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A man from Cleveland, Ohio, USA, has filed a lawsuit after suffering second- and third-degree burns following the explosion of an e-cigarette battery in his pants pocket.

“There was a flash, and he was on fire,” said attorney Tom Merriman, who is representing the plaintiff. “He literally drops to the ground, rolls, puts out the fire and realizes this vape battery has exploded.”

The injury was about the size of a volleyball and required extensive treatment by burn specialists at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.

According to the Associated Press, there have been about 200 fires and more than 130 injuries in the U.S. related to e-cigarettes since 2009.

The battery was manufactured by LG Chem of South Korea. The lawsuit also targets a retailer.

Rob Norris has accepted a transfer to Fontem Ventures as general manager of Canada effective Aug. 1. Fontem Ventures is another, produces vapor and other products for the Imperial Brands company.

“Rob has been with Imperial Brands for more than 20 years and has held a variety of increasingly responsible leadership positions,” said Javier Estades, President & CEO of Tabacalera USA.

“Given his tenure here, the move to Canada is an important next step for Rob’s professional career. Rob joined our Altadis USA unit as national sales and trade marketing director in 2011. He’s also led our JR Cigars as CEO and currently serves as the head of Altadis USA.”

Avail Vapor launched Leafana Wellness, its new CBD line. The company launched Leafana branded CBD products at its 99 retail stores in 12 states and offer the complete product line to U.S. distributors. Avail has carried third-party CBD products since February.

“We are excited to launch Leafana Wellness with our CBD product line,” said James Xu, CEO of Avail. “The products have been developed in direct response to needs our customers have shared with us. Leafana Wellness products provide the highest quality natural self-care options for both our vaping and non-vaping customers.”

Leafana Wellness CBD products are designed using U.S. ingredients and flavorings to deliver the highest quality products on the market, acording to a press release. Leafana is available in two product lines- a liquid isolate vaping series and broad spectrum tinctures.

CBD vape liquids include the flavors Fresh Melon, Smooth Custard, Tropical Breeze, and Bramble Berry in 500 mg and 1000 mg strengths. Leafana Wellness CBD tinctures include the flavors Spearmint, Orange Crème, Lemon Curd and Crisp Apple and are available in 500 mg, 1000 mg and 1500 mg strengths.

“We have built a solid foundation for manufacturing quality that our customers have grown to trust,” said Russ Rogers, COO for Avail. “Expanding into the wellness category with CBD is a logical move. We believe our customers will appreciate the many benefits of this new product line while trusting the quality that they know comes with Avail products. We are confident that this move will add an entirely new segment of customers to our business who rely on our products to make their lives better.”

The city of San Francisco on Tuesday voted to impose a blanket ban on e-cigarettes — making it the first American city to outlaw the sale, distribution and manufacturing of vaping products, according to a story on cbsnews.com.

The sweeping restriction also puts San Francisco at odds with one of its most prominent hometown startups, Juul Labs, which last Tuesday said it bought an office building in San Francisco — the same day the city board unanimously backed the e-cigarette ordinance in a preliminary vote. The city’s board of supervisors ratified the e-cig sales ban Tuesday, according to the story.

Juul claims the ordinance will “drive former adult smokers who successfully switched to vapor products back to deadly cigarettes.” It will also “deny the opportunity to switch for current adult smokers, and create a thriving black market instead of addressing the actual causes of underage access and use,” the company said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, according to the story.
The ordinance now awaits mayor London Breed’s signature. It will take effect in six months to give retailers time to remove the product from their shelves, and subject offending retailers to fines and other penalties, including jail time.

The ordinance is aimed exclusively at e-cigarettes, which Supervisor Shamann Walton said endanger San Francisco’s youth. It doesn’t affect the local sale of cigarettes, according to the story.

Walton emphasized that many of the health effects of e-cigarettes remain largely unknown: “Middle school and high school students are becoming addicted to nicotine because of e-cigarettes, so we want to do everything we can to keep e-cigarettes out of the hands of young people until the FDA conducts the appropriate clinical trials and finds out how these should be marketed. We need to make sure we protect young people,” he told CBS MoneyWatch, accoriding to the story

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that a new digital age verification calendar is available as part of the agency’s “This is Our Watch” voluntary retailer education program, which is designed to prevent and reduce sales of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products to minors.

As part of this voluntary program, the digital calendar, which makes it easier to verify a consumer’s age, is being mailed to retailers across the U.S this month and will also be available to order for free to retailers from the Center for Tobacco Products Exchange Lab. Retailers can digitally set the minimum age on the calendar, as appropriate for their location.

While the federal minimum age to purchase tobacco products is 18, in many localities and states, the age is higher. The FDA developed the digital, programmable calendars in response to feedback from retailers and state tobacco control officials for additional resources to educate their staff on how to comply with federal laws and regulations.

The digital calendars will replace the popular paper calendars the FDA initially distributed starting in November 2017 through the “This is Our Watch” program. In addition to the digital calendar, a full toolkit of resources is available to order or download for free including posters, stickers, flyers and more.

When Vape Club was first founded they would hold impromptu team huddle meetings in the car park to discuss the company vision. Vape Club has now announced a major milestone and further expansion.

Now one of the largest vaping retailers in the UK and employing over 60 people, [vapeclub.co.uk] Vape Club is celebrating 1.5 million orders processed, according to a press release.

