Category: News This Week

Turning Point Brands reported net sales of $96.8 million in the third quarter that ended Sept. 30, up 16.1 percent from that in the comparable 2018 quarter. Gross profit increased 18.2 percent to $42.8 million, but net income decreased $1.7 million to 6.3 million.

“Vaping headlines dramatically disrupted our third-party vaping distribution business starting in mid-August,” said Larry Wexler, president and CEO of
Turning Point Brands.

“While third-party vaping saw a step function down in the quarter, we produced strong quarterly performance in the smokeless and smoking segments. We
have proactively taken steps to address weakness in the third-party vaping distribution business.”

The so-called “gateway effect” that claims vaping leads to teens turning to combustible cigarettes might not be a reality, according a new study.

Using e-cigarettes doesn’t raise the likelihood a teenager would smoke, according to the study by U.S. researchers. Smoking can be entirely attributable to other factors affecting adolescents’ inclination toward cigarettes, such as parental education, peer smoking, anxiety and other substance abuse, according to a story on bloomberg.com

E-cigarette sales have been hit amid a regulatory crackdown in the U.S. amid concerns that producers like Juul Labs Inc. have been marketing to underage smokers. In the U.K., public health officials have recently reiterated their stance that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than combustibles and urged smokers to make the switch.

The study examined the relationship between vaping and conventional cigarette smoking, looking at 14 shared risk factors, based on surveys of U.S. eighth- and 10th-graders conducted in 2015 and 2016, according to the story.

While the vapers were more likely to smoke cigarettes, the effect was muted once the analysis accounted for risk factors that are shared between the two activities. However, the researchers did find an association between vaping and lifetime cigarette use and said further study is needed to determine if there is a causal link.

The findings are appearing in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, a scientific journal whose publisher does not accept any funding from the tobacco industry, the story states.

The research by Arielle Selya at Sanford Research in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Sooyong Kim at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks was supported by the University of North Dakota, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute for General Medical Sciences.

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate Dr. Stephen Hahn, chief medical executive of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, to lead the Food and Drug Administration, the White House said on Friday.

If confirmed, Hahn, a radiation oncologist who has been at MD Anderson in Houston since 2015, would succeed former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who stepped down from the post earlier this year. Hahn’s nomination passes over Ned Sharpless, a previous director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), who is currently serving as acting FDA commissioner, according to an article by Reuters.

Sharpless will return to his role at NCI, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Friday.

Hahn, who had previously been head of radiation oncology at Philadelphia’s University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, would be taking over a regulatory agency that oversees products ranging from complex cancer drugs, to food, cosmetics and tobacco, according to the story.

“The FDA is a massive government bureaucracy… There is a political aspect to running the FDA that is not really something that Dr. Hahn has done in the past,” said Christopher Mikson, leader of law firm Mayer Brown’s FDA regulatory practice.

“One of the reasons the Trump Administration would bring him in is because he is an outsider. He is an academic medical administrator from Texas by way of Philadelphia, not a Washington insider,” Mikson added, according to the story.

Hahn worked for a few years at the NCI earlier in his career.

The manufacture of tasty treats and mall food court giant Cinnabon is suing a Las Vegas-based vapor company for using its sticky-sweet brand name on some vape products.

Cinnabon, famous for its cinnamon rolls often sold in mall food courts across America, filed a federal lawsuit in Nevada on Monday accusing LiquidChronic.com LLC, an e-liquid company based in Las Vegas, of infringing on its trademark by selling several vaping liquids that are labeled as “Cinnabon” flavored, according to an article a Las Vegas Review-Journal article.

In the complaint, Cinnabon noted that it has licensed its name for various goods over the years, like frozen baked goods, dry baking mixes and even alcohol, according to the article. However, Cinnabon claims it never agreed to allow LiquidChronic to use its brand name for the “Cinnabon” flavored e-cigarette liquids that it sells on its website for as much as $129 for the CBD-infused version.

