Plans by Germany’s governing coalition to tax vapor products are a disaster for public health and the economy, according to the country’s e-cigarette trade association, VdeH. The move will make vapor products more expensive than combustible cigarettes, which are widely acknowledged to be considerably more harmful to health.
Under the plans, e-liquids will attract a tax of €4 per 10 mL bottle from July 1, 2022. On Jan. 1, 2024, the tax will increase to €8 plus VAT, i.e. €9.52 per 10 mL bottle. Based on an average sales price of about €5 per bottle, this amounts to a tripling of the retail price, says VdeH.
“These tax plans leave you stunned, and one initially suspects a calculation error,” said Michal Dobrajc, executive chairman of the VdeH, in a statement. Such a price increase, he added, could only have been passed with the intention to kill off vaping.
While not opposing e-cigarette taxation as such, the VdeH said fiscal measures should weigh the risks of vaping against those of smoking. Based on what is known about those relative risks, the tax on vapor products should not exceed 5 percent of that on tobacco products, according to the association. The governing coalition’s plans amount to 75 percent of the tobacco tax in Germany.
The VdeH urged the German government to heed the experience of other countries.
A similar tax policy in Italy caused the vapor market to collapse even as tobacco sales increased. Tax collections shriveled and the black market thrived. The Italian government was eventually forced to reduce the tax burden on vapor products by 90 percent. Estonia and Hungary had comparable experiences.
The biggest losers of the governing coalition’s plans, according to the VdeH, are former smokers who successfully quit their habit with the help of e-cigarettes and current smokers who will not attempt to switch under the new tax regime. A police union has already described the tax plans as a “startup for smugglers,” the association noted.
Pandemic-related anxiety, boredom, and irregular routines were cited as major drivers of increased nicotine and combustible tobacco use during the initial Covid-19 “lockdown,” according to research released by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Credit: Columbia University
“Pandemic response policies that intentionally or inadvertently restrict access to lower risk products – through availability, supply chains, or even postal service slowdowns – while leaving more harmful products widely accessible may have unintended consequences that should be considered during policy development,” said Daniel Giovenco, PhD, assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia Mailman School, and the study’s lead author.
The study highlights ways that public health interventions and policies can better support quit attempts and harm reduction, both during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The findings are published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
Nearly all participants reported increased stress related to Covid-19 – namely, fears about the virus, job uncertainty, and the psychological effects of isolation – and described this as the primary driver of increased nicotine and combustible tobacco use. Decreased use, while less common, was prevalent among “social” tobacco users, who cited fewer interpersonal interactions during lockdown and a fear of sharing products.
Between April-May 2020, the researchers conducted telephone interviews with adults across the US who use traditional cigarettes and/or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), such as e-cigarettes. Participants in the study were recruited using an advertisement campaign on Facebook and Instagram.
During this window, nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population experienced some form of state lockdown, with 40 states ordering non-essential businesses to close and 32 states enacting mandatory stay-at-home orders. At the time of their interviews, all participants were voluntarily isolating at home unless required to leave the house.
At the community level, retail access impacted cigarette and ENDS use differently. While cigarettes were universally accessible in essential businesses, such as convenience stores and gas stations, access to preferred ENDS products was more limited, since “vape shops” and other specialty ENDS retailers were typically deemed non-essential and required to close or limit hours, according to a press release.
This drove some ENDS users to order their products online, which often resulted in long wait times due to shipping delays, or product backorder as a result of high demand. As a result, some dual users of cigarettes and ENDS increased their use of readily-available cigarettes.
Millions of vapers could feel forced to return to smoking if national governments adopt a proposal from the World Health Organization (WHO) on e-cigarettes, warns the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA)
A new report published by WHO’s tobacco regulatory committee recommends nearly all vapes—especially “open systems”—be banned. It also demands existing restrictions on cigarettes be applied to emerging products, presumably so smokers won’t learn about them.
