Category: Recent News

Here’s the new trailer for the upcoming documentary, “YOU DON’T KNOW NICOTINE”

“The state’s new tax on e-cigarettes goes into effect tomorrow. Prices for cartridge-based e-cigarettes will increase by $1.50 per pod, and containers of refillable e-cigarette liquid will be taxed at 15% of the wholesale price.”

ARTICLE LINK:

E-Cigarette Tax Takes Effect Saturday in Kentucky

You’re lives simply don’t matter to them.

From the Wall Street Journal…

Americans are smoking more during the coronavirus pandemic because they are spending less on travel and entertainment and have more opportunities to light up. They are also switching back to traditional cigarettes from vaping devices in the wake of federal restrictions on e-cigarette flavors.

Executives at Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc. pointed to the trends Tuesday and said they have been significant enough to slow the yearslong decline in U.S. cigarette sales. Altria now expects U.S. cigarette unit sales to fall by 2% to 3.5% this year compared with its previous projection of a 4%-to-6% decline.

Pandemic lockdowns have meant fewer social outings and more time to smoke at home, Altria Chief Executive Billy Gifford said. Though unemployment rates are high, stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits have helped ease the financial hardship for low- and middle-income cigarette smokers, he added. Adult cigarette smokers are making fewer trips to the store, but they are stocking up on packs when they do go.

“Fewer social engagements allow for more tobacco-use occasions,” Mr. Gifford told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday. The company’s Marlboro brand accounts for 43% of all cigarettes sold in the U.S.

People have been switching back to cigarettes from e-cigarettes after the federal government earlier this year barred sales of many flavored vaping products, Altria said. The Food and Drug Administration in February halted the sale of fruit and mint flavors in cartridge-based e-cigarettes in an effort to curb a surge in underage vaping. Public health officials have said that sweet and fruity flavors are popular among young people.

As those restrictions took effect, Altria noted a shift back to cigarettes among adult vapers, particularly those older than 50. “That consumer was faced with choices,” Mr. Gifford said. “It benefited the entire cigarette category.”

U.S. e-cigarette unit sales in the second quarter were down 14% from a year earlier, Mr. Gifford said, adding that vaping’s growth may pause over the next two years because the FDA is requiring e-cigarette manufacturers to submit all products for agency review by September or otherwise take them off the U.S. market.

In April, Altria also noted that some adult vapers were switching back to cigarettes because of negative news coverage of e-cigarettes. Last year, amid an outbreak of a vaping-related lung illness, U.S. health officials warned against the use of e-cigarettes. They later said the ailment was linked not to e-cigarettes, but to vaping products containing marijuana and vitamin E oil.

The FDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the shift back to traditional smoking. Agency officials have said that their first priority is curbing underage use. They also have noted that they allowed menthol-flavored e-cigarettes to remain on the market to provide opportunities for adult cigarette smokers to switch to a less harmful option.

Cigarette smoking is associated with more than 480,000 deaths a year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Altria made a big wager on e-cigarettes in 2018 when it invested $12.8 billion for a 35% stake in Juul Labs Inc. at a time when the startup was logging strong sales of its vaporizers and cartridges. But Altria has had to take $8.6 billion in charges on the investment as Juul’s business slowed. The vaping industry leader has slashed jobs and pulled most of its flavors from the U.S. market.

Altria on Tuesday reported a second-quarter profit of $1.94 billion, compared with $2 billion a year earlier. Net revenue fell almost 4% to $6.37 billion.

The company projected adjusted earnings of $4.21 a share to $4.38 a share for 2020. In April, the company suspended its earnings outlook given uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, it was expecting adjusted earnings of $4.39 a share to $4.51 a share for the year.

“Dependence on e-cigarettes is much less than that found with cigarettes, according to a cross-sectional study of US adults. Mark Sembower and Saul Shiffman from PinneyAssociates and the University of Pittsburgh published their paper in the journal Addiction. The authors write: “Cigarette smoking often results in nicotine dependence. With use of electronic cigarettes as an alternative source of nicotine, it is important to assess dependence associated with e-cigarette use. This study assesses dependence among current and former adult e-cigarette users on cigarettes and e-cigarettes, compared with dependence on cigarettes.”

