Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced extensions of 30 days for the following advance notices of proposed rulemaking: “Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Combusted Cigarettes,” “Regulation of Flavors in Tobacco Products,” and “Regulation of Premium Cigars.”
The agency has also extended the comment period for the “Draft Concept Paper: Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products after Implementation of an FDA Product Standard.”
The updated comment period deadlines are:
Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Combusted Cigarettes – July 16, 2018
Regulation of Flavors in Tobacco Products – July 19, 2018
The Japan Tobacco Group has said it will invest $100 million in the production of PLOOM TECH tobacco capsules in Poland, according to a story in The Warsaw Business Journal.
Production is scheduled to take place at a plant at Stary Gostków near Łódź.
The Journal reported that the plant, with an area of 28,000 m2, would be ready to start production at the end of this year.
It said the plant would be the first to produce PLOOM TECH outside Japan.
The factory at Stary Gostków will employ 80 people, which will take the number of JTI Polska employees to more than 1,800.
The company currently produces cigarettes, smoking tobacco, cigars, cigarillos and pipe tobacco.
Philip Morris International yesterday published its latest Scientific Update for Smoke-Free Products, a regular publication on its research efforts to develop and assess a range of smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes.
‘We are focusing this issue on the growing body of independent research on our electrically heated tobacco product (EHTP, marketed as IQOS), the most advanced smoke-free alternative in our portfolio,’ according to a press note posted on the company’s website.
‘The covered research comprises independent, peer-reviewed publications on smoke-free products that focus on EHTP, and also includes four recent government reports from the UK, the US, Germany, and the Netherlands.’
Other sections are said to include an update on the assessment of each product in PMI’s smoke-free portfolio, recent R&D milestones and a compendium of the company’s peer-reviewed publications on its smoke-free products this year.
“We are happy to see growing interest in studying our smoke-free products and that the general trend among independent results is in line with our own research,” said Prof. Manuel Peitsch, PMI’s chief scientific officer.
“Independent research on our electronically heated tobacco product, ETHP, demonstrates significant improvements relative to cigarettes, and is crucial to our efforts to change the lives of millions of smokers around the world.”
PMI said its extensive research and assessment program was inspired by the well-recognized practices of the pharmaceutical industry and in line with the draft guidance of the US Food and Drug Administration for Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) Applications.
San Francisco voters voted yesterday in favor of Proposition E, a citywide ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco products (68 percent/31 percent). The ban includes menthol cigarettes, candy-flavored tobacco products and flavored vaping liquids.
American Vaping Association President Greg Conley said flavored products help smoker’s quit and this decision hinders those efforts. “It is a travesty that anti-vaping extremists would mislead San Francisco voters into making it harder for adult smokers to quit,” he said.
Vapor advocates said banning the flavored products was an overreach that infringed on adult choices. They also stated that the measure harms small businesses like vape shops and convenience stores.
Indonesia is due to impose an excise tax of 57 percent on certain e-liquids from July 1, according to a story by Tabita Diela for Reuters.
The tax is reportedly being imposed as part of efforts to curb tobacco-product consumption.
Sunaryo, an official with the Customs and Excise Office, was quoted as saying the e-liquid excise tax would be introduced as an expansion of the current excise tax rules governing tobacco products.
Tobacco accounts for the bulk of Indonesia’s excise taxes, which comprise a significant source of government revenue.
Sunaryo apparently said the new excise tax would apply only to e-liquids that contained “traces of tobacco plants”.
There are about 300 ‘unsupervised’ e-liquid makers in Indonesia, producing various liquids to supply more than 4,000 vape stores and 900,000 vapers, the customs office estimates.
Japan Tobacco Inc is cutting the prices of its heated tobacco products after a similar move by Philip Morris International, signaling increased competition on Japan’s nascent market for alternative cigarettes, according to a story by Taiga Uranaka and Ritsuko Shimizu for japantoday.com.
Japan, where electronic cigarettes delivering nicotine are effectively banned, has become the main market for heat not burn (HNB) products. The country accounts for more than 90 percent of the $5 billion HNB market, according to Euromonitor.
Tobacco makers initially struggled to keep up with demand as they began limited introductions of HNB products in Japan a few years ago. They have since ramped up production, but investors are now worried about slowing growth in the sector.
JT said was cutting the price of its Ploom TECH device to 3,000 yen from 4,000 yen.
“We are finally prepared and confident that we can reverse our position and go on the offensive,” Chito Sasaki, president of the company’s domestic tobacco business, reportedly told Reuters.
The company, with a 60 percent share of the traditional cigarette market, has been lagging rivals in the HNB category.
The US Food and Drug Administration has been warned that a proposed local ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products, including flavored e-liquids, could undermine the agency’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight tobacco smoking.
Today, voters in San Francisco will vote on whether to approve a Board of Supervisors’ ordinance, Proposition E, that includes a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.
According to a press note from the Consumer Choice Center, proponents of the ban claim the measure is necessary to protect ‘kids’.