The success of the company has secured its place as one of the top 350 UK online retailers, according to Internet Retailing UK. They are one of only two dedicated vape retailers to achieve the milestone. The rapid company growth since Vape Club was first founded has led to the creation of two additional companies, Vape Base and All Vape, according to a press release.  

“It’s been an incredible journey for Vape Club over the last 7 years to reach our 1.5 million order milestone. We’ve developed market-leading systems, content and processes [that] set industry standards and in turn help hundreds of thousands of smokers per year make the switch to vaping,” said Vlad Vassiliev, director and founder of Vape Club. “We’ve also been working hard with our shipping partners to extend our same day service dispatch until 6:30 pm and extend our customer support hours to 8am-7pm on weekdays.”

In the first-of-its-kind longitudinal study of lung health among millennials, researchers will be examining the long-term impact of vaping on the lungs, reports Medpage Today.

Scientists from Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, in partnership with the American Lung Association, plan to follow 4,000 healthy adults from the ages of 25 to 35 to gain insights into the causes of chronic respiratory diseases common in later life.

The first six years of the study will be funded by a $24.8 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

One of the goals of the study is to evaluate exposures relevant today as opposed to those that prevailed during the 1970s when prior studies were done, according.

Cigarette smoking among adults in the U.S. was 14 percent in 2017, compared with 33.2 percent in 1980. Vapor products, which are popular among young people today, did not exist at the time of the prior studies.

The study will also look at the impact of early-life air pollution exposures.

Consumers of vaping products and e-cigarettes may want to stock up on supplies this week. On July 1, two new Vermont laws will go into effect: H.57 will tax all e-cigarettes and vaping products 92 percent, and H.26 will restrict their sales over the internet, according to an article on headyvermont.com.

On September 1, S.86 will raise the legal age to buy those products to 21. There will be no grandfather clause for those who are 18-20 and have been purchasing the products legally. The tax and age requirements will include all CBD cartridges and all related paraphernalia, including batteries. Medical-use products sold through dispensaries will not be taxed, according to the article.

Fake refill pods can now be found at convenience stores across the country. The issue has become so pervasive that it has garnered the attention of a US Senator.

According to an article in the NY Post, Sen. Chuck Schumer warned that counterfeit e-cigarettes made with potentially dangerous ingredients are showing up in the United States and he wants the federal government to crack down on the products to prevent an emergency health crisis.

“That is why, amidst an emerging ‘fake’ e-cig flavor pod explosion I am urging the feds to get real focused: crackdown on illegal online sales, implement plans to more vigorously inspect and detect illegal shipments, and altogether remove these faux pods from the U.S. marketplace,” the New York Democrat said during a news conference on Sunday, according to the article.

Schumer is asking the Food and Drug Administration and Customs and Border Protection to ramp up their efforts to “inspect, detect and stop dangerous and unregulated e-cig products – mainly from China – from gaining access to the US marketplace.”

“As is the case with lots of American ingenuity, China is at it again, copying and cashing in on the popularity of e-cigs here in New York and beyond,” Schumer added, according to the article. “But in the case of dangerous e-cig copycat flavors cooked up in some foreign lab, the stakes are too high and concern the public’s health and safety.”

The senator noted that hundreds of fake Juul e-cigs on their way to the New York area were seized recently.

He said the illegal pods are entering the market in two ways – counterfeits posing as Juul products and illegal pods under another name but still compatible with Juul devices.

Juul products, Schumer said, are popular among youths because of their flavored liquids and because they can be easily concealed because they are identical to a USB flash drive, according to the article.

​”​Now, counterfeit or ‘fake’ Juul pods, manufactured predominantly in China, are being imported to the U.S. They’re often made in unregulated facilities and with substandard materials. Ingesting and inhaling these counterfeit products can pose great danger to consumers​,” Schumer said. ​

​A Juul spokesman said in a statement that the company supports the government stepping up its effort to “fight this urgent problem that exacerbates youth access and undermines public health.”

“We share Senator Schumer’s concern and applaud his efforts as we continue to fight counterfeit and compatible knock-off products that are made with unknown ingredients, under unknown quality and manufacturing standards, and are often sold online without adequate age verification​,” it said, according to the article. ​

The UK retailer Argos included the wrong battery with several vaporizer kits, which forced a recall of otherwise safe Innokin and Smok vapor products.

Argos supplied consumers with two Samsung 25r 18650 batteries with its Smok Priv and Mag devices, as well as its Innokin Proton products. The Smok and Innokin devices are safe, however, the batteries supplied by Argos are not approved for use in e-cigarettes.

George Xia, co-founder and vice president of Innokin, said that the distributor in the UK packaged the Proton with replaceable 18650 batteries without Innokin having any idea of what type of battery was bundled with the Proton device.

“Argos made the decision of purchasing with their suppliers and not dealing with Innokin directly. Argos and a local distributor agreed there is nothing wrong with Innokin’s Proton device,” said Xia. “Our devices have been tested many times in independent labs and we sent Argos and the distributor all of our certificates from these tests.”

When Argos first announced the recall consumers were confused and believed the issue was the hardware. Argos later released a statement explaining the battery was the problem and the hardware was otherwise safe.

Stories of exploding e-cigarette batteries are often blamed on hardware manufacturers, however, the true culprit is most often an external battery that is supplied by either the retailer or consumer, according to several news sources.