Author: Bill Tarling

“As the country is producing more tobacco in 2020 than 2019, the government must discourage unbridled import of cigarettes and tobacco. These measures would not only increase income of 75,000 families whose livelihood depends on cultivation of tobacco, but also lead to further increase in the production of crop, reducing dependence on the imported cigarettes and tobacco. Stakeholders in the local tobacco sector have pointed out that the use of E-cigarettes has proved dangerous for the smokers as a result of which several countries have banned their sale. In the coming budget, the government should completely ban import and sale of E-cigarettes.”

BILL TARLING —  The Pakistan Tobacco Board [PTB] deceptively and fraudulantly claims that e-liquid vapor products are far more dangerous than smoking

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Govt must discourage import of cigarettes, ban e-cigarettes

“An $11.3 billion settlement agreement from 1997 between Florida government and a group of tobacco companies was in the spotlight Tuesday when the Fourth District Court of Appeal considered whether R.J. Reynolds should continue paying millions of dollars a year for cigarette brands it no longer owns.”

BILL TARLING — If the courts decide to nullify the payments, it could potentially set a precedence where Big Tobacco companies might simply start either selling off some old lines, or simply rebranding them to tie up courts with claims that the sold lines or ‘new name’ lines should not be subject to MSA payments. Even if it wouldn’t release them from their obligations, it could feasibly tie up the payments long enough to strain State budgets — who, in turn, would likely push to increase taxes on e-liquid vapor products to compensate for the delayed tobacco revenue. Big Tobacco wouldn’t need to win additional claims, they could try outlasting the States with legal claims and lawsuits.

ARTICLE LINK:

R.J. Reynolds Wants Out of Historic Tobacco Settlement With Florida Government. Who Will Foot $100M Bill?

“An article produced by the Kentucky Centre for Smoke-free Policy has prompted a bitter Stanton Glantz into revealing his unapologetic feelings over a retraction of one of his papers. Called “fraudulent”, his deeply flawed paper on vaping’s impact on the heart was pulled by The Journal of American Heart Association. Scientists who do not comment on vaping matters joined in a call to have it retracted – something the journal resolutely refused to do for eight months. Glantz refused to let people examine his work and ended up not just with egg on his face, but also managed to get banned from using the PATH data in future – and succeeded in getting his colleagues and institution banned into the bargain. At a time where Stan is running low on friends, the Kentucky Centre for Smoke-free Policy has leapt to his defence. Why would it do this? It receives its funding from the State’s declining Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement income”

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Butthurt Stan

“The city of Mesa on Tuesday began enforcing its new regulations regarding vaping in public. The ordinance was approved by the City Council in December and includes vaping within the city’s existing tobacco regulations. Mesa residents are no longer permitted to vape within city facilities, certain public places and places of employment. The new policies do not prohibit residents from purchasing vaping materials, nor are vaping shops with proper ventilation required to alter their practices.”

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Mesa begins enforcing new regulations aimed at public vaping

“Vaping advocates are pushing back in federal court against a newly enacted Palmdale city ordinance banning the sale of flavored e-cigarette products. The suit, filed by the California Smoke & Vape Association and tobacco retailer Cigs Plus against the city, alleges the law is “overbroad” and will “destroy Palmdale’s nicotine vapor product industry, and damage the livelihoods of the workers that it employs.” The Los Angeles federal court complaint, filed Sunday, also contends that the ordinance “will likely precipitate a public health crisis, as vapor products users turn either to combustible cigarettes or to black market sources to obtain vapor tobacco products.””

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Palmdale ban on flavored e-cigarettes draws lawsuit from vaping advocates

“The New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) hosted a webcast on Zoom last week with guest speaker Clive Bates, harm reduction advocate and all-round expert. He discussed whether the new iteration of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) would be an opportunity or catastrophe.”

VAPING NEWS:

NNA Zoom Webcast with Clive Bates

“The parties of the government’s coalition have issued a draft bill to go before the Riigikogu which would stop the collection of excise duty on tobacco e-liquids for two years following entering into law. In the draft explanation, government coalition Riigikogu group members note that in stopping the collection of excise duty, entrepreneurs will be given a chance to cut the price of tobacco e-liquids, used in “vaping” products, and create a stimulus for buying the products legally and internally in Estonia, rather than from outside Estonia, or on the black market.”

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Coalition parties want to abolish excise duty on e-tobacco liquids

“Vapor products remain widely available in India eight months after the country banned them. While leading players such as Juul have left the country, vapor products remain widely available today. People can still buy e-cigarettes on the internet or from any paan shop. It is difficult to enforce regulations as nicotine is available in all other forms,” Samrat Chowdhery, founder and director of the Association of Vapers India, told Business Insider. “Formal players making e-cigarettes are exiting the market. Once black market industry gains a footover, it will be impossible to get control over it. The government missed a golden opportunity to tax these products.””

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India: E-cigarettes Widely Available Despite Ban

“The UK government has rapidly released its advice on vaping during the COVID-19 pandemic, just four months after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 and 10 weeks after the national lockdown commenced. The position remains unchanged that vaping is preferable to smoking to reduce potential harm despite the nonsensical closure of vape shops.

The government states: “E-cigarettes (vapes) can be an effective aid to stopping smoking and staying smokefree. The evidence on the health risks of e-cigarettes is still developing. However, it is clear that vaping is far less harmful to the respiratory system than smoking. There is very little evidence on vaping and COVID-19 and it is unknown whether vaping makes you more susceptible to severe disease if you become infected. If it does, the risk is likely to be much less than if you smoke. Vaping remains much less harmful than smoking for most people and it is very important that you avoid returning to smoking.”

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Vaping and COVID

“Older smokers who had switched to e-cigarettes are turning back to traditional cigarettes because of negative news coverage and regulatory crackdowns on vaping. Well-funded advocacy groups masquerading as concerned parents used the mysterious disease to argue that not only did nicotine-based vaping systems cause E-cigarette or Vaping Product Use-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI) but that flavors were luring teens to the dangerous products. Unfortunately, the damage to the public consciousness had been done and states continued their march to ban some or all nicotine e-cigarettes under the banner of protecting teen users. But the data suggesting there was or is an “epidemic” of teen e-cigarette use does not show any such thing.”

ARTICLE LINK:

‘Grassroots’ Anti-vaping Efforts Pushing People Back to Cigarettes