In the open system, which is the preferred way of vaping for many people across Asia, the consumer manually refills the liquid to be vaporized. According to the WHO, this system allows for the addition of substances which could make the product more harmful.
“The latest recommendation from WHO defies all logic,” said Nancy Loucas, the executive coordinator of CAPHRA, in a statement. “If countries adopt the recommendation to ban open-system vapes, years of hard work by ex-smokers as well as good public policy will be rendered meaningless.”
“Let there be no doubt: vapers will then go back to cigarettes, which is the worst possible outcome.”
“Banning any product is not the answer, nor is applying blanket cigarette rules to all emerging products. Bans encourage the black market. Bans do not allow for proper consumer protection,” Loucas said.
CAPHRA is calling on governments to adopt evidence-based, common sense regulations for all vaping products.
“Just last week, the U.K.’s leading health agency, Public Health England (PHE), concluded that nicotine vaping products were the most popular aid used by smokers trying to quit,” Loucas said.
“On the one hand, you have a local public health agency looking into the evidence and ways in which smokers can be encouraged to quit smoking and vape, and on the other you have a global agency stuck in their old ways of believing prohibition is the answer to everything.”
“WHO’s attitude to e-cigarettes has been devastating for millions and millions of smokers and vapers alike all around the world,” Loucas said.
CAPHRA said it’s only through regulating products can vapers remain protected, encouraged to stop smoking, and as a result, achieve good public health outcomes.
The Altria Group Inc. asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its help in convincing Americans that nicotine isn’t linked to cancer. In a letter to the regulatory agency, the maker of IQOS and Juul products asked for the FDA to assist in combatting misperceptions about nicotine as part of a proposed $100 million advertising campaign to reduce the harm caused by tobacco.
According to a letter seen by Bloomberg, Altria states that nearly three-fourths of U.S. adults incorrectly believe nicotine causes cancer, citing government research. Clearing up the drug’s health risks will be key to the agency reducing smoking combustible cigarettes because it will help convince cigarette users to switch to noncombustible options for nicotine, the company said.
While there are at least 60 well-established carcinogens in cigarette smoke, it’s been known for years that nicotine isn’t the direct cause of many of smoking’s ills. The drug has even been touted as a way to ease tension and sharpen the mind. But nicotine is the ingredient that addicts people to tobacco products, and it has risks, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency.
The FDA “should commit resources and expertise to correct the deeply entrenched public misperceptions regarding the health risks of nicotine,” Paige Magness, Altria’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, said in the letter dated Feb. 25. Such a campaign would help the agency by getting more smokers to use noncombustible offerings that “may present lower health risk,” according to the letter.
The FDA declined to comment, according to Bloomberg.
Logic brand e-cigarettes will end the online sales of its products, according to an email to customers. “Unfortunately, as of March 16, 2021, we will discontinue online sales of Logic products. Due to recent regulations, Logic will be unable to ship online orders after this date,” the email states. “Logic has worked tirelessly to make sure we provide you with the best possible vaping and shopping experience. Always have, always will.”
Credit: Logic
The company states that the recent amendment to the 2009 All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act prevents the company from being able to mail its products to consumers. In late December, former President Trump voted into law a $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill that contained a provision banning the USPS from delivering vapor products.
The USPS was already prohibited from delivering cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to consumers under the PACT Act. The law passed in December extends the act’s original definition of “cigarette” to include electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS).
Tobacco and vapor companies may use private services to ship their products to consumers, but the PACT Act requires them to register with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the tobacco tax administrators of the states into which a shipment is made. Delivery sellers are further required to verify the age and identity of the customer at purchase and maintain records of delivery sales for a period of four years after the date of sale, creating substantial administrative burdens.
Critically for the vapor industry, the most popular carriers, Federal Express (FedEx) and United Parcel Service (UPS), have recently announced that they would cease all deliveries of vapor products.
Age-verified adult consumers can order Logic products at logicvapes.us until March 16 at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. In order to help consumers locate Logic products, the company has updated and improved its online store locator.
