Category: News This Week

  • Nerudia and Broughton partner

    Nerudia and Broughton partner

    Nerudia and Broughton Laboratories are partnering to support customers in complying with the requirements of the European Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which comes into effect on May 20.

    The partnership brings together the strengths and expertise of the two companies and will bring cost benefits to customers through economies of scale and knowledge, along with the convenience of having a single point of contact between the two businesses.

    “The analytical capabilities and expertise of Broughton Laboratories are a perfect fit with Nerudia’s regulatory knowledge and our own services,” says Peter Beckett, Nerudia’s head of compliance.

    “Our partnership will bring cost-effective and accessible services to the entire market, from the smaller firms up to larger organisations, as we believe that the cost of TPD should not be prohibitive to anyone.”

    “The partnership of Nerudia and Broughton Laboratories means that clients will receive a premium level of service for both regulatory support and emissions testing studies for EU TPD compliance,” says Chris Allen, managing director of Broughton Laboratories.

    “Combining our experience and expertise of working within global regulated industries enables us to offer clients a pragmatic and scientifically-sound approach to complying with the EU TPD regulations.

    “Alongside Nerudia Compliance we will continue to work closely with the MHRA and other EU Member States to develop, establish and promote international quality standards for the electronic cigarette industry. We believe this will help our clients achieve success.”

    To mark the partnership, the companies will offer of 10 percent discount on all analytical and regulatory services booked during March.

    For further information please contact compliance@nerudia.com

  • Vapers urged to vote UK out of EU

    Vapers urged to vote UK out of EU

    One of the problems facing those hoping to convince the UK public to vote to remain within the EU is that many people are concentrating on what might be described as peripheral issues.

    Some are concerned that the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being negotiated between the EU and the US will allow corporations to make money out of the much-loved but under-pressure National Health Service – to take taxpayers’ money while possibly avoiding paying tax themselves.

    And their fears are being inflamed by the secretive nature of the negotiations and, especially, by the Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions of the TTIP, which seem unaccountable and therefore undemocratic.

    And according to a Daily Caller story relayed by the TMA, a new campaign group called Vapers for Britain (VfB) is urging British electronic cigarette users to vote in the June 23 referendum to leave the EU.

    VfB is urging an out vote so as to avoid the ‘damaging impact’ of the revised EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which will take effect on May 20 and require electronic cigarette businesses to spend ‘a fortune on filling in tens of thousands of meaningless forms … and changing [e-liquid] bottle sizes down to fiddly 10 ml’.

    The UK government has apparently said that domestic electronic cigarette companies will have to spend £1.3 million to comply with the revised TPD, while the electronic cigarette industry has said the new regulations could mean its spending £988 million.

    ‘The Prime Minister told the House of Commons in December that vaping had got one million people to quit [smoking],’ the VfB was quoted as saying. ‘Yet despite this stunning public health achievement, we are heading to the TPD Disaster starting on Black Friday.’

    Clive Bates of The Counterfactual was quoted in the story as saying that the revised EU TPD governing electronic cigarette regulation was a ‘catalogue of poorly designed, disproportionate and discriminatory measures that will achieve nothing useful but do a great deal of harm’.

    One problem for those wanting the UK to remain within the EU is that anti-TTIP campaigners and vapers form well-connected, vocal groups of people who are likely to turn out to vote.

  • Webinar on cannabidiol regulations

    Webinar on cannabidiol regulations

    Keller and Heckman Partners Azim Chowdhury and Christopher Van Gundy will host a webinar about the regulations surrounding cannabidiol on (CBD) March 14, 2016, 2-3 p.m. Eastern Time.

    Vaping continues to boom as a viable delivery mechanism for CBD. However, misconceptions persist concerning the legal status of CBD and the current regulatory framework.

    This webinar is aimed at manufacturers and suppliers of e-cigarettes, e-liquids and CBD products in the United States. It will address:

    • Current legal status of CBD in the United States
    • Background on the Food and Drug Administration regulation of e-vapor and CBD products; and
    • Problems and pitfalls that producers and suppliers of CBD products should be aware of.

