Category: Featured

BAT Calls for Higher Cigarette Taxes in Japan

Photo: Colleen Williams
British American Tobacco has surprised some observers by calling for higher cigarette taxes in Japan, reports the Japan Times.
The company has submitted the request in writing to a group of lawmakers ahead of a tax system reform scheduled for 2022.
The unusual move by a tobacco-maker comes as Japan is slated to raise its tobacco tax only for heat-not-burn (HnB) tobacco products in October 2022, which is expected to make some of such products more expensive than cigarettes.
BAT is concerned that this will discourage smokers from switching to HnB products, which the company believes are less harmful to health than combustible cigarettes.
The company is also requesting that the tax on heat-not-burn tobacco be increased at a slower pace than that for cigarettes in the medium to long run.
In 2018, the government decided to increase the cigarette tax by ¥1 per cigarette each in 2018, 2020 and 2021 and the tax on heat-not-burn products in five stages from 2018 to 2022.
According to the Tobacco Institute of Japan (TIOJ), sales of cigarettes in fiscal 2020, which ended last March, dropped 11.8 percent from the previous year to ¥2.47 trillion, due in part to a fall in opportunities to smoke outside home as people stayed at home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Tobacco harm reduction activists attribute the sharp drop in smoking to the rising popularity of HnB products.
The TIOJ’s first survey of HnB products showed sales of ¥1.06 trillion, or more than 40 percent of the country’s cigarette sales.
November 5, 2021
Taipei Moves Closer to Banning E-Cigarettes

Photo: Skye
The Taipei city government has passed a ban on vapor products, reports The Taipei Times. If the Executive ratifies the measure, the city will impose a broad-ranging prohibition on the sale, advertisement, display and commercial transportation of novel tobacco products, including vaping devices and heated tobacco units.
Additionally, vaping and using heated tobacco products is to be banned in a 50-meter zone around schools.
Violators risk fines of between TWD2,000 ($71.76) and TWD10,000.
The city ordinance, which initially targeted only e-cigarettes, was expanded to include heated tobacco products at the suggestion of Taipei City Councilor Wang Hong-wei of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Lauding the council’s decision, Health Promotion Division Director Lin Meng-hui dismissed as false tobacco industry claims promoting novel tobacco products as harm-reduction tools and smoking-cessation aids.
Lin said government testing showed that more than 80 percent of e-cigarettes contain nicotine, and that the devices create dependence on the substance.
The city has not drafted a timetable for implementing the ban.
November 5, 2021
Doctors Reluctant to Prescribe E-Cigarettes

Photo: omphoto
Not all doctors and nurses are enthusiastic about England’s intention to let physicians prescribe e-cigarettes to smokers, reports Daily Mail.
A yet-to-be-published study, involving the University of Oxford, which interviewed 11 medical staff, found most struggled to advise long-term use of e-cigarettes because of concerns about unknown long-term effects.
A survey commissioned by Cancer Research UK two years ago indicates that two in five English nurses and doctors would feel uncomfortable recommending e-cigarettes to smokers and one in six would never do so.
General practitioners “find it difficult handing patients something which may cause them harm, even where e-cigarettes are far safer than cigarettes… They struggle to give people devices which may not be entirely safe or may perpetuate addiction to nicotine,” said Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioral medicine at the University of Oxford, who was involved in both pieces of research.
Martin Marshall of the Royal College of general practitioners urged more investment in community smoking cessation centers. “’Vaping should only be seen as a way to give up smoking, with the intention to then give up vaping,” he said.
Simon Capewell, professor of clinical epidemiology at Liverpool University, called the Department of Health plan for prescription e-cigarettes deeply worrying.
“England is out on a dangerous limb,” he said. “Officials here have fallen for the exaggerated claims of the pro-vaping lobby, and are ignoring the health risks. The main claim, that e-cigarettes are a major aid to quitting, is wrong. If that were true, why would the multinational tobacco corporations be pushing vaping so hard?”
November 2, 2021
Christoph Tepr Joins Poda Holdings