“We believe that all age-verified adult vapers and smokers should have the choice to purchase vapor products online to be delivered to their home. However, as a responsible company, we always remain committed to regulatory compliance,” the email states. “We’re dedicated to doing whatever it takes to deliver pleasurable vaping moments you can truly enjoy.
Acquired by Japan Tobacco in 2015, Logic is not the first vapor company to cease online sales in the wake of the shipping ban. In February, Securience, which manufactures Durasmoke, Forge and other brands, announced it would be closing its doors in March due to the restrictions. Lizard Juice e-liquids also said it would stop mailing products to consumers.
1account, a technology provider to online vendors of age-restricted products and services, has created a new advisory board to support its ambitious plans in the vaping sector, which includes the rollout of a new business-to-consumer ID app to prevent underage access to vape devices and e-liquids online and offline.
Joining the new board are Mark Aylwin, former managing director of Booker; Ralph Topping, former chief executive of bookmaker William Hill; Simon Bazalgette, former CEO of the Jockey Club; and Murray Perkins, former policy director at the British Board of Film Classification.
Following 1account’s success in providing age verification technology to the vaping and gambling sectors, Aylwin will help drive the continued rollout of the company’s online technology and help businesses in the vaping sector make the transition to accepting the company’s new consumer digital ID app, 1account ID, for their online and offline commerce.
The new B2C product will help to prevent unlawful access to vaping products online and in vape retail outlets, convenience stores and supermarkets, aligning with the British government’s strategy to build a Digital Identity Trust Framework.
“The creation of a digital ID for the purchase of vape products online and offline represents a major step forward and will enable vape retailers to take the most proactive stance possible in preventing underage sales of vape devices and e-liquids,” says Aylwin. “1account can offer vape retailers a solution both online and offline that enables compliance for now and the future.”
In July 2020, Puff Bar announced that it would cease all online sales and distribution in the U.S. until further notice. However, the brand resumed sales on its website last month with a changed product. To get around the ban, Puff Bar is now using tobacco-free nicotine, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Credit: Puff Bar
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has started investigating Puff Bar’s redesigned fruit-flavored disposable vaporizers because of the changes, reports The Hill. The regulatory agency said it was aware of Puff Bar’s actions but would not say whether the agency’s ban was still applicable, citing the ongoing investigation.
In mid-2020, the FDA told Puff Bar to stop selling its fruity vaporizers as part of a broader crackdown on underage vaping. In a letter to Puff Bar, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products said Puff Bar products hadn’t been authorized for sale by the agency and that the company had made unauthorized claims on its website that its vaporizers were less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
In early 2020, the Trump administration banned fruity flavored e-cigarettes in reusable devices like Juul, the blockbuster brand that helped trigger the teen vaping craze in the U.S. Under that policy, only menthol and tobacco flavors were allowed for those devices. But the flavor ban did not apply to disposable vaping products like Puff Bar, which is offered in more than 20 flavors, including pina colada and pink lemonade.
Following the ban, Puff Bar quickly emerged as the vape of choice among young people. Puff Bar has fallen to No. 3 in the disposable category this year, after Bidi Stick and Blu, according to Nielsen data.
It’s unclear who owns Puff Bar. Previous owners include Cool Clouds Distribution in California and DS Technology Licensing in China.
Policy experts weigh in on the vaping industry’s future under the Biden administration.
By Maria Verven
Within days of assuming office, U.S. President Joe Biden issued executive orders to respond to Covid-19, by far the biggest global health threat in over 100 years. It may be months or even years before anyone knows how the new administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its new director, Rochelle Walensky, will respond to another major health threat: the 480,000 annual deaths caused by combustible cigarettes.
Vapor Voice interviewed vapor industry leaders and legislative experts for their opinions on how the vapor industry might fare under the new administration. The panel includes:
Mark Anton, executive director, Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA)
“Let’s get the junk science funded by big pharma and the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement out of the narrative of harm reduction. The federal government must be guided by the best science to ensure responsible decision-making.”