ARTICLE LINK:

Vaping is Less Addictive

“The bill to ban flavored tobacco is still in play in the California Legislature despite the shortened legislative session due to COVID-19 shutdowns, and despite that the Food and Drug Association gave the Swedish Match General “Snus,” a “Modified Risk Tobacco Product designation.” Senate Bill 793, authored by Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), would make it illegal for any store that sells tobacco to sell flavored tobacco or tobacco flavor enhancer products. Current law already bans the sale of tobacco products to anyone under 21 years old. At the same time, the legislation does not 1) ban cigarettes, despite the fact that we’re in the midst of a respiratory illness pandemic and cigarettes are a huge problem for respiratory health, and 2) touch flavored cannabis vapes, e.g., mango cannabis vapes, despite a bunch of people having actually DIED from vaping cannabis in 2019.”

ARTICLE LINK:

Flavored Tobacco Ban Is Still in Play in Legislature Despite COVID

Here’s the latest from Brent Stafford at Regulator Watch:

Caught between big tobacco and big government is how Dave Bryans, CEO of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, describes the predicament that family-run convenience stores face in Ontario as a result of the upheaval over the so-called youth vaping epidemic.

OCSA’s membership totals over 3,000 independently run C-Stores in Ontario and the association advocates on behalf of the entire sector of 6,000 family-run stores.

In this episode of RegWatch learn about the pressure tactics which Bryans says big tobacco is using to maneuverer around the quickly changing regulatory environment and find out how new restrictions on the sale of vaping products represent a lost opportunity to communicate the virtues of vaping as an alternative to smoking.

Did Dr. Hammond bury the correction to his study?

Find out. Only on RegWatch by RegulatorWatch.com.

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The DP Show! – Together Again At Last! – S01E09

Dimitris comes for a visit and hopefully does not leave Florida with COVID.
We have an open discussion on a little bit of everything and then…
HILARITY ENSUES!!
Don’t miss it!

As always, we get YOU involved in the show.

VAPE WHEEL PRIZE DONATORS:
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THE VIDEO:

THE PODCAST:
COMING SOON!

“A recent MyVoice study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics reveals the main driver for teens who use Juul or Juul-like e-cigarettes is the “cool” factor, not the products’ appetizing flavors. Authors of the study “Youth Perceptions of Juul in the United States,” found that a whopping two-thirds of the respondents said “looking cool” and the social aspect of vaping drove them to use Juuls while a paltry 5 percent said it was the different flavors of the e-cigarettes that brought them to the product. But that is not the story we were sold by “grassroots” anti-vaping activists when they crusaded against e-cigarettes and e-cigarette flavors in front of city councils, statehouses, and the U.S. Congress. The public was told that the seductively delicious flavors of Juuls and other e-cigarettes were luring youngsters to dangerous nicotine products. The real victims of the anti-flavor crusade are former smokers who use flavored e-cigarettes to stay away from combustible tobacco cigarettes along with current smokers who are looking for an effective way to quit smoking.”

ARTICLE LINK:

Study Shows Teens Vape for the ‘Cool’ Factor, not the Flavor

“Viscount Ridley has spoken up for vaping and a tobacco harm reduction approach many times in and outside the House of Lords. He is a prolific and successful author, writing on subjects as diverse as science, prosperity, and innovation. The Institute of Economic Affairs’ (IEA) Book Club hosted a webcast where Matt Ridley, discussed “How innovation works”. In 2016, Viscount Ridley launched a spirited attack on the sections of the Tobacco Products Directive where it proposed to regulate vaping [link], “this directive scores an own-goal by bringing in measures that would discourage the take-up of vaping, and thereby drive people back to cigarettes or to prevent them quitting.” At the 2018 Global Forum for Nicotine, Ridley told the audience, “We should treat vaping in the same way that we treat access to mobile phones. The best way to get people to give up smoking is to innovate with technology. Vaping is a motorway OUT of smoking!”“

ARTICLE LINK:

In Conversation with Matt Ridley

“A cross-sectional, matched control study by researchers at University College London (UCL) has been published in the journal ‘Tobacco Control’. It looked to see if there was an association of between vaping and subsequent progression on to smoking, and also factored in other tobacco product use with smoking in American adolescents. Lion Shahab, Emma Beard, and Jamie Brown conducted the study using data from 78,265 adolescents in the American National Youth Tobacco Survey. The team concluded: “The NYTS showed a continuing decrease in both cigarette smoking prevalence and in the use of any tobacco product, despite a concurrent increase in e-cigarette use between 2014 to 2017. This suggests that any gateway effect of e-cigarettes, if present, must be small. Further, despite e-cigarettes being more commonly used than any other product from 2015 onwards, cigarettes remained the most prevalent initiation product in 2014 and 2015, followed by other combustibles. <1% of adolescents trying an e-cigarette first became established cigarette smokers, significantly fewer than in any other product category.”

ARTICLE LINK:

US Gateway Closed