Photo: Andryei Yalanskiy
Tobacco industry veteran Christoph Tepr has joined Poda Holdings as vice president of European sales & international expansion effective Jan. 17, 2022. In the interim, Tepr has joined the company’s global advisory board.
Tepr has more than 15 years of commercial experience with some of the biggest tobacco and e-cigarette companies in the world, including Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, and Juul Labs. His broad management experience spans sales operations, commercial deployment, brand management and professional services—targeting customers in mature and emerging product/service segments. He has helped drive the growth of iconic brands such as L&M, IQOS, and Juul.
At PMI, Tepr held several key sales and management positions and was instrumental in deploying the IQOS product into the Swiss marketplace. At Juul, Tepr was hired to build the Swiss commercial organization from the ground up and, together with his team, took the company to category leadership within 12 months of launch. Subsequently, he successfully restructured the German commercial organization for Juul. Prior to this he held a commercial leadership position with British American Tobacco, focusing on commercializing and growing their Heat-not-Burn and conventional product portfolio.
Tepr holds a MSc in International Business from Maastricht University as well as an executive certificate in Driving Strategic Innovation from IMD Lausanne / MIT Sloan.
“Poda is an agile challenger in the fast-growing heat-not-burn space,” said Tepr in a statement. “With their proprietary technology platform, Poda represents a rare opportunity that has the potential to capture significant market share and ultimately transform and expand application areas within the category—while simultaneously improving the lives of the world’s 1.3 billion adult smokers by offering them a potentially less harmful alternative to conventional cigarettes. Having worked in multinational tobacco companies as well as for the fastest-growing e-cigarette start up in U.S. history, I look forward to using that experience to establish Poda’s European operations, set up a world-class team and make commercial headway into key European markets.”
“I am thrilled that Mr. Tepr has agreed to join the Poda team, both as a member of our global advisory board and, in January 2022, as the vice president of European sales & international expansion for Poda,” said Poda Holding CEO Ryan Selby. “Our goal is to build Poda into a truly global company that can challenge big tobacco head on, and we believe our superior heat-not-burn technology will allow us to do just that.”
November 2, 2021
Tobacco Tax Dropped from U.S. Legislation

Photo: RomanR
Previously proposed tobacco tax increases have been removed from the U.S. Build Back Better Act, a massive piece of legislation conceived to fund Covid-19 relief, boost economic recovery and invest in new infrastructure. The most recent version of the proposed bill, H.R. 5376, makes no mention of the measures.
The dropped proposal would have effectively doubled the federal excise tax on small cigars and cigarettes, and it would have increased the tax on chewing tobacco from a little over $0.50 to $10.70—more than 21 times its current level. It also called for a new tax on vapor products.
The proposed tobacco tax hikes attracted fierce criticism from retailers and tobacco harm reduction advocates, among others.
On Sept. 24., the National Association of Convenience Stores sent a letter warning lawmakers against unintended consequences, such as illegal trade and underage sales.
“When the price of a product rises too much too fast, illicit purveyors will seize the opportunity to exploit and take advantage of current users and entice new users without discriminating based on age,” the letter read. “This undermines the responsible measures our retailers have taken and creates a problem for society as a whole.”
Earlier, the Tax Foundation cautioned that the proposal would make cigarettes—the most harmful tool to consume nicotine—cheaper than other, less-risky tobacco products in many states.
While every U.S. state taxes cigarettes by quantity, a majority tax other tobacco products by price. When states tax tobacco products by price, the tax on the product will “pyramid” since the federal tax is levied at the manufacturer level and the state tax is levied at the distribution level, according to the Tax Foundation.
“In effect, the state tax base includes the federal tax and becomes a tax on a tax,” wrote Ulrik Boesen, senior policy analyst in excise taxes of the Tax Foundation.
While the most recent version of the H.R. 5376 omits tobacco tax hikes, there is no guarantee the measure will not reappear in future renderings of the proposed legislation.
November 1, 2021
Puff Bar CEOs Profiled

