Vape Forward, producer of the Cync compact vaporizer, has selected Greenville, North Carolina, USA-based Purilum as its long-term, preferred partner for filling its Cync pods. Cync is a closed system that utilizes the concept of sealed cartridges, called “refill pods,” which are pre-filled to 1.5 or 2.5 ml with e-liquid made by a number of premier e-liquid makers.
“Purilum is proud to be selected as a long-term filling partner for Cync pods,” said Anthony Dillon, Purilum board member. “The Cync device is recognized for delivering a consistent and excellent product for consumers, which directly aligns with Purilum’s commitment to stand at the forefront of quality and taste. We are excited to work closely with Vape Forward as we embrace the future of flavor.”
Purilum will fill the Cync pods from its state-of-the-art facility, which includes multiple ISO 8 class 100,000 clean room environments, segregated nicotine and non-nicotine mixing rooms, and fully-automated bottle and cartomizer/clearomizer filling and assembly.
“As we continue to grow and expand the Cync product, it is essential that we have partners who help us maintain the same quality and experience that our customers have come to expect,” said Charlie Kauss, CEO of Vape Forward. “Purilum is well-known for setting the standard of excellence in the e-liquid and e-cigarette industries, and therefore is an excellent partner to fill our Cync pods. We look forward to a strong partnership with them for many years to come.”
The EU Commission has said that it will continue to monitor developments relating to the use of electronic cigarettes and submit a report in 2021 as it is required to do under the Tobacco Productions Directive.
This was part of an answer given to a question raised by the French MEP Joëlle Mélin on the future of electronic cigarettes.
In a preamble to her question, Mélin said in part that though electronic cigarettes and e-liquids did not contain any tobacco, these devices and the products associated with them were included in the directive.
‘Placing electronic cigarettes — which do not burn or contain tobacco — in the same category as traditional cigarettes only dissuades smokers from turning to less harmful alternatives, which could amount to a direct contradiction of the Commission’s stated objective of public health protection,’ she said.
‘Given, then, that Commission studies (COM (2016) 269) have shown that “vaping” is not dangerous, that more than 21 percent of users have managed to cut down on their tobacco consumption, and 14 percent have given up tobacco altogether (2016 Eurobarometer survey), does the Commission intend to review the inclusion of electronic cigarettes in the Tobacco Directive,” she asked.
In its reply, the Commission said that, taking into account the characteristics, and in particular the nicotine content of e-cigarettes, it was deemed appropriate to consider them as tobacco-related products and to include them in the scope of the directive.
‘Given the lack of conclusive evidence relating to the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes, their use patterns and potential to facilitate smoking cessation, Article 20 of the directive adopts a precautionary approach to their regulation which places an emphasis on safety, quality and consumer protection,’ the commission said.
‘The rules for e-cigarettes nevertheless allow these products to remain widely available to consumers.
‘The Commission report COM (2016) 2692 does not conclude that vaping is risk free; it points to a number of potential risks to public health relating to the use of e-cigarettes whilst highlighting the need for further research.
‘The Commission has no immediate plans to review the regulation of e-cigarettes within Directive 2014/40/EU, the provisions of which began to be applied on 20 May 2016.
‘It will continue to monitor developments relating to the use of these products and will submit a report in 2021 as required under Article 28(1) of the Directive.’
Next year could mark a breakthrough for the Australian electronic cigarette market, with the regulator due to review a proposal that electronic cigarettes could be allowed subject to a maximum nicotine concentration, according to a story by David Palacios on ecigintelligence.com.
At present, all nicotine-containing products for therapeutic use must be approved as ‘registered’ medicines in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods before they can be marketed, but to date, no such approval has been granted.
But, Palacios said, a new proposal put to the Therapeutic Goods Administration by the New Nicotine Alliance Australia (NNAA), an independent consumer association, sought to make nicotine e-liquids legal from mid-2017 provided they did not exceed a maximum nicotine concentration.
‘Though each state and territory sets its own regulations, e-cig products containing nicotine are effectively prohibited across Australia, as nicotine is classed as a poison,’ he said.
‘The NNAA application suggests an exemption to this law for nicotine concentrations of 3.6 percent or less for e-cig systems.’
Palacios said that a decision was expected by March 2017 and possible implementation by June 2017.
