Category: News This Week

Using vapor products may reverse some of the harm resulting from tobacco smoking in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a PR Newswire story – relayed by the TMA – based on a study published in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease by Dr. Riccardo Polosa, MD, PhD, the director of the Institute for Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology at the University of Catania, Italy.

The study found too that using vapor products may improve COPD outcomes over the long term.

The researchers evaluated changes in objective and subjective respiratory parameters among 44 COPD patients and compared those who stopped smoking or substantially reduced it by switching to vapor use with COPD patients who were smokers not using vapor products at the time of the study.

They found that after three years, the group’s patients significantly reduced their smoking, and had reduced respiratory infections and COPD exacerbations. Their respiratory physiology was not worsened by e-cigarette use and their overall health status and physical activity improved consistently.

Improved outcomes were even seen among dual users.

Co-researcher Dr. Caruso said, “the finding that COPD exacerbations were halved in patients who stopped or considerably reduced their smoking habit following switching to vapor products was an important finding that confirms the potential for harm reversal of these products”.

Roughly 10.8 million US adults use electronic cigarettes, and more than half of them are under 35 years old, according to a story at reuters.com citing the results of a study.

One in three e-cigarette users vape daily, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“Electronic cigarette use is also closely associated with other high-risk behaviors,” said senior study author Dr. Michael Blaha, director of clinical research for the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease.

“The most common pattern of use in the US is dual use, i.e. current use of both traditional cigarettes and electronic cigarettes.”

The study found that 20-somethings, smokers of traditional cigarettes, unemployed adults, and people who identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender (LGBT) are more likely than other individuals to use e-cigarettes, the study also found.

“It is becoming clear that specific vulnerable groups are at highest risk of adopting electronic cigarettes,” Blaha said by email.

The Reuters story said that a limitation, however, was that all the data was self-reported and not verified by medical records.

And researchers didn’t know the type of e-cigarette devices people used or the liquids they vaped.

The Israeli Supreme Court has rejected a petition filed by Juul Labs seeking a temporary injunction against the Ministry of Health’s decision to ban the sale and importation of Juul.

The ministry announced the ban amid concerns that the device contains high levels of nicotine and poses “a grave risk to public health.” The measure, signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will take effect within 10 days.

Juul entered the Israeli market in May, selling its pods with a full nicotine content of 59 mg per pod, although in the U.K. the company sells pods with a reduced nicotine content to comply with European Union regulations.

The company maintains that, despite its higher nicotine content, Juul is safer than regular cigarettes. It said the ban “prevented many smokers from a much less damaging alternative which does not involve inhaling cancerous tobacco smoke, while at the same time cigarettes continue to be sold unhindered and different types of cigarettes continue to enter the Israeli market.”

The ‘extraordinary and unprecedented’ flood of fake comments into the network hosting the public consultation process for the US Food and Drug Administration’s proposed regulation of flavors in tobacco products is much higher than previously was known, according to a story by Brent Stafford at regulatorwatch.com.

With the comment period now closed, staff at Regulations.gov were said to have confirmed to RegWatch the ‘stunning revelation’ that 95 percent of the 525,000 comments received into the system were BOT-submitted comments or were otherwise duplicate in nature.

Last month, regulatorwatch.com reported that, in a battle to destroy vaping, ‘bad actors’ had spammed more than 255,000 fake anti-vaping comments into the system overseeing the consultation process related to proposed regulations that could include restrictions on the use of flavors in e-liquids, or an outright flavor ban.

It was said that the assault nearly brought down federal servers and so bogged-down the internal network that it became next-to-impossible to process any submissions.

RegWatch described what happened as a massive assault on the credibility of the public consultation process.

Meanwhile, according to a Vaping 360 story last month relayed by the TMA, the 255,000 comments originated from four IP addresses.

At that time, the agency was said to have been able to stem the flow of comments but had not approved or published a single comment from the pending queue of hundreds of thousands of comments.

The spammed comments were unsigned and followed one of four templates, including three that used language copied from an April Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, and another from a form letter to California mayors created by the California Department of Public Health.

The comments were said to ‘critique the use of flavors and packaging to increase addictiveness and appeal’.

