Category: News This Week

Two California Cities Start Nation’s Strictest Vaping Bans
Two California cities have become the only jurisdictions in the U.S. to eliminate the sale of all vaping and traditional tobacco products. On January 1st, Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, both in the Los Angeles area, began to enforce the strictest vaping rules in the country. The law also included a phase-out period for retailers to empty their shelves of e-cigarettes. Other cities are considering enacting similar bans.
The Beverly Hills City Council, the first to pass its ordinance, proposed the rule nearly three years ago during a meeting discussing the potential ban of flavored vaping products. Ultimately, the council settled on a total ban of all vaping and traditional tobacco products.
Credit: Haiberliu
“Somebody’s got to be first, so let it be us,” said then-Mayor, current Councilmember John Mirisch, who first proposed the concept in 2017, according to a press release. Mirisch recently joined the Board of Trustees of the advocacy group Action on Smoking & Health (ASH), which coordinates Project Sunset, an effort to phase out tobacco sales worldwide.
“Cigarettes have become so normalized that to some this might seem like a drastic step,” said Chris Bostic, ASH Policy Director. “But if another product emerged tomorrow that was highly addictive and killed when used as intended, of course we’d ban its sale. We’d probably charge the people who marketed it with manslaughter too.”
Total vaping and tobacco bans have been gaining traction more recently, within the public health community and more broadly. The Danish Institute for Human Rights, after concluding a human rights assessment of Philip Morris International in 2017, concluded that “there can be no doubt that the production and marketing of tobacco is irreconcilable with the human right to health. For the tobacco industry, the UNGPs [United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights] therefore require the cessation of the production and marketing of tobacco.”
Vapor industry advocates say that banning e-cigarettes only pushes former combustible cigarettes smokers back to combustibles. They also say that vaping bans increase the size of the black market. Black market THC vaping products were the cause of a lung disease that sickened and killed numerous youth in 2019.
January 5, 2021
RELX Files With SEC For $100 Million U.S. Stock Sale
RLX Technology, parent to the RELX brand of vaping products, has filed with the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO).
Credit: RELX Technology
The $100 million request is well below the $1 billion the company said it expected to raise when it announced Citigroup as the bank of record for its planned initial public offering in the U.S., people with knowledge of the matter said.
The Shenzhen-based company, which counts Sequoia Capital among its backers, boasts a 62.6 percent market share in China for closed-system vaping products in terms of retail sales, according to a press release.
“The company has partnered with 110 authorized distributors to supply its products to over 5,000 RELX Branded Partner Stores, and over 100,000 other retail outlets nationwide, covering over 250 cities in China,” the release states.
Revenue for the company nearly doubled in the nine months ended September 30, 2020 to $324 million, with net income of $16 million.
The Beijing, China-based company was founded in 2018 and booked $400 million in sales for the 12 months ended September 30, 2020. It plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol RLX. RLX Technology filed confidentially on October 26, 2020. Citi is the sole bookrunner on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.
January 5, 2021
Vapor Industry Expecting to See More Bad Science in 2021

Credit: Timusu
Regulation, taxation and fighting bad science is all on the agenda for the tobacco and vapor industries over the next 12 months.
By VV staff
During the final session of the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF), the future of the vapor industry was put on center stage. The panel of experts suggested that regulation, taxation and confronting misinformation are going to be the major challenges that the tobacco and vapor industries battle over the next 12 months.
In the U.S., the premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) process is going to be a major legal and regulatory focus, according to Stacy Ehrlich, partner at Kleinfeld Kaplan & Becker LLP. She said that while companies need to file PMTAs or standard equivalency (SE) reports, it is unknown how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will review these new products and enforce its rules.
“How wide will the FDA enforcement be over these products? Another regulatory key issue over the coming 12 months will be flavors in vapor and cigar products at all levels of government,” she said. “Flavors may increase initiation in youth … but they may also help move adults to lower risk products.”
So far, the only action toward flavors by the FDA has been to remove all flavors except tobacco flavors for closed pod systems. The absence of federal rulemaking has motivated some local and state entities to enact their own flavor bans.