Electronic cigarettes can be as effective as conventional cigarettes at delivering nicotine, especially when used by experienced vapers, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Health Behavior(https://doi.org/10.5993/AJHB.41.1.2).
The study was carried out as a collaboration between British American Tobacco and U.S.-based Los Angeles Clinical Trials (LACT).
Dr. Ian Fearon, head of clinical research at BAT said that the results of the study had shown that newer-generation electronic cigarettes were more effective than were first-generation devices at delivering nicotine. But smokers needed to be able to adapt their behavior in order to use them to best effect, at least with currently available products.
“Being as effective as cigarettes at delivering nicotine was important,” said Dr. Mitch Nides, president of LACT and a veteran researcher in smoking cessation. This was because it could be a factor in determining whether smokers were likely to continue to use electronic cigarettes in place of regular cigarettes.
In the study, scientists examined changes in blood nicotine from volunteers who used both cigarettes and electronic cigarettes and the results revealed that nicotine delivery from electronic cigarettes differed, according to the type of electronic cigarette used, who used them and how.
“Our results demonstrate that e-cigarettes are effective at delivering nicotine during brief use periods and new-generation devices are even better at it,” said Fearon. “However, elevation of blood nicotine levels during e-cigarette use was greater in experienced vapers compared to e-cigarette naïve smokers and under more real-world conditions, i.e. when the volunteer controlled how they used them.”
Participants in the first study were cigarette smokers who were familiar with but not current users of e-cigarettes,’ said a BAT press note. “They first smoked a typical cigarette for five minutes by taking a single puff every 30 seconds. After a 15-minute break, they smoked cigarettes freely for an hour. At specific time points during both smoking periods, blood samples were taken and participants were asked to rate how much they would like a cigarette. After two days, the procedure was repeated but with a Vype vPro ePen e-cigarette (a closed modular system).
“For these inexperienced (in e-cigarettes) smokers, e-cigarettes delivered less nicotine than [did] conventional cigarettes. During the five-minute defined puffing period, mean peak nicotine concentration from the e-cigarette was significantly lower [at 2.5ng/ml] than for a regular cigarette [13.4ng/ml], although the time to reach it was similar.
“During the free period, mean nicotine concentration reached using the e-cigarettes was higher at 5.9ng/ml, but still not as high as with cigarettes (14.9ng/ml). Both the cigarette and the e-cigarette reduced the urge to smoke.
“Participants in the second study were current vapers who occasionally smoked cigarettes. To start with, they smoked a single cigarette freely for five minutes; blood samples were taken at specific time points before, during and after. The participants were then given Nicolite (an old-style cig-a-like, non-rechargeable first-generation e-cigarette) to familiarize themselves with and, after two days, the procedure was repeated but with a second-generation e-cigarette, a Vype vPro ePen. After two days, the procedure was again repeated.
“For the vapers, mean peak blood nicotine concentration for the Vype e-cigarette was 7.8ng/ml compared to 7.2ng/ml for cigarettes. For Nicolites, mean peak blood nicotine concentration was 4.7ng/ml.
“These results demonstrate that the e-cigarettes, especially the newer models, can effectively deliver nicotine to experienced users. The results also suggest that the experience of study volunteers needs to be considered when planning and executing these kinds of studies to ensure the reliability of results.”
The Philippines’ delegation to the recent Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the World Health Organization’ Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has come under fire because of its composition and because of at least one of the decisions it took, according to a piece in the Philippine Star.
Writing in the Star, Mary Ann LL. Reyes, asked why a public official, whose office had nothing to do with health, had been the head a Philippine delegation to an international conference that dealt with public health issues?
The Philippines is one of 180 parties to the FCTC; so it sent an official delegation to attend the seventh meeting of the CoP that was held in India on November 7-12.
The CoP, which is the governing body of the FCTC, regularly reviews the implementation of the convention and makes the decisions necessary to promote its effective implementation.
The Philippine delegation was headed by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) chair Alicia dela Rosa-Bala.
In her piece, Reyes said that Bala had been educated in social studies and had extensive experience in social work, having been undersecretary of the Social Welfare and Development department, but she questioned whether this equipped her to support an outright ban on electronic cigarettes or vape devices on behalf of the Philippines.