A piece at spiked-online.com by Martin Cullip has brought some perspective to a row that has blown up over a recommendation contained in a report by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on electronic cigarettes.

Cullip reported that the medical community had largely welcomed the Committee’s report, but that one aspect of it had led to uproar on social media. Many media outlets too had focused on this same small part of the report.

‘The objections all followed the same themes,’ Cullip wrote. ‘People were convinced that this would mean huge clouds of vapor in every place they visit. Many said e-cigarettes should “remain banned” in public places. Others declared that if vapers wanted to “kill themselves” they should do so in their own spaces and not subject others to “toxic” second-hand vapor.

‘Unwittingly,’ Cullip added, ‘every comment along those lines backed up the 66-page report’s conclusion that there is a huge misunderstanding about what e-cigarettes are and how they are used, and that this misunderstanding is hampering efforts to tempt smokers away from tobacco.

‘Firstly, vaping is not banned in public, as smoking is, and the government has consistently said it has no plans to change that.

‘Additionally, as the report clearly states, it has been “impossible to measure the risks from second-hand e-cigarette vapor because any potentially harmful compounds released into the surrounding area are so negligible”.

‘Restrictions on vaping in certain places have nothing to do with government and are not based on any public-health threat. Mostly, anti-vaping policies have been installed because those applying them don’t understand anything about e-cigarettes, so banning them is the simple and lazy option.

‘Pubs, businesses and, yes, train companies set their own policies. All the report is saying is that they should be better informed as to what e-cigarettes are and how they are encouraging smokers to quit at a rapid rate. Some may change their policy, some may not, but it is better that they understand the debate so that they can make a more informed decision.’

The results of new research released yesterday reveals a more-than thirty-fold increase in the number of vape shops in the UK during the past five years – from less than 100 in 2013 to 2,850 in 2018.

The research, carried out by the Centre for Economic and Business Research on-behalf of Philip Morris Limited, found that the rapid spread of vape shops across the country has coincided with significant falls in the prevalence of smoking, with some of the largest declines in smoking rates during the past five years being observed in regions with a particularly prominent vaping sector.

On a wider front, vape shops are becoming a significant presence on the high street while other stores, particularly those of grocers, newsagents and electrical goods retailers, are in sharp decline. Forty percent of vape shops were found to be trading from premises that were previously vacant, and vape shop owners are estimated now to employ close to 6,000 people directly in-store.

A PM press note announcing the research findings said that UK sales of vape products had reached £1 billion in 2017 and that this was expected to reach £2 billion by 2020, according to Euromonitor International.

The research found that the North West was the UK’s number one vaping hotspot with 456 vape shops – one for every 2,019 adult smokers in the region. The region had experienced also one of the biggest declines in smoking prevalence, with the adult smoking rate falling by four percent between 2013 and 2017.

“This research clearly shows the huge contribution vape shops are making in helping smokers switch away from cigarettes,” Mark MacGregor, PMI UK corporate affairs director, was quoted as saying. “According to ASH, 50 percent of all smokers do not realise that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful than smoking. Vape shops have an incredibly important role to play in raising awareness of the various alternatives to smoking, including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco.”

Malaysia’s Minister of Health, Dzulkefly Ahmad, has been asked whether he has been reading the evidence about electronic cigarettes coming out of the UK.

This question was raised in an opinion piece in the Malay Mail by Sarah Zailana Hamid, who made the point that while nobody was saying that e-cigarettes were absolutely safe, what was being said was that they were less harmful than were combustible cigarettes.

She said she hoped that Malaysia would move towards a similar stance as that recommended in a report published on Friday by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Such a stance would allow for the usage of e-cigarettes while conducting annual reviews to determine the long-term effects with a publicly funded health committee providing oversight.

‘Because if our government insists on waiting until those long-term effects are visible, we will be looking at no alternative to smoking and thus, letting the Malaysian smoking population continue to miss the opportunity for a less harmful choice,’ she said.

‘The report also pointed out the stigma over vaping, and how the second-hand vapor had “negligible health risks”. Thus, the media should bear some responsibility for demonising the vaping community in the past which led to the overreaction from our authorities and the general public.