    Click here to register.

     

  • Relief over Swedish ruling

    Relief over Swedish ruling

    Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court this week issued a ruling preventing the Swedish Medical Products Agency (SMPA) from asserting full control over electronic cigarettes in the country, according to a story by the tobacco policy commentator Atakan Befrits.

    Befrits had warned earlier there was a danger that classifying these devices as pharmaceutical products and placing them under the SMPA would lead to a de facto ban on e-liquids and electronic cigarettes containing and delivering nicotine.

    According to Befrits, the prohibitive costs of the SMPA regulatory process necessary to register electronic cigarettes on a small market such as Sweden would have resulted in a de facto ban for the foreseeable future.

  • Petition to distinguish vapor

    Petition to distinguish vapor

    More than 11,000 people have signed petition urging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to change the social networking service’s definition of a tobacco product so that it does not include vaping products, reports The Daily Caller.

    Many commenters object to Facebook’s reasoning that vaping products contain nicotine and therefore should be categorized as tobacco products, pointing out that cauliflower and eggplant also contain nicotine, while a wide array of e-cigarettes and vaporizers do not.

    The petition was started by Kevin Price of Littleton, Colorado, USA.

  • ONS Study: most vape to quit smoking

    bridge-smallOver half of people who used e-cigarettes said their main reason was as an aid to quitting smoking tobacco, according to a 2015 survey on e-cigarette use published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

    After the 53 percent who said their main reason was to help quitting, the next most popular reason at 22 percent was because they were felt to be less harmful than cigarettes, with another 9 percent each citing cheapness and the ability to vape indoors.

    The survey estimated that there were 2.2 million current e-cigarette users in Great Britain – some 4 percent of the adult population. Among current e-cigarette users, 59 percent said they also used ordinary cigarettes. Two-thirds – 67 percent – of current vapers said that they did so every day, and another 19 percent at least once a week. Of people who had been e-cigarette users but were no longer, 74 percent were now smoking ordinary cigarettes. Fewer than 3 percent of e-cigarette users had not previously been cigarette smokers.

    Figures on cigarette smoking show that, in 2014, 19 percent of adults smoked. The figure for men – 20 percent – was the lowest on record, while the 17 percent of women who smoked was unchanged on 2013. Average consumption among smokers was 11.4 cigarettes a day, down from a peak of 16.8 in 1976. Just over one in 10 babies were born to women who smoked. Among women smokers, 63 percent smoked exclusively packeted cigarettes and 28 percent only roll-ups, compared with 50 percent of men smoking only packeted cigarettes and 39 percent only roll-ups.

    Commenting on these figures, senior ONS statistician Jamie Jenkins said: “These figures continue a long-term trend for fewer people to smoke cigarettes – only 19 percent of adults today compared with 46 percent when our survey began in 1976. While the majority of people are using e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking it seems they don’t work for everyone, as three-quarters of former vapers are still smoking cigarettes.

  • Sweanor: Anti-vapor lobby just like ‘abstinence only’

    One of the world’s leading tobacco control experts is speaking out against an overzealous public health movement more concerned with fighting big companies than improving people’s health.David Sweanor

    “We had this fundamental problem that you had people that had taken an absolutist position- this is all about right and wrong, and they were more like the abstinence-only people on sex education, or on drugs or alcohol,” says expert David Sweanor in an article in the Daily Caller. “They saw any alternative product as a problem because it might potentially allow a cigarette company to morph into something else, and it’s a battle against these companies they couldn’t allow that to happen.”

    Sweanor has spent more than 30 years fighting tobacco. He is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa and special lecturer with the division of epidemiology and public health at the University of Nottingham.

     “I got involved, I believe, as the first lawyer in the world to work full-time on public advocacy issues through cigarette smoking,” said Sweanor.
  • Guide to navigating ‘tricky’ laws

    Guide to navigating ‘tricky’ laws

    Tasker Payment Gateways has developed an info page to help e-cigarette retailers, distributors and online vendors understand some of the complexities involved with selling e-cigarettes, especially online.