Reyes pointed out that two local electronic cigarette consumer groups had criticized Bala for supporting a proposal presented at CoP7 that would allow an outright ban of electronic cigarettes or vape devices in the Philippines without prior consultation with the local vaping community.
Vapers Philippines spokesperson Mark Erana said that, according to fellow vapers in Europe, Bala, as head of the Philippine delegation, had supported a proposal that would allow an outright ban of electronic cigarettes without consulting the Philippine vaping community.
Reyes said that she was not saying whether the WHO position was correct or incorrect. ‘We just want Bala to do her job, and the taxpayers are paying her to take care of the civil service and civil servants, nothing else,’ she wrote.
As electronic cigarettes and other nicotine-vapor products grow in popularity, US state and local jurisdictions that rely extensively on revenues from cigarette taxes face new challenges in determining which policies best promote public health, a new R Street Institute policy study has found.
R Street describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan public policy research organization whose mission is to promote free markets and limited, effective government. In a press note, the study’s authors, state programs director Cameron Smith and research associate Dan Semelsberger, said they had examined the tax and regulatory environments for electronic cigarettes and nicotine-vapor products across 52 major US cities, evaluating the degree to which each promoted a harm-reduction approach to tobacco. ‘Our first Vapescore analysis reveals a rapidly developing policy area rife with misinformation and heavily motivated by a political desire to replace declining cigarette revenues,’ Smith and Semelsberger wrote.
‘We anticipate our scoring to change significantly in future iterations of Vapescore, as more state and local governments actively develop policies for emerging alternatives to cigarettes.
‘We likely will need to address novel products, such as so-called “heat-not-burn” offerings, as they become available in the United States.’ The report is said to focus specifically on currently available vapor products that most nearly replicate the smoking experience, but without the harmful tar and other chemicals that cause cancer and a host of other smoking-related diseases. ‘As vapor products and other less harmful alternatives to cigarettes gain a proportionally larger share of the marketplace, policymakers must carefully ensure that the quest for tax revenues doesn’t undermine the laudable goal of improving public health,’ the authors said.
‘Rather than arbitrarily and unscientifically drawing the conclusion that cigarettes and vapor products are equivalent, public officials should consider policies treat vapor products proportionally to their health impacts.’ The full report, including sources and methodology, is available here: http://www.vapescore.org/
A class action failure-to-warn lawsuit against electronic cigarette companies was thrown out by the Central District Court of California last week, according to a story on natlawreview.com.
The suit, filed by plaintiffs from California, Illinois, and New York, included claims that the accused companies, including Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Reynolds American Inc., which bought Lorillard in 2014, deceptively advertised the health benefits of electronic cigarette products over traditional cigarettes.
The judge ruled federal law superseded state regulations citing the US Food and Drug Administration’s rule making electronic cigarettes subject to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Under Federal law tobacco products only need to carry a warning regarding the addictive properties of nicotine and states cannot mandate stricter labeling requirements.
The Review said that the only claim that appeared to have survived was an unfair competition claim that the companies neglected to warn consumers of the dangers of toxic chemicals in the products.
If complying with new vape-product regulations is not to become a competitive disadvantage in the UK, those regulations need to be enforced from day one, according to the Independent British Vape Trade Association (IBVTA).
The IBVTA said that from today only vape products (electronic cigarettes and e-liquids) that complied with all the requirements of the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) could be manufactured or imported to the UK.
“Producers (i.e. anyone who imports, manufactures, or re-brands a product) cannot sell any remaining stocks of non-compliant products after 21st November 2016, unless those products have been notified by 21st November 2016,” it stated in a press note. “Retailers that do not engage in importation or manufacture may continue to sell non-compliant products up until the 19th May 2017 provided the product was sourced from a UK manufacturer and was in stock prior to the 21st November or has been notified as non-compliant by the producer.”
The IBVTA said that while its members had worked hard and spent a significant sum of money to meet this deadline, some companies had been entirely, and often willfully, ignorant of, and unprepared for, their responsibilities under the new regulations.
“IBVTA members have collectively spent millions of pounds to comply with these regulations, and to meet deadlines set back in 2014,” said Fraser Cropper, chairman of the IBVTA. “If these regulations are not enforced and policed from the 22nd November, this expenditure will in effect be money down the drain.