‘Truth be told, there is a need for an independent study of Malaysians on e-cigarettes and such devices, a monitoring of their long-term health effects, while the government allows these products to be promoted as an alternative to traditional cigarettes for people trying to quit smoking.

‘I do hope that Dzulkefly manages to push through such a change so that we can truly move forward towards a healthier Malaysia with the principle of harm reduction rather than an outright ban.’

A new report exploring General Practitioners’ prescribing practices for quitting services and treatment in the UK has revealed that 75 percent fewer ‘stop smoking’ aids were dispensed in 2016-17 than in 2005-6, according to a story on Practice Business.

The report, published by the British Lung Foundation, was said to have reflected on the impact this decline is likely to have on patients and healthcare provisions in the long-term.

In taking a closer look at ‘what GP practices can do to push forward in the fight against smoking and to support cessation’, Practice Business looked in part at the question of vaping, under the heading: To vape or not to vape; advice on e-cigarettes.

For people who smoked and who were using, or were interested in using, a nicotine-containing e-cigarette on general sale to quit smoking, Practice Business quoted NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] guidelines.

These guidelines apparently say that though these products are not licensed medicines, they are regulated by the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016; and that many people have found them helpful to quit smoking cigarettes.

‘People using e-cigarettes should stop smoking tobacco completely, because any smoking is harmful,’ the guidelines say.

‘The evidence suggests that e-cigarettes are substantially less harmful to health than smoking but are not risk-free; the evidence in this area is still developing, including evidence on the long-term health impact.’

British American Tobacco has welcomed a report by the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on electronic cigarettes.

The report, which was published on Friday, said in part that e-cigarettes were too often being overlooked as a stop-smoking tool by the National Health Service. 

“We warmly welcome the committee’s report into e-cigarettes which offers an accurate and pragmatic snapshot of the current state of play of the e-cigarette market,” a BAT spokesperson was quoted as saying in a note posted on the company’s website.

“E-cigarettes have already helped 1.2 million smokers in UK move away from tobacco products. The Committee’s recommendations set out a useful road map for the Government to continue its progressive regulatory approach to the category which will help more smokers, who would otherwise not quit, make the switch from traditional tobacco products.

“While recognising the significant risk reduction potential of e-cigarettes, the Committee also addresses a number of challenges to realising their potential. Adopting an evidence-based approach to amending the e-cigarette product format restrictions, taxation and where they can be used will also help remove the hurdles currently facing smokers who may be looking to switch to e-cigarettes.

“At the heart of everything is the ability to communicate [,] so amending the marketing restrictions currently imposed on the e-cigarette category would allow us to correct misinformation regarding the potential reduced risk of e-cigarettes versus smoking and to communicate the availability of these product[s] to smokers.

“The report highlights that e-cigarettes should be embraced as part of tobacco cessation programs. We hope local councils and health bodies will feel confident to include e-cigarettes in their local cessation programs and that they will feel comfortable consulting with responsible industry players for the roll out of these products.

“As part of our commitment to transform the tobacco industry, we remain committed to working with local councils and public health bodies and offering smokers an ever-increasing range of high quality, innovative alternative, potentially reduced risk, products.”

The Philippines House of Representatives is urging that vaping be included in the country’s tobacco control strategy, according to a story by Jim McDonald at vaping360.com.

The legislative body has issued a resolution asking the health department to promote tobacco harm reduction.

The resolution, authored by Representatives Anthony Bravo and Jose Tejada, references the experience in the UK, where public health authorities have promoted vaping as a safer alternative for cigarette smokers.

McDonald said that, according to the Manila Standard, the lawmakers specifically cited the landmark reports from Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians.

He added that a resolution did not amount to a law and wasn’t binding on the regulators. It was a recommendation by the legislature that the department of health regulate vapes without banning them.

The Vapers Philippines president Peter Paul Dator reportedly told the Standard that his organization thanked the legislators for keeping an open mind to the growing body of scientific evidence supporting e-cigarettes as a significantly less harmful alternative to conventional cigarettes. “We urge the [Department of Health] to do the same and help save lives,” he added.