Gregory Conley, president, American Vaping Association (AVA)
“Legal nicotine vaping products are far less hazardous than smoking and serve a vital public health role in helping adult smokers quit.”
Michael Siegel, professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health
“Vaping is, for many smokers, a life-saving health decision. It is much safer than smoking and is literally saving the lives of smokers who would likely die if they weren’t able to stop smoking.”
David T. Sweanor, adjunct professor, advisory board chair, Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics, University of Ottawa
“It’s the smoke, stupid.”
Vapor Voice: What policy changes might the Biden administration make regarding vaping products?
Anton: During the Biden administration, SFATA is taking the lead in youth prevention with the creation of the Responsible Industry Network, which we presented to HHS and the FDA. This would allow adults to access flavors while protecting small businesses through the FDA’s PMTA (premarket tobacco product application) process.
Mark Anton / Credit: SFATA
Adults need access to products that help them transition away from combustible cigarettes, so unfavorable e-cig policies and flavor bans should not be on their agenda. Vaping is truly a good tool for tobacco harm reduction. The industry is made up of former smokers who strive to develop the best manufacturing practices without the FDA’s help. To protect against youth use, SFATA supports the enforcement of T21 [Tobacco 21], passed by Congress and signed by the president. Covid[-19] policies have prevented true enforcement.
Finally, the CDC should always give true assessments and release reports to the media and medical and public health journals. Last year, the CDC failed to give a full accounting of EVALI (vaping-related lung illnesses), when they should have made a declarative statement that vaping nicotine e-cigs was not the cause.
Conley: Sadly, there is no use answering this question as there’s no indication whatsoever that the Biden Administration will make favorable decisions with regard to vaping products. I would be thrilled to be wrong, but after a decade of fantasizing about smart policy and regulations and only getting the opposite, it’s time to stop dreaming and work within the broken system we have.
Siegel: Introduce legislation to ban the sale of tobacco products, including vaping products, with the exception of stores only open to [consumers] 21-plus that only sell these products. And direct health insurance companies to cover electronic cigarettes just as they cover other forms of nicotine-replacement therapy.
Encourage physicians to promote vaping for smokers who are unable to quit using other means. And direct the CDC, FDA and other national health agencies to endorse the use of vaping products for smoking cessation, especially when traditional medications do not work. Finally, discontinue the requirement for PMTAs for vaping products and, instead, directly regulate these products by forcing the FDA to promulgate safety regulations.
Sweanor: Follow the science on relative risk and communicate truthfully with the public. And empower those who use nicotine to have control over their health though ready access to a wide range of low-risk alternatives to cigarettes and risk proportionate regulation of the spectrum of products. Access to alternatives to cigarettes should be no less urgent a public health goal than access to Covid[-19] treatments and vaccines. Government policy should reflect this urgency.
What were the most egregious policies implemented during the Trump administration?
Anton: Clearly, CDC misinformation about EVALI, falsely accusing e-cigarettes and seeking to ban flavors without sufficient scientific evidence is high on the list of misguided policies. And despite all the research to the contrary, they created hysteria by calling e-cigarette use by minors an ‘epidemic’ when it was not. The true epidemic is 480,000 smokers dying every year from smoking combustible cigarettes.
Conley: [Former]President Trump created a wave of issues when he declared that flavored vaping products should be banned because they were killing people. He was undoubtedly being fed bad information from his advisors, but it was ridiculous coming from the supposed pro-business, anti-regulation POTUS. Even Trump’s biggest fans realized that one of his flaws was his inability to hire competent people who shared his worldview. Putting Alex Azar in as Secretary of Health and Human Services assured there would be no positive movement to reform vaping regulations at any of the agencies HHS oversees.
