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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has again issued warning letters to several small business owners for selling flavored disposable vaping products. The regulatory agency issued letters to 14 online businesses for selling unauthorized e-cigarette products. The warning letters cite the sale of disposable e-cigarette products marketed under brand names, including Elf Bar/EB Design, Lava Plus, Funky Republic/Funky Lands, Lost Mary, Cali Bars, Cali Plus, and Kangvape. “These warning letters were informed by FDA’s ongoing monitoring of multiple surveillance systems to identify products that are popular among youth or have youth appeal, an agency press release states. [...]

Coupons for e-cigarettes appear to be a powerful way to get people hooked on vaping, a new study shows. People who receive coupons for e-cigarettes are 50% more likely to begin vaping, and less likely to quit once they've started, according to findings published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "Our study found that when people were exposed to more waves of e-cigarette coupon advertising, they were more likely to initiate e-cigarette use and it was more challenging for them to quit," said researcher Zongshuan Duan, an assistant professor of population health sciences at Georgia State University.

Vaping is often considered to be a safer alternative to smoking. But that does not mean it is without risks. In a new study, published in the Journal of Public Health, nearly 4 in 5 e-cigarette users reported experiencing adverse health outcomes within six hours of vaping. The results raise serious concerns about the health impacts associated with these devices. [...] However, because of the nature of the study, we do not know for sure that the e-cigarettes themselves were causing these effects. The authors said more work is needed in this area to determine the mechanisms underpinning this association. Even so, the study is an important look at the potential side implications of vaping.

Beware a politician in search of a legacy. Rishi Sunak, in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, to point to as an achievement, has taken to banning things that this teetotal, straight-edge prime minister has probably never tried and clearly doesn’t understand. At the Conservative Party conference last year, Sunak decided that making England ‘smoke-free’ would be his chapter in history. So he announced Britain’s biggest experiment in prohibition for generations: a phased-in ban on tobacco products that will mean today’s 15-year-olds will never legally be able to buy cigarettes.

Dr. Kgosi Letlape has been a passionate and relentless activist on the side of “the underdog,” as he puts it, for most of his life. An ophthalmologist in South Africa, Letlape is the former chairman of the South African Medical Association and a co-founder of the Africa Harm Reduction Alliance. In our filmed interview, he told Filter how South Africa’s devastating HIV epidemic has profoundly changed him, shifting him from “not just activism of talking, but of action and making things happen.”

Public health experts are calling on the Government to be totally transparent on any past or present dealings its MPs have had with tobacco companies. The coalition is set to repeal the previous government's smokefree legislation, which would have banned the sale of tobacco to anyone born from January 1, 2009; cut the number of retailers; and de-nicotinised cigarettes. The Government is vowing to still meet Smokefree 2025 targets, but reasons it gave for repealing the previous legislation included that it could lead to a rise in crime and a tobacco black market.

Professor Nick Hopkinson, chairman of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London is interviewed on Times Radio about the recent ban on disposable vapes and plans to create a smokefree generation. He appears alongside Christopher Snowden, head of lifestyle economics at the tobacco industry-funded Institute of Economic Affairs.

Almost 90 per cent of Western Australia's vape stores are located less than 1km from a school, an Australian first study by The University of Notre Dame Australia has found. The study identified 194 stores in WA that sold vaping products as a main form of business, with 88 per cent located a short walk from either a primary school or high school. One primary school in Fremantle has two vape stores within 200m.

Consumer advocacy group Quit for Good asked the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to consider the lives of more than a billion smokers when it convenes the 10th Conference of the Parties in Panama next week. Lorenzo Mata Jr., president of Quit for Good, said the WHO should implement FCTC Article 1 (d) on harm reduction strategies to help smokers.  The treaty defines tobacco control as “a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies.” “Offering safer nicotine products to millions of adult smokers who want to reduce their exposure to toxic substances from smoke is common sense. [...]

Indonesia's recent changes to e-cigarette taxation, which now place e-cigarettes in the same category as combustible tobacco products, have caused uproar amongst retailers and consumers. Garindra Kartasasmita joins us to explain these latest developments, and why the government is dead-set on denying vaping science.