“What are unintended consequences of flavor ban?” Ehrlich asked. “A push towards the black market—push people back to smoking? What are the long-term impacts on public health? These are significant regulatory issues to watch in the coming year.”
The fight against misinformation will also be a major issue. David O’Reilly, director of scientific research for British American Tobacco, told attendees that the industry is still suffering from the effects of the e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) that began in mid-2019. That crisis was later found to be caused by vitamin E acetate in black market THC products and not any nicotine-based vapor products.
“What the pandemic might do, and the jury is still out on this, but it has brought science and evidence into everyone’s lives,” said O’Reilly. “There is an opportunity for this industry to use that science to promote harm reduction and bring this information to consumers and make them more savvy, and maybe they will look at the different products and brands [and move to a less-harmful product].”
Another effect on the industry caused by the pandemic may be on packaging. Omar Rahmanadi, CEO of BMJ, said that before the pandemic, there was a pressure through social media and from political groups to lessen the use of single-use plastics. The pandemic, however, has caused a major increase in the use of such plastics because of the massive need for gloves and masks.
When the pandemic ends, there could be a major pushback toward removing single-use plastics from the market completely, Rahmanadi speculated. “It’s only a matter of time before the vapor and tobacco industries are pressured to use less single-use plastics,” he said.
Sally Satel, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and psychiatry lecturer at Yale University, said that for any innovation or regulation to be implemented properly, the industry needs “a massive public reckoning of the truth” about the advantages of switching to vaping from combustible cigarettes. For example, there has been a move toward negative science and studies in recent months, she says.
The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed a vaping study centered on heart disease that was later retracted. The study, which appeared in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), was written by Dharma Bhatta and Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, and concluded that “Someday and everyday e‐cigarette use are associated with increased risk of having had a myocardial infarction, adjusted for combustible cigarette smoking.”
Another study from Rutgers University found that 80 percent of doctors wrongly believe nicotine causes cancer. It also took the Centers for Disease Control months to clarify that EVALI was caused by black market THC vapor products. “This paints a fairly grim picture of what we are up against,” said Satel. “And all of this while allowing cigarette sales to go undisturbed while putting barriers on devices that are a great benefit to public health.”
Whatever the challenges facing the tobacco and vapor industries, answers are out there, according to David Sweanor, adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa. He said several countries have lessened restrictions on next-generation tobacco products in recent years, and that has had a ripple effect in the tobacco industry. Cigarette sales have slumped.
“We have seen what happens in other countries when we see a slight lessening of restrictions on these [next-generation] products like we have seen in Japan … Norway, Iceland, Sweden. These aren’t places that are actively trying to see how rapidly ending smoking is happening; it was just the effect of lessening restrictions,” explains Sweanor.
“What would happen if any jurisdiction in the world wanted to see how rapidly they could get rid of cigarettes? … Good policy is contagious. It would be very hard to resist if we saw something like that happen on a major scale to end smoking. Any country that gets that right—backs new technology—could save hundreds of millions of lives and possibly even create a new technology sector for its economy.”
January 4, 2021
Studies Say Vaping ‘May’ Help Smokers Quit Combustibles
Vaping studies often contain a lot of modal verbs like can, could, may and might. For example, an updated study on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation by the Cochrane Review suggest that vaping “could” help smokers quit using deadly combustible cigarettes.
The Cochrane study looked at 50 studies that took place in the US, the UK, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Belgium, Canada, Poland, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland and Turkey. The review found that e-cigarettes “could” be the answer many smokers are looking for according to an article in The New Strait Times.
Among the key findings were that smokers were likely to stop smoking for at least six months by switching to a vaping device with a nicotine e-liquid as compared to nicotine replacement therapy (such as gum and patches), nicotine-free vaporizers or behavioural support.
The researchers, made up of multiple independent and internationally-renowned healthcare experts, found that vaping with a nicotine e-liquid can help 10 in 100 people to stop smoking, compared to only 6 in 100 people who have tried using nicotine-replacement therapy or vaping nicotine-free e-liquids. Only an estimated 4 in 100 who try to quit without support, or those who rely only on behavioural support, are likely to succeed.
They also did not detect any clear evidence of serious harm from vaping a nicotine e-liquid.