Greg Conley / Credit: AVA
Siegel: The ban on flavored e-cigarettes in pod systems and the requirement that companies must submit PMTAs to stay on the market both need to be reversed. There does need to be regulation of nicotine strengths, especially for nicotine salts, but getting rid of flavors isn’t going to solve the problem of youth vaping, and it is hurting many adult ex-smokers.
Sweanor: I think the biggest failure was the failure to remove the mounting barriers confronting less hazardous products such as e-cigarettes. After a steep decline in cigarette sales by substituting safer products, particularly vaping, cigarettes started making a comeback as the CDC and other agencies engaged in a massively misleading campaign against vaping.
Meanwhile, the FDA put vaping at a marketplace disadvantage compared to cigarettes. Research showed those most at risk were misinformed about the relative risks.
At the end of Biden’s term, what state do you think the vaping industry will be in?
Anton: The outlook is not very bright for the small vaping industry based on Biden’s cabinet selections; many have anti-vaping outlooks and ignore the multitude of studies in support of the harm reduction potential of vaping products. The focus has been on youth use even though it’s decreasing at record levels. Much of the vapor industry success or demise will hinge on the Biden administration’s willingness to look honestly at the science. Additionally, Congress has pushed to ban flavors despite the fact that flavors are an important tool for the average smoker to quit smoking.
Politics have clouded the potential of this industry’s ability to reduce harm in the U.S. regarding smoking combustible cigarettes. If the Biden administration follows this path, we will be worse off. But if they choose science and real life, it will be better. Much hinges on the role the FDA will play in issuing marketing authorizations.
Conley: Right now, most adult vapers can easily access tens of thousands of different vaping products in every flavor you can think of. While there will always be a gray market and internet sales, the legal market will never be as free as it is today.
Four years from now, there will still be a legal market for tobacco-derived nicotine vaping products authorized by the FDA. It may not be a great market, but it will exist. Companies with authorized products will do everything in their power to disrupt the gray market such as stand-alone devices, nicotine-free or tobacco-free nicotine e-liquids that many vapers rely on.
Siegel: It will probably be worse off. If the administration enforces the PMTA rules, many vaping products will be taken off the market. Big tobacco companies and a few large independent companies will dominate the market. The growth of the e-cigarette sector will wane. Many ex-smokers will return to smoking, and e-cigarettes will no longer serve as an off-ramp for as many smokers.
Dr. Michael Siegel
Sweanor: Ultimately, disruptive technology, science, rationality and human rights will win, and cigarettes will go the way of previous categories of unreasonably hazardous goods and services. The question of whether that happens within four years depends on the way politics unfolds and the emergence of leaders who see the opportunity and relentlessly pursue it.
Is limiting the level of nicotine a viable solution for users of conventional tobacco?
Conley: Bloomberg-funded prohibitionists and legislators who can’t differentiate between classes of vaping products are not going to be swayed by nicotine limits. Their goal is prohibition. When you give in to the prohibitionists, all you’re doing is guaranteeing they’ll be back next year to argue that we need flavor bans because nicotine limits didn’t work.
Siegel: Yes. Limiting nicotine in e-cigarettes will help reduce youth addiction to these products. There is also evidence that very low nicotine cigarettes can result in much lower levels of addiction in cigarette smokers.
Sweanor: No. It’s a replication of the disastrous Volstead Act that ushered in Prohibition, which forced beer and wine to have no more than a minimum level of alcohol.
David Sweanor
The total U.S. nicotine market is over $80 billion, and the cigarette market alone is over $60 billion, with tens of millions of consumers. The products are far more dependence-producing than alcoholic beverages. A prohibitionist policy is very unlikely to garner political acceptance and could rapidly lead to the sort of entrepreneurship and criminality long associated with other abstinence-only campaigns.
Many who are pushing for such a policy also oppose the wide availability of consumer-acceptable low-risk alternatives to cigarettes, demonstrating that this is a flawed moralistic strategy rather than a pragmatic public health one.
What chance do any of these proposed changes/solutions have at being implemented?
