Read articles from United States of America

May 24, 2021 by cstoredecisions.com

Back in 2009, the federal government issued its first flavored tobacco restriction by prohibiting the sale of flavored combustible cigarettes other than menthol and traditional tobacco. Since then, cities, states and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) all have enacted bans of varying degrees on flavored tobacco. Why are lawmakers so determined to pull these products from back bars? The standard response is to prevent young people from picking up a nicotine habit that could graduate to cigarette smoking. [...]

May 20, 2021 by time.com

On June 7, North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein will enter a Durham courtroom with a mission: proving that the e-cigarette company Juul Labs purposely targeted teenagers with its nicotine-rich products.

If Stein—who in 2019 became the first state attorney general in the U.S. to sue Juul—is successful, the vaping company may be in for a world of hurt. Hundreds of lawsuits against Juul, many of which were consolidated into multi-district litigation in California, are pushing allegations mirroring Stein’s. They claim Juul purposely designed its stylish, flash-drive-like devices and flavored nicotine e-liquids to appeal to teenagers. [...]

May 20, 2021 by pmi.com

While cigarettes remain the largest part of PMI’s business in terms of net revenues and shipment volume in most countries today, this is changing rapidly.

Over time, the shift of adult smokers away from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives can play an important role in helping countries achieve the ambitious smoking reduction targets set by the WHO and other organizations and eventually ending smoking. Minimizing tobacco-related harm at the population level depends not only on the degree of risk reduction of the smoke-free products, but also on their adoption by adults who would otherwise continue to smoke. [...]

May 19, 2021 by filtermag.org

A new study suggests that teens who vape would probably be smoking cigarettes instead if vapes had never become available.

The academic article, published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, set out to determine whether youth who vaped between 2014 and 2018 would, in the absence of e-cigarettes, likely have become smokers. In other words, the social epidemiologists who co-authored the study—Dr. Natasha Sokol, [...] wanted to question the so-called “gateway” theory: the idea that vaping, for teenagers, is a path toward smoking.

May 16, 2021 by thehill.com

In recent weeks, federal officials have announced policies that are very likely to increase cigarette smuggling into the United States and bring other unintended consequences.

The Tobacco Tax Equity Act of 2021, introduced in Congress on April 22, would both raise federal excise taxes (FET) on each pack of cigarettes and adjust the tax each year for inflation to ensure automatic tax hikes. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration has moved to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes, a popular type of smoke. [...]

May 14, 2021 by alreporter.com

The American Lung Association and five other groups are asking Gov. Kay Ivey to veto a bill the group says has caveats that favor the tobacco and vaping industries.

House Bill 273 raises the age of buying tobacco and vaping products from 19 to 21, and establishes a registry that vaping manufacturers would have to submit to, but there’s concern that aspects of the bill are unworkable, and favor the industries. The bill passed both the House and Senate and awaits Ivey’s signature.

May 13, 2021 by usatoday.com

The Food and Drug Administration announced late last month that it wants to ban menthol cigarettes, which are the overwhelming preference of African American smokers. But if a smoking prohibition is good for Black people, who comprise only about 1 in 7 U.S. cigarette smokers, why isn’t it good for whites and other Americans as well? 

A smarter policy would be to phase in an FDA ban on all products that burn tobacco and aggressively urge adult smokers who can’t quit to transition to alternative devices that deliver nicotine in a far less dangerous way.

May 11, 2021 by umich.edu

The FDA has announced that it will ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars within the next year, a move the tobacco industry has pushed against for the last decade. University of Michigan experts can comment. “Successful implementation of the FDA’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives over a short period and reduce health inequalities, particularly for African Americans,” Mendez said. [...]

May 11, 2021 by filtermag.org

On May 7, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois reintroduced his END ENDS Act—a federal bill that would cap e-cigarette nicotine levels at 20 milligrams per milliliter.

The intention was clear: The Ending Nicotine Dependence from Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Act—“END ENDS”—seeks to decrease the nicotine concentrations in vapes in order to make them less “addictive” and appealing to teenagers.

May 10, 2021 by regulatorwatch.com

For everyone, there’s nothing in life more certain than death and taxes. Yet if you are a smoker the risk of death and pain of taxation increases by orders of magnitude, often thanks to ill-conceived government action. Joining us today to talk about the U.S. approach to vaping and its macabre commitment to death and taxes is the writer, researcher and vape activist Lindsey Stroud, from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.