“Yet,” according to the Center’s senior fellow Jeff Stier (pictured), “California law already prohibits the sale of all e-cigarettes to anyone under 21. As such, the ordinance would change the legal status of the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults exclusively.”
Stier is calling on the FDA to “speak out about how a local ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults could undermine the FDA’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight smoking, given the role flavors in e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit”.
The press note said that the FDA, which was studying whether to regulate e-cigarette flavors, had already noted the potential life-saving nature of e-cigarette flavors, saying that, ‘certain flavors may help currently addicted adult smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine-containing tobacco products’.
Stier said that “because the San Francisco Ordinance would do nothing to prevent sales to kids, and everything to ban sales to adults who use flavored e-cigarettes to quit smoking, the FDA should alert the public to how the ordinance would undermine federal anti-smoking efforts”.
The imposition of higher excise taxes on tobacco products does not necessarily lower smoking rates, but substituting electronic cigarettes for traditional cigarettes does, according to a story in The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoting the representative of a pro-nicotine alliance.
Nancy Sutthoff, spokesperson for the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organizations, was recently in the Philippines to address the first Summit on Harm Reduction, held at the Sulo Riviera Hotel in Quezon City.
Citing the case of her own country, New Zealand, Sutthoff said the government had increased tobacco excise by 10 percent every six months.
“Our smoking rate has yet to go down,” she said.
Sutthoff, who is also co-founder and co-director of the Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (Avca) in New Zealand, said Avca had launched the Vape It Forward program in 2017 to support smokers who wanted to quit smoking by switching to vaping.
Eighteen months after its launch, the VIF program had delivered an 88-percent success rate.
A proposed ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products in the city of San Francisco, US, has been portrayed as a fight between pro-ban David and anti-ban Goliath, but the allegory doesn’t work because David isn’t the good, little guy he’s made out to be.
In a piece for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Michelle Minton wrote on Friday that ‘big tobacco’ was pouring millions into a campaign to maintain its ability to keep selling harmful products that target children. ‘At least, that’s the narrative most news outlets have sold about Proposition E, a measure on the city’s June 5th ballot, which would ban the sale of flavors, including menthol, for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes,’ she added as clarification.
‘The David and Goliath story is compelling, but don’t be fooled. The other side, comprised of hundreds of anti-tobacco activists, is just – if not more – powerful than big tobacco companies. These groups have an advantage by cloaking their support of Prop E under the guise of “public health” and the support of factions in government and the university system, along with the industries that compete with e-cigarettes (e.g. big pharma). They also have vast financial resources, including taxpayer money, which they can spend without reporting it as “lobbying”.’
Minton goes on to describe the amounts and types of funding behind this lobbying and ‘non-lobbying’.
And she looks at the situation as it is currently, concluding, in part, that ‘kids, it seems, are neither targeted nor very interested in vaping, despite what anti-vaping activists claim’.
‘However, adult smokers increasingly rely on these devices as a safer means of consuming nicotine.
‘While likely not risk-free, recent analyses estimate that vaping has just one percent of the cancer risk that traditional combustible cigarettes carry.
‘And flavor seems to be an essential element in keeping people from returning to cigarettes. As a 2013 study found, the number of flavors a vaper used was independently associated with smoking cessation.’
The introduction to the city council of Chicago, US, of a measure aimed at banning flavored nicotine cartridges used with electronic cigarettes has been condemned by experts at the free-market think tank, The Heartland Institute.
The measure has been put forward by Alderman Ed Burke.
‘Alderman Ed Burke’s proposed ordinance is nothing more than preening for moralizing anti-fun busybodies,’ said Jesse Hathaway, research fellow, budget and tax policy at the institute.
‘Selling e-cigarettes to individuals under the age of 18 is already illegal in Illinois, so the ordinance’s aims are already addressed by existing laws.
‘Prohibiting the sale of flavored vaping products won’t save any lives, but it may stop people currently addicted to cigarettes from switching to less-harmful alternatives or even kicking the nicotine habit.
‘If Burke’s goal is to promote public health, restricting access to flavoring in e-cigarettes advances the ball in the wrong direction.
‘If Burke’s goal is to look like he’s doing something to gain accolades from the puritan anti-e-cig crowd without actually doing anything useful, then this is perfect.’
Meanwhile, Lindsey Stroud, state government relations manager at the institute, said the role of flavors in electronic cigarettes and vaping devices was crucial – and a motivating factor that had enabled thousands of smokers to quit combustible cigarettes, according to 72 percent of the respondents to a 2015 Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives study of 19,000 observations.
‘While attempting to “protect the children,” Alderman Burke ignores the role of tobacco harm reduction (THR) products for adults and is attempting to limit the choices available to help alleviate these individuals from cigarette addiction,’ said Stroud.
‘Rather than placing restrictions on products that have been proven to aid individuals who desire to quit smoking, policy makers should promote the unencumbered use of THR products.’