“That ‘doing the right thing’ could become a disincentive, as well as a competitive disadvantage, would be an outrageous affront to those that have willingly worked with regulators and made significant commercial investment to help make a difficult, ill-conceived, and counterproductive piece of legislation vaguely palatable.”
Meanwhile, Nigel Quine, deputy chairman of the IBVTA said the association applauded the constructive attitude taken by the Department of Health and the MHRA [the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency] with regard to the implementation of the regulations.
“However, if the responsible industry is to retain confidence in the TRPR going forward, then deadlines need to be met and enforced, not just for the sake of the responsible industry, but also for consumer safety and confidence,” he said.
Early Tuesday afternoon the rumors started. The U.S. FDA was changing the deeming date. While being true in a sense, it wasn’t quite what was expected. Today’s announcement will be almost meaningless to the vapor industry.
Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, has said that the FDA considered a number of factors in developing the rule and “believes our approach is reasonable and balanced.”
The FDA will publish a rule change today, Sept. 16, that will address how it “refuses to accept” premarket tobacco applications (PMTA).
The rule change does matter to many, though. Changing its direct final rule regarding procedures for refusing to accept PMTA will undoubtedly give those (mostly tobacco) companies much-needed time to comply with an onerous regulation that isn’t far off for the vapor industry.
This change does give hope, however, that the FDA is susceptible to public outcry, according to many vapor industry experts.
A new trade body for the UK vaping industry has condemned the World Health Organization’s stance on vaping regulation as part of its plans for tobacco control.
The biennial gathering of the Conference of the Parties (CoP7) to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, described by one British MP as a “waste of money”, met in India last week to discuss international strategies for tobacco harm reduction.
‘The COP7 conference’s core mission is to combat tobacco use and promote public health, but this secretive gathering has also begun spreading its influence into the area of vaping – an area for which it has no mandate,’ the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), said in a press note.
‘Despite many governments, such as the UK’s, seeing vaping as a powerful tool for smoking cessation and harm reduction, the WHO has said that prohibition of vaping products is a viable option in tobacco reduction strategies.’
The UKVIA said it was dismayed by the tone this set for public health officials who were currently reviewing their own approach to vaping.
“The WHO’s position on vaping is entirely counterproductive,” said Brett Horth, a UKVIA board member and CEO of Guildford-based Vapouriz. “How can we be in a position where respected health agencies, like our own Public Health England, are saying that vaping is up to 95 percent safer than tobacco use but at the same time announce an extra £15 million funding for an international organization like the WHO which says it’s acceptable to ban it?
“If a complete ban was ever brought in, preventing people from using vaping as a highly beneficial route towards smoking cessation, it’s no exaggeration to say it could cost lives in the long term.”
Public Health England, Action on Smoking and Health and Cancer Research UK have all recently acknowledged that vaping could play a significant part in reducing tobacco use, and ultimately save lives.
“The UK has so far taken a very enlightened approach to vaping technologies and their potential for tobacco harm reduction,” said John Dunne, a UKVIA board member and MD of Nicopure Labs. “In fact many Stop Smoking Services across the country have started using them as part of their offer to smokers trying to quit. What message does this send to them?
“The tone the WHO are setting by leaving the door open to prohibition could be a public health disaster that would cost lives, and a real missed opportunity for those trying to break the link with tobacco. We urge the UK government to take a stand against this decision.”
Public Health Minister, Nicola Blackwood, was quoted as saying during a recent Westminster debate that it was notable that one of the most significant disruptions to smoking in recent years had had nothing to do with government intervention. “We have seen considerable take-up of e-cigarettes in the UK, and we know that almost half of the 2.8 million current users are no longer smoking tobacco,” she said.
The UKVIA says it was formed in September 2016 as a partnership of the leading producers, distributors and vendors of vaping products. UKVIA had been established to support all parts of the vape industry, and aimed to represent all responsible and ethical vaping businesses in the UK, irrespective of the size of their companies and operations.
UKVIA is made up of 13 founding members, with varying shares of the vaping market both in terms of production and retail. All members have equal voting rights in the future direction of the association, and share the costs of running the association equally.
The founding members are: Vape Club; Vapouriz; Madvapes; British American Tobacco; E cig Wizard; Gamucci, Fontem Ventures (Imperial Brands); Nicopure; Japan Tobacco International; Multicig; Nerudia; Philip Morris International; Vaporized.