Photo: Puff Bar
The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Patrick Beltran and Nick Minas, co-CEOs of Puff Bar, a top-selling disposable e-cigarette brand in the United States.
Puff Bar entered the U.S. market in 2019. At the time, it was owned by Cool Clouds Distribution of California. Cool Clouds sold the Puff Bar to the brand’s Chinese manufacturer, DS Technology Licensing, in early 2020.
In February 2020, to curb youth vaping, the Food and Drug Administration implemented new restrictions excluding sweet and fruit flavors in reusable e-cigarettes such as those offered by Juul Labs. The restrictions did not apply to disposable devices such as Puff Bars.
In the summer of 2020, however, the FDA ordered Puff Bar products off the market. Critics said the brand was replacing Juul as the vape of choice among young people as Juul discontinued certain flavored products. In February 2021 Puff Bar resumed sales with redesigned product containing synthetic nicotine, which remains outside the FDA’s purview.
Minas and Beltran became executives of Puff Bar as CEO and CFO respectively in the spring of 2020, when the brand was taken over by two men and DS Technology as per company filings. The entrepreneurs owned and operated an online e-cigarette retailer called Eliquidstop.
In the Wall Street Journal article, Beltran described the Puff Bar ingredient change as “a forced innovation,” saying that the FDA gave the company no choice.
Puff Bar sales in retail stores tracked by Nielsen totaled $156 million for the year ended Sept. 25, according to Goldman Sachs, although it is unclear how many of those sales are counterfeit products. In a federal survey released in Sept., 26 percent of high-school vaporizers said they used Puff Bars. Among middle-school e-cigarette users, 30 percent reported that their generic brand was Puff Bars.
November 1, 2021
TMA Announces Virtual Annual Conference
TMA will hold a virtual annual conference on Nov. 16-17, TMA 2021: From Chance to Change. As the industry has been challenged in many ways this year, TMA believes it is important to share insights among all stakeholders to equip its audience and members with the understanding and information necessary to successfully navigate the changes that lie ahead. TMA 2021 will feature two half-day interactive virtual sessions with keynotes from regulatory leaders and panel discussions from industry and stakeholder thought leaders that covers everything from Food and Drug Administration policy, marketing denial orders, product authorization pathways (PMTA, SE, MRTP, exemptions) and global trends that may surface in the U.S. and vice-versa.
“For this year’s TMA Annual Conference, we felt it was important to capitalize on the breadth and depth of speakers and expertise that only TMA can bring and condense that into the most important topics for our attendees who have also spent the last 24 months living virtually. We are very proud of our lineup for TMA 2021 and the information that it brings to the people doing the work on the front lines. You simply cannot get this anywhere else but from TMA,” said TMA President and CEO Chris Greer.
The program includes live keynote presentations with Q&As by FDA CTP Director Mitch Zeller and CTP Office of Science Director Matt Holman followed by these panel discussions:
An Applicant’s Perspective: Reflections on Where We Stand – Moderated by Jim Solyst, industry consultant
The Marketplace Perspective: Adjusting to Change – Moderated by Mary Szarmach, Smoker Friendly
Early and Often: Navigating Your Path to Market – Moderated by Jennifer Smith, Altria Client Services
Connecting U.S. and Global Trends – Moderated by Jeannie Cameron, JCIC International Consultants
“2021 was another challenging year for in-person events; following feedback from our members and guests, TMA elected to hold our annual conference virtually and will host our annual meeting and conference in 2022 as an in-person and virtual event,” said Greer.
For this year’s TMA Annual Conference, we felt it was important to capitalize on the breadth and depth of speakers and expertise that only TMA can bring and condense that into the most important topics for our attendees who have also spent the last 24 months living virtually.
Chris Greer, president and CEO, TMA
TMA 2020 | Digital was TMA’s first virtual only event and featured an expansive program of hour-long discussions and keynotes spread over several months. TMA 2021 takes the best of that format along with a super-charged program aimed directly at those most active in the industry and stakeholder community.
Registration will open on or about Nov. 1 and run up through the conference commencement. Registered attendees will have the ability to view content for 30 days following the end of TMA 2021 and TMA members will have access for longer still. Registration is $299 for non-members and $199 for TMA members.
For more information, please see tma.org or send inquiries to tma@tma.org.
October 29, 2021
England Paves Way for E-Cig Prescriptions

Photo: goodmanphoto
Doctors in England may soon be prescribing e-cigarettes to help people stop smoking tobacco, according to a news story published by the Department of Health Social Care and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is publishing updated guidance that paves the way for medicinally licensed e-cigarette products to be prescribed for smoking cessation.
Manufacturers can approach the MHRA to submit their products to go through the same regulatory approvals process as other medicines available on the health service.
This could mean England becomes the first country in the world to prescribe e-cigarettes licensed as a medical product.
If a product receives MHRA approval, clinicians could then decide on a case-by-case basis whether it would be appropriate to prescribe an e-cigarette to NHS patients to help them quit smoking. It remains the case that non-smokers and children are strongly advised against using e-cigarettes.