Lawyers for Cinnabon stated in the complaint that LiquidChronic is “targeting consumers which are familiar with” the famous cinnamon rolls and that the vape company’s unauthorized use of the trademark “is likely to tarnish the Cinnabon Mark and cause a blurring in the minds of consumers” between Cinnabon’s well-known cinnamon rolls and the vaping liquid.

China’s tobacco regulator on Friday issued a notice asking e-commerce platforms and businesses to shut online stores that sell electronic cigarette products, in a move aimed at stopping minors from purchasing e-cigarettes through the internet, according to a story on Reuters.com

The notice comes not long after online platforms and retailers in the U.S. launched similar takedowns amid government scrutiny toward vaping’s effect on public health.

It also arrives as a bevvy of Chinese startups race to capture a piece of China’s massive potential market for e-cigarettes, the story states.

The notice, which was dated October 30, was published one day later on the website of state monopoly China Tobacco, which is overseen by the country’s tobacco regulator.

In order to “further strengthen the protection of the physical and mental health of minors,” the regulator “urges e-cigarette producers, retailers, or individual sellers to temporarily close online sales websites or channels” and “urges e-commerce platform to temporarily close e-cigarette shops,” the regulator stated.

China is home to over 300 million smokers, making it the world’s largest market for smokers.

John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England (PHE), insists e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking, even after a spate of vaping-related deaths and illnesses in the United States.

As of Oct. 31, 1,604 Americans have been hospitalized and at least 34 have died from a mysterious lung illness attributed to vaping, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

PHE claims vaping is 95 percent less harmful than smoking and encourages traditional smokers who can or will not quit smoking to switch.

Newton reiterated that PHE’s advice on nicotine-containing e-cigarettes had not changed in the wake of the American vape scare.

“Our concern is that the responses we have seen to the problem in the U.S. and in other countries may increase the already widespread misunderstanding about the relative safety of nicotine e-cigarettes, deterring smokers from switching and risk driving vapers who have switched back to smoking,” said Newton, adding that vapers should avoid buying unregulated devices.

Newton’s comments come after new data revealed that a record number of Britons are vaping.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) estimates that there are 3.6 million vapers in Great Britain compared with 7.2 million smokers in the U.K. in 2018.

The proportion of vapers who are ex-smokers continues to grow, reaching 54.1 percent in 2019. Only 0.8 percent of never-smokers are current vapers.

A declining proportion, 39.8 percent, of vapers also smoke, according to ASH.

The Tobacco Institute of Japan (TIOJ) is set to implement rules for the disposal of heat-not-burn (HnB) products that use lithium-ion batteries, reports The Mainichi.

The initiative is a response to multiple reports of fire incidents attributed to tobacco cartridges discarded as noncombustible trash.

Japan requires local governments and electronics manufacturers to collect lithium-ion battery-powered products including smartphones and portable video game consoles.

However, HnB cartridges are not subject to such requirements. Without clear rules regarding the collection of these products, many local bodies do not accept them as trash.

Japan Tobacco (JT) launched a pilot program in May to collect used HnB tobacco products at its shops in Tokyo, and the tobacco companies will set rules based on JT’s system.

HnB products have been on sale in Japan for about five years, sold by TIOJ member companies JT, Philip Morris Japan and British American Tobacco Japan. To date, more than 10 million units have been sold in the country.

The South Korean government’s recent warning on the use of vapor products is causing confusion for consumers. Smokers and vapers alike are left without information on how harmful e-cigarettes are and whether combustible cigarettes are any safer.

Amid the confusion, more and more retailers are suspending sales of e-liquids, driving e-cigarette smokers to consider returning to combustible ones, according to an article on koreatimes.co.kr.

Last week, the Ministry of Health and Welfare issued a “strong” recommendation that smokers stop using vaping products until their effects on the human body are fully confirmed, an upgraded warning from last month’s “advisory” telling people to limit their use of the products. The recommendation followed lung diseases and deaths in the U.S. among people using illegal marijuana, not nicotine, cartomizers.

