes and juices, announcing Thursday a ban that will come into force on April 1.
The province has worked hard to become a smoke-free culture and doesn't want to lose ground as the number of people vaping continues to grow, Health Minister Randy Delorey said in a news release.
The particular concern is young people. Smoke Free Nova Scotia recently conducted a survey that showed 95 per cent of young people who vape in Nova Scotia said they prefer flavoured juices [...]
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- Category: December 2019
Last week, Nova Scotia became the first province in Canada to adopt a ban on flavoured vaping products, effective April 1, 2020. They will still allow the sale of vaping products that are either tobacco flavoured or without flavour.
The week before, Ontario municipalities Brampton and Mississauga announced a ban on vaping in outdoor public spaces.
Other cities and provinces are considering their bans and new rules.
This hodgepodge of rules and limits across Canada will lead to massive confusion, a lack of enforcement, and, most importantly, a lack of protection for millions of our kids.
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- Category: December 2019
The case study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, suggests the condition in the lungs of an unnamed 49-year-old woman was likely caused by vaping. Hard-metal pneumoconiosis can result in permanent scarring, breathing difficulties and chronic coughing. The woman vaped cannabis oil - which has been linked to many of the hundreds of cases of lung illness in the US have been linked to. One of the authors of the case study, Kirk Jones [...] said: "Hard-metal pneumoconiosis is diagnosed by looking at a sample of patient's lung tissue under the microscope.
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- Category: December 2019
According to a current report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking among youth remains at a decade low.
However, its analysis of data collected through May of this year about the habits and cravings of youth who do use tobacco products on a somewhat regular basis indicate e-cigarettes continue to be the most commonly used product overall. The ongoing trend appears in the report to be driven by product flavorings as well as curiosity, exposure to other users and advertisements and lack of knowledge about harm.
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- Category: December 2019
Vaping, already linked to lung damage, may also have harmful psychological effects, a new study suggests. The researchers found a strong association between vaping and depression in a study of nearly 900,000 U.S. adults.
The apparent culprit: nicotine.
"There is a potential risk between e-cigarette use and depression," said lead researcher Dr. Olufunmilayo Obisesan. "E-cigarettes are not as harmless as people once thought they were," Obisesan added.
[...]
"Because e-cigarettes contain nicotine, there could also be an association with depression," Obisesan said.
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- Category: December 2019
Nicotine and cannabis vaporizers have been making headlines lately, from the rise in vaping among teenagers to the outbreak of vaping-related illnesses nationwide.
But what actually is a vaporizer?
As federal and state leaders debate changes to vaping regulations and ban the sale of flavored vaping products, you may be wondering: What are the ingredients that people are concerned about? What are my teenagers inhaling when they vape? And how does a vape actually work? So let’s take a step back. Here’s your crash course in vapes.
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- Category: December 2019
69 per cent of Malaysian smokers say they want to see legislation that would allow for the distribution and sale of nicotine e-cigarettes so that they can have a viable alternative to help them quit regular cigarettes.
A majority of Malaysians, or about 66 per cent, believe the government is not doing enough to help smokers quit.
[...] The poll also found that 58 per cent of Malaysians surveyed believe that nicotine e-cigarettes should be taxed but at a level lower than that of regular cigarettes to encourage people to switch and quit smoking.
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- Category: December 2019
By now it should be clear to all observers that politicians, public health officials, non-profit health groups and the national media are joined in common cause to force Health Canada into abject retreat on vaping. In this edition of RegWatch we are joined by David Sweanor, Ottawa lawyer, renowned tobacco-control policy expert and harm reduction advocate. We’ll dive into the issues and ask: What and who is driving this train towards total abstinence and what if anything could be done to stop it?
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- Category: December 2019
A top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official was grilled by members of Congress on Wednesday for declining to answers questions about the agency’s plan to curb youth vaping rates.
Mitch Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products, would not say whether the FDA is still considering a proposal to clear the market of flavored e-cigarette products it says are appealing to kids.
“There has been no final decision made on this policy. Because there is ongoing discussions that are taking place, I’m not going to be able to get into the substance of what was in that document,” Zeller said [...]
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- Category: December 2019
CVS Health CEO Larry Merlo raised c oncerns Thursday over the teen vaping crisis and the long-term health risks. “We don’t know the longitudinal effect of these products,” Merlo told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Something has to be done.” Merlo said he saw signs that something was wrong with vaping in 2014, around the same time that CVS stopped selling tobacco products at its drug stores.
“I can remember going into a retail establishment that was selling [e-cigarettes] and I saw the device with the Hello Kitty logo and the bubblegum liquid,” he recalled. [...]
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- Category: December 2019
The state confirmed its first case of vaping-related illness on Tuesday.
Up until now, Alaska was the only state in the country that had not reported any instances of e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury, or EVALI. Fortunately, Alaska’s first suspected case does not appear to be life-threatening.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin said the teenage male patient from Southeast Alaska is responding well to treatment.
“This is a hard thing to have to go through, especially over the holidays,” McLaughlin said. “Fortunately, the patient is recovering steadily.”