    According to Tasker Payment Gateways, regulations on both physical retailers and internet sales in the U.S. can be unclear. As the online guide explains, “most state laws regarding e-cigarettes pertain to physical retailers and distributors. But some states are starting to directly regulate the online sale of e-cigarettes in order to close the loopholes some feel minors use to purchase vapor products.”

    Many states have declared e-cigarettes as tobacco products, while other states classify them as a separate product that is exempt from tobacco-related restrictions.

    This can make understanding state laws very tricky.

    “The best rule of thumb is to know the tobacco laws for each state and abide by them, except in cases where alternative laws regulating e-commerce exist,” the guide advises. “If in any doubt, consult an attorney familiar with your business model and the states in question.”

  • Op-ed: U.S. FDA wrong on vapor

    The health of America’s 42 million smokers, whose lives will be cut short an average of 10 years by their continued use of combusted cigarettes, is being held hostage by government inaction.

    Public-health officials agree that e-cigarettes have a role in reducing the burden of illness; while e-cigarettes are not safe, they are a much less harmful way of delivering the nicotine to which smokers are dependent,states an opinionE-cigarette color collection published by rstreet.org. They can help smokers quit — even, sometimes, smokers who didn’t take them up with that intention. Failing that, they reduce the harm of continued nicotine consumption.

    Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control know this, yet have done precious little to address the new technology — either to encourage smokers to switch, or even to regulate e-cigarettes in a serious and reasonable manner. They have been preoccupied by their war on nicotine, regardless of the source.

    Television ad campaigns against smoking are a prime example of how federal agencies approach the subject. While these advertisements are effective, especially with young people, they leave millions who could be helped to quit smoking untreated.

    These agencies express concern that positive messages about e-cigarettes could encourage young people to try them. This is a reasonable worry. But although some young people have taken up e-cigarettes in recent years, this is largely due to an absence of regulation — while some states have banned sales to minors, many have not yet formally taken action.

    Better regulations could address this concern, but that does not seem to be a priority for policymakers. The government has spent the last five years, for example, developing protocols to evaluate and regulate the safety of e-cigarettes. The draft guidelines are so onerous that it would take several years and millions of dollars for any e-cigarette product to be approved. And after many years of reports of children being poisoned after accessing their parents’ nicotine, it was only this year that Congress passed legislation requiring that e-cigarettes and the devices used to refill them be made childproof.

    Fortunately, smokers who want to reduce their risk of tobacco-related disease are not waiting. Reuters reports that 10 percent of adults now use electronic cigarettes. One prominent health activist has attributed the recent decline in cigarette smoking, which has reached a new low of 15.3 percent, to this increased use of e-cigarettes. Two recent surveys of physicians find that half report their smoking patients ask about e-cigarettes; one in three doctors recommend them for harm reduction or cessation.

  • Vapor sales surging in UK

    Just last year, e-cig use had grown by 24 percent on the previous year, with 2.6 million adults using them in the UK alone, according to an article by smallbusiness.co.uk. Contributing to the sales surge are Public Health England stating that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobaccobridge cigarettes by up to 95 percent and the recently relaxed laws surrounding their use.

    In the UK, the e-cigarette industry has become one of the fastest-growing supermarket products by volume and value, with a 50 percent year on year increase to around 17.3 million units last year as more and more people become aware and interested in the technology. Whether these users are turning to them as a quitting aid to regular tobacco cigarettes or as a healthier alternative is a source of debate but the figures speak for themselves, e-cigarettes are on the up.

    While the online marketplace is at a bursting point, more and more stores are showing up on the high street to cash in on the trend too. But is this rapid growth sustainable?

    The ‘Global E Cigarette & Vaporizer Market – Analysis & Forecast Through 2015 to 2025’ report speculates that the industry will continue to grow globally at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 22 percent from 2015 to 2025, witnessing a monumental growth until 2017 when it is forecast that regulatory and policy framework will be in place across the globe. In this 10-year period it is theorized that the industry will grow by $50 billion – a staggering amount of money.