This country continues to be a global leader on healthcare, whether it’s our Covid-19 vaccine rollout saving lives or our innovative public health measures reducing people’s risk of serious illness.
Sajid Javid, Health and Social Care Secretary
If a product receives MHRA approval, clinicians could then decide on a case-by-case basis whether it would be appropriate to prescribe an e-cigarette to NHS patients to help them quit smoking. It remains the case that non-smokers and children are strongly advised against using e-cigarettes.
E-cigarettes contain nicotine and are not risk free, but expert reviews from the U.K. and U.S. have been clear that the regulated e-cigarettes are less harmful than smoking. A medicinally licensed e-cigarette would have to pass even more rigorous safety checks.
Smoking remains the leading preventable cause of premature death and while rates are at record low levels in the U.K., there are still around 6.1 million smokers in England. There are also stark differences in rates across the country, with smoking rates in Blackpool (23.4 percent) and Kingston upon Hull (22.2 percent) poles apart from rates in wealthier areas such as Richmond upon Thames (8 percent).
E-cigarettes were the most popular aid used by smokers trying to quit in England in 2020, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. E-cigarettes have been shown to be highly effective in supporting those trying to quit, with 27.2 percent of smokers using them compared with 18.2 percent using nicotine replacement therapy products such as patches and gum.
Some of the highest success rates of those trying to quit smoking are among people using an e-cigarette to kick their addiction alongside local Stop Smoking services, with up to 68 percent successfully quitting in 2020 -2021.

We fully welcome the news that the NHS in England is exploring opportunities to prescribe vaping products to help people quit smoking.
Doug Mutter, director, VPZ
“This country continues to be a global leader on healthcare, whether it’s our Covid-19 vaccine rollout saving lives or our innovative public health measures reducing people’s risk of serious illness,” said Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid.
“Opening the door to a licensed e-cigarette prescribed on the NHS has the potential to tackle the stark disparities in smoking rates across the country, helping people stop smoking wherever they live and whatever their background.”
Vapor industry representative welcomed the prospect of e-cigarettes on prescription.
“We fully welcome the news that the NHS in England is exploring opportunities to prescribe vaping products to help people quit smoking,” said Doug Mutter, director of VPZ, the U.K.’s largest vaping retailer with 157 stores throughout the country.
“The pandemic has triggered an increase in smoking rates and the public health problem has been compounded by funding cuts for NHS stop smoking services and local support groups.
“However this progressive and innovative approach being considered by the NHS in England has the potential to reverse this damage and bring new momentum to our ambitions of becoming a smoke free nation by 2030.”

The government deserves huge praise for taking this bold decision to look more closely at the use of vaping when it comes to smoking cessation and for taking an evidence-based, science-led approach.
John Dunne, director-general, UKVIA
“The government deserves huge praise for taking this bold decision to look more closely at the use of vaping when it comes to smoking cessation and for taking an evidence-based, science-led approach rather than the nonsensical anti-vaping, anti-harm reduction stance of some countries,” said John Dunne, Director General of the U.K. Vaping Industry Association.
“This announcement by the Department for Health is just the latest in a long line of breakthroughs for those of us who for years have advocated vaping as the best and most effective method for people looking to quit smoking.”
October 29, 2021
Voopoo Launches Drag Nano2
October 29, 2021
FDA Stays Bidi Vapor MDO Pending Review
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an administrative stay of its marketing denial order (MDO) for nontobacco flavored bidi sticks, pending the agency’s review of Bidi Vapor’s request that the MDO be rescinded based on product-specific scientific evidence in its premarket tobacco product applications (PMTAs).
Bidi Vapor’s flavored Bidi Sticks may remain on the market without the threat of enforcement while the FDA reviews the company’s request.
Bidi Vapor submitted PMTAs for all 11 flavor varieties of its Bidi Stick. The applications ran over 285,000 pages and contained information supporting the products as appropriate for the protection of the public health.
On Sept. 29, 2021, Bidi Vapor filed a Petition for Review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, seeking judicial review of the MDO under the Tobacco Control Act, the Administrative Procedure Act as well as the U.S. Constitution.
“We appreciate FDA’s decision to stay, or put on hold, the MDO as it reconsiders its denial,” said Bidi Vapor Niraj Patel in a statement. “As we explained to the agency, Bidi Vapor submitted scientifically rigorous PMTAs that contained product-specific evidence demonstrating that the added benefit of our flavored Bidi Sticks to adult smokers outweighs any potential risks to youth, especially considering our stringent youth-access prevention measures and commitment to mature, adult-focused marketing.”
“That said, we are still seeking a formal, judicial stay from the appellate court pending the outcome of the lawsuit,” Patel noted.
The company has now filed a Motion for Stay Pending Review with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals citing the “irreparable harm” it continues to suffer from the MDO.
Multiple companies have challenges their MDOs in recent weeks. In early October, the FDA rescinded MDOs it has issued to Turning Point Brands and Fumizer, placing their products back under review.
According to Filter, Triton, Bidi and Gripum recently received some temporary form of stay, and My Vape Order has demanded a recission due to the fact its PMTA includes some of the same data and studies that also appears in TPB’s applications.
October 28, 2021