Anton: The previous FDA leadership has called the millions of smokers who have transitioned from combustible cigarettes to flavored vapor products ‘anecdotal evidence’ without investing any funds into research. The Biden administration and the new FDA leadership now has the opportunity to affect public health on a massive scale by investigating this hypothesis.
The U.K.’s National Health policy recommends that smokers who want to quit switch to vaping. They recognize vaping is safer than cigarettes. This is from the country that put warning labels on cigarette packs four years before the U.S. The Responsible Industry Network is a framework that will help prevent youth access, limit marketing to age-restricted stores and develop a pathway to prevent the loss of tens of thousands of small businesses. It brings together all the elements of the Tobacco Control Act (TCA)—protecting youth from smoking and tobacco use while assisting millions of adults who are trying to stop smoking.
While these are foundational items of the TCA and the FDA, politicians are missing the opportunity to help millions of current smokers because vaping is so politicized and youth use and access to vapor products has been blown out of proportion.
Siegel: The likelihood [that] these policies will be implemented is very low. I just don’t think the mainstream tobacco control and health organizations support the idea of harm reduction in tobacco control.
Sweanor: I have little ability to discern the likelihood of rational policies, in part because the current politics around nicotine seem to favor a War on Drugs mentality where the pursuit of total abstinence takes precedence over a public health orientation. Much will depend on Americans who use nicotine, a demographic Biden appears to care very much about.
The original “Vaping Vamp,” Maria Verven owns Verve Communications, a P.R. and marketing firm specializing in the vapor industry.
Health researchers have called on the South African government to revive legislation intended to regulate e-cigarettes, saying the products don’t help people quit smoking as advertised, reports Business Day.
The Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill was released for public comment in 2018, but the legislation has yet to be submitted to Parliament. As a result, e-cigarettes and other nicotine-delivery devices remain unregulated in South Africa.
Presenting recent research on e-cigarette use in South Africa, Lekan Ayo-Yusuf, director of the Africa Centre for Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Policy Research at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, said that more than 95 percent of e-cigarette users continued to smoke and few of them managed to stop smoking for more than six months.
Compared to people who had never used e-cigarettes, the likelihood of kicking the smoking habit for six months to 12 months was 77 percent lower among regular e-cigarette users.
“While the tobacco and e-cigarette industry likes to position e-cigarettes as cessation aids, the limited effectiveness of these products for long-term quitting, the health harms associated with usage and the industry’s clear and targeted marketing to youth are facts which are conveniently omitted from their narrative,” said Ayo-Yusuf.
According to one of the prevalence studies, 2.71 percent of adults, or 1.09-million people, used e-cigarettes daily or occasionally during 2018. Almost all these people (97.5 percent) were regularly smoking cigarettes as well. A separate study found vape shops were clustered in the wealthier parts of urban centers, and two-thirds were within a 20 km radius of a university or college campus.
E-cigarettes have been available in South Africa for more than 10 years but remain untaxed. Recently, the treasury department said it plans to release a discussion paper on tax proposals for electronic nicotine devices.
The recent research has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
If society wants a smoke-free world, it cannot allow promising products to die of neglect.
By George Gay
Browsing the internet recently, I came across a report claiming that 22 countries with, according to my calculation, a total population of about 2.6 billion, or 34 percent, of the worldwide population, had banned the use of vaping products. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those figures, but I guess they would be at least as accurate as the widely accepted estimates of worldwide, annual tobacco-related deaths.
At the same time, many people are living in countries where certain forms of vaping products are banned (Japan, for example, with a population of about 126 million) or where the appeal of vaping products has been deliberately and sometimes severely narrowed by, for instance, restricting flavors (the U.S., 328 million) or limiting nicotine levels (countries of the EU, 448 million post-Brexit).
Looking at this situation, I couldn’t help wondering whether a person with the foresight 15 years ago to have predicted the arrival on the market of products whose consumption was far less risky than was the consumption of combustible cigarettes and that could substitute for those cigarettes would have foreseen also the wide-ranging and often visceral hostility that has greeted their arrival.
