Author: Bill Tarling

“The Netherlands is seeing the largest number of responses ever collected in a public consultation on health matters. The inquiry asks people if they agree with a ban on flavoured e-liquids for e-cigarettes (also known as vape flavours), and the overwhelming answer has been “No!” From the 757 submissions recorded on the official website, 746 (98.54%) opposed the ban, with 9 void entries and just two submissions supporting the government’s proposal. The consultation, which was meant to end yesterday (19 January), has been extended to 2 February “due to popular demand,” according to a statement just published on the Government website.”

ARTICLE LINK:   98% against Dutch Ban

“Advocates and lawmakers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, want the state to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products. Nearby states have already done so. State Senator Mary Daugherty Abrams co-chairs the state Public Health Committee. She sponsored a bill that would protect children across Connecticut from being lured into tobacco use through flavored products. Advocates from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Bridgeport NAACP said flavored tobacco products are dangerous to the health of young people and lead to addiction, especially in communities of color.”

BILL TARLING — They continue to use the fabricated “Protect The Children” pretense in order to dupe the public for support. All they are doing is driving people back to cigarettes and smoking in order to keep their tobacco revenue streams flowing.

ARTICLE LINK:  Bridgeport Advocates Push Connecticut For Flavored Tobacco Ban

“Last June, Massachusetts’ ban on all flavored tobacco products was implemented with full force. As a result, menthol cigarettes, flavored vapes, and smokeless tobacco are no longer available for sale in the Bay State — legally that is. Business owners, politicians, and economists warned state officials that prohibition would supercharge the illicit tobacco market and do little to reduce tobacco use. But public health groups promised these fears were overblown and that the benefits of the flavored tobacco ban would more than make up for any costs the state might suffer. Skyrocketing cross-border sales were a predictable response to prohibition and it is bewildering why Massachusetts decided to ban these products in the first place. From June 2020 to November 2020, Massachusetts cigarette excise tax stamp sales fell 24 percent, with $62 million in revenue lost. These figures do not include Massachusetts’ losses from other flavored products like cigars, smokeless tobacco, pipe tobacco, or e-cigarettes so they represent an underestimate of the state’s overall revenue losses, with the comprehensive figure possibly breaching $100 million in lost revenue.”

ARTICLE LINK: The Failures of Flavored Tobacco Bans

“While research suggesting e-cigarettes may be useful for helping adult smokers quit continues to build, but the evidence remains inadequate to support a formal recommendation, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) determined. In updated recommendations appearing in JAMA, “The USPSTF recommends that clinicians direct patients who use tobacco to other tobacco cessation interventions with proven effectiveness and established safety,” the statement read. The advisory group also found the data insufficient to assess the safety of established smoking cessation pharmacotherapies in pregnant women who smoke.”

NOTE: JAMA is a Pay-To-Publish service

ARTICLE LINK:  USPSTF Declines to Back E-Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation

“35 organisations representing millions of vapers around the world urged Google to not ban vaping related apps from Google Play and to ensure that adults can keep rely on facts when trying to quit cigarettes. The message comes in response to a request from Tobacco Free Kids to ban all vaping related apps on Google Play. The signatory organisations are calling on Google to keep access to information about vaping and tobacco harm reduction in general open.”

ARTICLE LINK:   Organisations Call Out Google

“The Independent British Vape Trade Association (IBVTA) trade organisation has established a partnership with WorldNet Payments for its members. The move comes as PayPal continues to close the accounts of online vendors and businesses are rapidly arranging alternative secure payment methods. In November, Planet of the Vapes warned business owners of the many companies which reported experiencing issues with their PayPal accounts. Companies were having their accounts frozen with no reason given and the balances locked for up to 180 days. IBVTA has now taken further steps to assist its membership by forging a new partnership with a payment services provider.”

ARTICLE LINK:   IBVTA Establishes Alternative Link For Payments

“Speakers at the virtual summit also discussed the current regulations and the future goals and challenges for vaping products. In the 2021 legislative session, advocates are looking to propose raising the minimum legal sale age of tobacco products from 18 to 21. Public health experts also aim to protect the gains achieved in 2019, particularly to defeat the effort to repeal how vapor products are taxed as “other tobacco products” and preserve vaping prevention and control funding. The approximately 200 strategies crafted by the expert speakers and summit participants will form the foundation of an action plan that will be submitted to the Division of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH) on Feb. 15 and will not include specific goals, but instead, will provide a set of tactics segmented by the five main tracks of the summit, which focused on cannabis prevention, tobacco products, cannabis and vaping regulation, law enforcement, and special populations. The strategies emerged from the Nevada Public Health Cannabis and Vaping Summit, a three-day virtual gathering of research and regulatory experts, policy makers, and others convened by the attorney general’s office and state health officials. After the summit’s action plan is submitted to the DPBH in February, the Legislature and other stakeholders from the event will have an opportunity to act on the recommended strategies.”

ARTICLE LINK:  Confronting a rise in youth vaping, experts strategize on actions for prevention

“Dartmouth College’s announcement last week of a new policy prohibiting the use of tobacco products on campus has received mixed reviews from members of the Dartmouth community. The policy, which goes into effect on March 18, bans smoking and the use of other tobacco products, including chewing tobacco and e-cigarettes, in all facilities, grounds, vehicles or other Dartmouth properties by students, employees and visitors. Dartmouth joins more than 2,000 other campuses, according to the American Cancer Society’s Center for Tobacco Control. The college’s efforts to do so extend back at least to the fall of 2018, when it received a $11,900 grant from the Center for Tobacco Control, Dartmouth spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said.”

BILL TARLING — So hopefully you can see the “Center for Tobacco Control” happily hands out money to demonize harm reduction products such as e-liquid vape products [which have a huge success rate at creating ex-smokers] in order to help Pharma protect their sales of shoddy NRT product sales [which have been shown to have over a 90% failure rate]. Dartmouth College has shown how cheap they’re willing to sell out peoples’ lives.

ARTICLE LINK:  Dartmouth’s campuswide ban on tobacco earns praise, criticism

“Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to 10 firms who manufacture and operate websites selling electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products, specifically e-liquids, advising them that selling these products, which lack premarket authorization, is illegal, and therefore they cannot be sold or distributed in the U.S. The firms did not submit a premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) by the Sept. 9, 2020 deadline. The 10 firms receiving warning letters are Little House Vapes LLC; Castle Rock Vapor LLC; Dropsmoke Inc.; Perfection Vapes Inc.; CLS Trading LLC d/b/a Vape Dudes HQ; Session Supply Co.; Coastal E-Liquid Laboratory/GC Vapors LLC; Dr. Crimmy LLC d/b/a Dr. Crimmy’s V-Liquid; CMM Capital LLC d/b/a ETX Vape; and E-Cig Barn LLC.”

ARTICLE LINK: FDA Warns Firms to Remove Unauthorized E-liquid Products from Market

““Vaping could nearly triple the chance of smoking in teens”, says a group from Ohio State University. Their false fears over a non-existent epidemic, addiction, and a gateway to smoking has been quashed by work by Jackson, Brown, and Jarvis at University College London (UCL). What they actually demonstrated was that teens more predisposed to smoking were also more likely to try vaping. Their work contains a total absence of evidence that vaping leads to smoking, leaning too heavily on the debunked trope that a teen epidemic exists in the United States. The declining smoking rate ought to be reason enough for American researchers to drop the false fear of a teen gateway and focus on the real benefit – vaping works to help smokers quit and offers a fraction of the danger and addictive aspects of smoking for adults.”

ARTICLE LINK:   US Teens Not Dependent On Ecigs