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce from the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group said there is an increase in evidence of smoking cessation through the use of e-cigarettes compared to the last review in 2016.
“The randomised evidence on smoking cessation has increased since the last version of the review and there is now evidence that electronic cigarettes with nicotine are likely to increase the chances of quitting successfully compared to nicotine gum or patches,” said Hartmann-Boyce, the lead author of the review. “While there is currently no clear evidence of any serious side effects, there is considerable uncertainty about the harms of electronic cigarettes and longer-term data are needed. Scientific consensus holds that electronic cigarettes are considerably less harmful than traditional cigarettes, but not risk-free.”
In contrast, a recent study from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), led by Richard Wang, determined that that e-cigarettes do not lead smokers away from addiction. Wang also claims that e-cigarettes “could” increase a users risk of disease. “If the use of consumer device products is not associated with increased smoking cessation, there is no health benefit,” he said. “Also, as people who smoke add e-cigarettes to their smoking, their risk of disease could increase.”
Wang worked with fellow UCSF researcher Sudhamiyi Bhadriraju and disgraced former UCSF researcher Stanton Glantz, who has recently had multiple studies retracted for what has been labeled by fellow scientists as “explicit dishonesty.”
This latest study was based on the collection of 64 trials in which participants were examined. All of them are e-cigarette users, according to an article on Explica.com.
“In observational studies you are asking people about the use of the devices they bought themselves. But they did it without specific guidance to quit smoking,” says Wang. “In a randomized trial, you test a product, treating it as a therapy or drug to quit.”
Wang then goes on to say there “may” be a cessation effect. “When certain electronic devices are treated as medicines, there may actually be a smoking cessation effect,” explains Wang. “But it has to be balanced against the risks of using cigarettes.”
January 4, 2021
Study Claims Vaping Could Cloud Thinking

Photo: Kevinsphotos from Pixabay
Vaping can have a negative effect on memory, thinking skills and the ability to focus, particularly for young people, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Rochester (New York) Medical Center.
“Our studies add to growing evidence that vaping should not be considered a safe alternative to tobacco smoking,” said Head researcher Dongmei Li.
The study is based on data analyzed from the over 886,000 participants involved in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey and the more than 18,000 responses from the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
The researchers concluded that those who vaped or smoked cigarettes were more likely to struggle with cognitive function than those who had never smoked in any capacity. Also, the researchers noted that age played a large role in the participants’ cognitive abilities as they found that when participants were younger than 14 when they started vaping or smoking, they were even more likely to have cognitive struggles as adults.
“With the recent rise in teen vaping, this is very concerning and suggests that we need to intervene even earlier. Prevention programs that start in middle or high school might actually be too late,” Li added.
January 2, 2021
E-Cigarette Sales Slumping Since Regulatory Action
For the last 10 months, convenience store e-cigarette sales have been slumping. According to Nielsen data, e-cigarettes sales are down 3.5 percent for the four-week period ending Dec. 25. The sector, mostly consisting of convenience stores since Nielsen doesn’t track vape shop sales, has been failing since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implemented its latest round of heightened regulations on the products on Feb. 6.
Credit: Timothy S. Donahue
Overall e-cigarette sales-volume growth has declined steadily since Nielsen’s Aug. 10, 2019, report, when it was up 60.2 percent year over year, according to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal. The latest FDA restrictions on the sector debuted Feb. 6. Those restrictions foremost required manufacturers of cartridge-based e-cigarettes to stop making, distributing and selling “unauthorized flavorings” by Feb. 6, or risk enforcement actions.
Top-selling Juul’s four-week dollar sales have dropped from a 50.2 percent increase in the Aug. 10, 2019, report to a 15.6 percent decline for the latest report. By comparison, Reynolds’ Vuse was up 87.3 percent in the latest report and NJoy down 31.5 percent.
Juul’s market share dropped from 54.3% in the previous report to 53.8 percent. It was at 55.1 percent a year ago. Vuse’s market share slipped from 28.5 percent to 28.1 percent, while No. 3 NJoy was unchanged at 5 percent, and Fontem Ventures’ blu eCigs was unchanged at 3.6 percent.
Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog has cautioned in her monthly reports in recent months that there has been increasing consumer demand for lower-priced traditional cigarettes during the pandemic.
Herzog referred to the trend as “downtrading” from many top brands. That trend could be offset somewhat by the scheduled $600 federal stimulus payment to most Americans, which could be released as early as this week,
Cowen & Co. analyst Vivian Azer also says consumer downtrading in traditional cigarettes “remains a central theme in the U.S.
FiscalNote Markets managing director Stefanie Miller said that the Food and Drug Administration under a Biden administration “is likely to begin working anew on nicotine cap regulations for cigarettes.”
“Because of likely inaction in Congress, we now expect the Biden administration to reopen stalled menthol/flavor regulations as well.”
The $908 billion federal stimulus package contains an element that affects the distribution of electronic-cigarette products, according to tobacco analysts. The Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from delivering packages containing e-cigarettes. The bill also subjects e-cigarettes to other rules that currently govern online cigarette sales. The prohibition could go into effect as soon as 120 days.
“We see this policy as mainly advancing the trend we’re already seeing in the market — which is that the large, well-capitalized manufacturers will be poised to pay the costs to be in compliance with the new more burdensome policies,” Miller wrote. “Meanwhile, smaller manufacturers and retailers likely fall short and will be forced to exit the market.”
January 1, 2021
Public Health Expert: Harm Reduction is Future of Nicotine
Nicotine is addictive. Most people who have smoked 60 cigarettes are going to be daily smokers. According to Jonathan Foulds, professor of public health sciences and psychiatry and co-director of Penn State Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, the average middle-aged smoker has made about 20 serious attempts to quit.
Jonathan Foulds, Penn State Cancer Institute
After deciding to try to quit, the average smoker has a 95 percent chance of still smoking a year later. Even with counselling and using a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cessation medicine, there is still an 80 percent chance they will be smoking again in a year.
Speaking during the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF), Foulds said that people smoke for the psychological effects of nicotine, but they suffer the health effects created by inhaling combustible tobacco. To lessen the harms of nicotine consumption, regulators should focus on ways to get cigarette smokers to switch to less-risky forms of nicotine intake.
“If it were not for the nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke than they are to blow bubbles,” he said. “Blowing bubbles is fun, but no one wants to do it 20 times a day for the rest of their life. It’s the nicotine that’s key to [people smoking].”
Despite the addictiveness of nicotine, cigarette consumption in the United States has been falling consistently over the past 20 years. Cigarette consumption has fallen more than 50 percent since 1997. That is equal to approximately 200 billion fewer cigarettes being sold per year since 1997, and there are now many more people in the U.S. Foulds said there is also evidence that the decline has been accelerating over the past few years [alongside the growing popularity of vapor products].
Meanwhile, youth smoking rates have declined dramatically. In the 1970s, an average of 30 percent of high school seniors smoked cigarettes. In 1995, that number dropped to 25 percent. Today, less than 2 percent of high school seniors smoke cigarettes.
“The massive cigarette sales that the industry has been used to—clearly, that is coming to an end. I mean, the end is in sight from the cigarette industry,” Foulds told the GTNF audience. “What I’m trying to get across here to many of you—who are from the industry—is that we may be coming to a tipping point where it would be much better, rather than to just fight [regulators], it may actually be a wiser strategy to accept that this is happening sooner or later in terms of cigarettes and get ahead of it and embrace it.”
For cigarette manufacturers to survive, Foulds said they must promote less-risky forms of nicotine intake. Lower nicotine cigarettes are one example of how manufacturers can help push people to other products, such as e-cigarettes. He was unconcerned about consumers compensating for lower amounts of nicotine by smoking more cigarettes. “There’s now a bunch of studies—almost a dozen studies and they’re fairly consistent—showing that compensatory smoking really isn’t a thing that happens with these kinds of cigarettes,” he said. “The smokers learn pretty quickly that they can puff as much as they like, and they’re not going to get any satisfying amount of nicotine out of them.”
Another concern is that if only lower nicotine cigarettes are available, this would push smokers to the black market for higher nicotine cigarettes. Foulds says several studies have shown that that is not true. Smokers would be more likely to move to products such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn systems to get the nicotine they crave.