Following the recommendation, major convenience store chains decided to remove flavored liquid e-cigarettes from their shelves across the country until the health authorities announce the study results on chemical substances and the toxicity of those products. While GS25 announced the decision first, emart24, 7-Eleven and CU followed suit, according to the article.

Consumers of the liquid e-cigarettes, however, said the government’s announcement has only caused more confusion.

“I honestly don’t understand the government’s recommendation to stop using e-cigarettes while it has not released any tangible information or scientific proof that e-cigarettes are more harmful than conventional ones,” said Lee Chul-hyung, a 41-year-old patent lawyer who has been using the product for about eight months, the article states..

“Do they mean that e-cigarette users should turn back to combustible ones? Or do they mean we have to totally quit smoking? Are there any better options available to adult smokers who don’t want to quit?” Lee asked.

The health authorities said detailed guidelines would be announced when they finish the study on the substances in e-cigarettes.

“Although the government recommends people stop using liquid e-cigarettes, it doesn’t mean it is safe to smoke conventional cigarettes,” said an official of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

“The best option is quitting smoking, as we cannot conclude which one is less hazardous yet,” the official said, according to the story.

Some smokers here also point out that most serious lung disease cases in the U.S. were related to e-cigarettes containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is illegal in Korea.

The Korea E-cig Industry Association (KECIA) released a statement Friday denouncing the government’s recommendation as “groundless” and “excessive.”

“The problematic substance of liquid e-cigarettes in the U.S. was THC, which is not included in the products sold in Korea,” the KECIA said.

It said the Korean patient, who was cited by the ministry during the briefing, already left the hospital without any specific aftereffects. According to guidance released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Public Health Agency of Canada, people are recommended not to return to smoking combustible cigarettes if they were using vaping products as a means of quitting combustible cigarette smoking, the KECIA said, according to the story.

“The ministry said it would inform people of the harmful effects of e-liquids, but we can’t see any scientific grounds,” the group said. “We request the ministry show proof that liquid e-cigarettes are more harmful than combustible ones.”

A former Juul Labs executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the company shipped 1 million contaminated pods without informing consumers or issuing a recall, reports Buzzfeed.

Plaintiff Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at Juul Labs from May 2018 to March 2019, claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment.

Breja alleges that on March 12, 2019, he learned that some batches of mint e-liquid had been found to be contaminated. Approximately 250,000 mint refill kits, the equivalent of 1 million pods, were manufactured with the contaminated e-liquid, shipped to retailers and sold to customers.

Not only did management refuse to recall the batches, it also asked Breja to charge the supplier of the e-liquid $7 billion for the contaminated batches, the lawsuit alleges.

According to the lawsuit, Breja was terminated on March 21, just over a week after he raised concerns about the contaminated pods. He was told it was because he had misrepresented himself as the chief financial officer at Uber.

A judge has overturned Utah’s emergency rule banning the sale of flavored ejuices.

Third District Court Judge Keith Kelly said the Utah Department of Health overstepped its authority in implementing the emergency rule and should instead have followed an administrative rule-making process. He also agreed with the plaintiffs’ assertion that enforcement would cause vape shop owners irreparable harm.

Vape shops sued after the Utah Department of Health implemented a rule blocking nonlicensed specialty tobacco shops from selling flavored e-cigarette
products to help stem an outbreak of vaping-related illnesses. So far, 98 cases have been reported in Utah.

The vape shops’ attorney argued there is no “emergency” and the rule puts up to 680 small Utah businesses at risk. The outbreak, they argued, is tied to
illegal THC products not flavored juices.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office claimed that while illegal THC was a component, health officials still believed many cases involved regular nicotine
juices.

The judge’s restraining order will lapse on Nov. 22 when both sides are scheduled to return to court for a preliminary injunction hearing where vape
shops could seek to make the order permanent.