E-cigarettes are not without health risks, according to Foulds. “They are likely to be far less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes,” he clarified. “E-cigarettes contain fewer numbers and lower levels of toxicant substances than conventional cigarettes. There’s been more and more evidence that e-cigarettes deliver far, far lower levels of harmful toxicants than cigarettes. It’s become very, very consistent … e-cigarettes can help people quit.”
If regulators allow high-nicotine, reduced-harm products, like e-cigarettes, to remain in the market, Foulds says that it is highly likely that many current smokers will reduce their smoking, quit or switch to reduced toxic-exposure products, resulting in a substantial improvement in overall public health. “It is time for major cigarette manufacturers to support nicotine reduction in combustibles as perhaps their best chance of still being in business in 2030,” he said.
January 1, 2021
Indiana to Take Up E-liquid Flavor Ban Again in 2021
The state of Indiana will again try to ban flavored vaping products in its next legislative session. Senate Bill 45, authored by Sen. Ronald Grooms, will be on the the agenda when the 2021 session begins on January 4, at 1:30 pm.
Credit: Davis Mark
The bill defines “flavored e-liquid” as e-liquid that contains a constituent ingredient that is added for the purpose of imparting a characterizing flavor. The bill would also make it illegal for any manufacturer, distributor, or retailer to manufacture, distribute, or market flavored e-liquid in Indiana.
The bill would prohibit the sale of flavored e-liquid to a person of any age and authorizes the state’s alcohol and tobacco commission to investigate and enforce penalties for certain violations involving flavored e-liquid.
Indiana has previously tried to ban flavored vaping products without success. In early March, the Indiana House of Representatives approved a bill to ban flavored e-liquids 213-195, but it failed to gain approval in the senate.
December 30, 2020
Dates Announced for 2021 IECIE Shanghai Vapor Show
The IECIE Shanghai Vape Culture Week (IECIE Shanghai) will be held from 18-20 of May, 2021. Hosted by Shenzhen Informa Markets Creativity Exhibition Co., IECIE Shanghai will take place at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. The show will occupy an exhibition area of 12,000 square meters and is expected to attract more than 20,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors from around the world.
The IECIE Shenzhen Expo is scheduled for September 3-5 2021. This makes the IECIE Shanghai the first large-scale professional e-cigarette exhibition of 2021 in China. “As a professional e-cigarette exhibition in the domestic vertical field that opens throughout the year, IECIE Shanghai casts irreplaceable influence on the industry,” a press release states. “It will not only provide a trade platform for exhibitors and professional visitors to communicate and reach a deal, but also a booster to promote product technology innovation and industry development.”
IECIE Shanghai will not only meet the needs of e-cigarette companies for new product launches and overseas promotion, but also meet the purpose of vape store purchases and mass consumers to try new products, according to the release. Typically, the IECIE Shenzhen is held in April and is the first trade show for vapor products to provide a platform to new product launches and displays for global e-cigarette brands. April-May has also become the agreed-upon peak season for new product launches in the industry
IECIE Shanghai aims to focus on functional e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices. The Shanghai show will include the “World Vape Championship”, “Infinite E-liquid Station”, and “Vape Map Member Day.” For more information, visit https://en.iecie.com/
December 30, 2020
Oregon’s E-Cigarette Tax Hike Takes Effect Friday
E-cigarettes will be taxed for the first time in Oregon beginning Friday, Jan. 1. Also, Oregon’s tax on combustible cigarettes will increase by $2 per pack after voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 108 last month.
Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), such as vaping and e-cigarette products, will be taxed at a rate of 65 percent of the wholesale purchase price. Oregon’s cigarette tax will now be $3.33 per pack, the sixth-highest in the nation and the highest on the West Coast.
Credit: Pasja1000

In addition to saving lives, the cigarette tax increase is projected to raise nearly $135 million in annual revenue, according to data from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Tobacconomics.
The new revenue will provide access to health care on the Oregon Health Plan at a time when health care coverage is critical, and fund the state’s tobacco prevention and cessation programs to help people quit tobacco successfully, according to a press release.
December 30, 2020