I can’t help feeling that our seer would have dismissed as ridiculous the idea that these new products, vaping devices as it turned out, would be so badly served by so many governments, companies, organizations and individuals. She would surely have found it incomprehensible that smokers would be let down so badly.
Why? Well, as is still the case, 15 years ago, the combustible cigarette was the pariah consumer product and, we were told, no amount of effort was being spared in trying to do away with it. It was claimed that this was the only product that killed its consumers when used as it was designed to be used, and this claim was employed to underpin the justification for legislating for the degradation of both the product and its packaging, and the restriction of cigarette sales.
Credit: Nadine Shaabana
And it was not only the product that was seen as unacceptable. Cigarette manufacturers had cynically manipulated their products to make them “more addictive” and thereby keep consumers hooked and the profits rolling in. And consumers were little better. So, in the U.K. at least, they were attacked by officialdom as being smelly and then denormalized to the point where they and their secondhand smoke were cut off from normal society.
Given this, and given that vaping is recognized by most sensible people to be hugely less risky than is smoking, why is it that vaping has had such a rough ride? There are, of course, any number of reasons based on the vested interests and breath-taking hypocrisy of some individuals, researchers, companies, organizations and governments, for all of whom and which the continued use of tobacco represents a nice little earner.
But here I would like to speculate about another possible reason. Could the U.K. government at least have decided that the problem of tobacco smoking has been overblown? No, let me put that another way. Could it be that the government has decided that the net problem caused by smoking—that is, the smoking negatives minus the smoking positives—has been overblown, especially when compared with other problems it must confront? For instance, I guess it is becoming just too difficult to ignore the elephant in the morgue: the pollution-related deaths, many of which, I assume, overlap with tobacco-related deaths.
According to Damian Carrington, environment editor, writing in the Guardian on Jan. 26, a global review in 2019 concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ in the human body as inhaled particles travel around it and cause inflammation. And it is instructive, I think, that a statement made late last year by the U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, pointing out that air pollution is killing nine million people a year, has, unusually, not been trumped by the World Health Organization coming up with an even higher figure for tobacco-related deaths.
But I have a more specific reason for believing that the U.K. government might be letting smoking slip down its list of priorities. While it has been progressive in respect of encouraging the use of vaping as a means of getting people to quit smoking, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has steadfastly refused to allow vape shops to open during lockdowns; that is, it has deemed them not to be essential, whereas a shop selling plugs for the basin in your bathroom apparently is essential. This indicates to me that the government doesn’t put much importance on encouraging people to quit smoking, though that is not to say it isn’t happy to dabble in such an enterprise.
OK, I hear you ask, could it be that the government does believe that encouraging people to quit smoking is important, but, right now, in the face of a deadly pandemic, such encouragement has had to take a back seat?
There are a number of reasons why I don’t think this is the case. One is that the government has found the time to deal with all manner of pet issues during the pandemic, such as its undermining of the BBC in an attempt to better control its image. Another was Brexit, which was hugely time-consuming, but its deadline our erstwhile fellow members of the EU had been willing to postpone.
However, the most telling reason in my view was the government’s announcement at the end of March 2020 that it was to axe Public Health England, an executive agency of the department of health and social care, and transfer some of its responsibilities, but not its smoking prevention and some other obligations, to a new organization, the National Institute for Health Protection.
Meanwhile, while the government seems to be taking its foot off the quit-smoking pedal, there are some for whom the very existence of the pandemic is seen as underlining the need for the government to encourage the switch from smoking to vaping. The usual suspects have been only too willing to tell smokers, without, I suspect, any solid evidence, that they are at increased risk of suffering severe symptoms if they are infected with Covid-19. And one respected public health professional has argued that the emphasis should be placed on fighting noncommunicable health problems because, in that way, we will all be leaner and fitter to fight the next pandemic. Hmm.
I cannot agree with these people’s reasoning, but I do maintain that this is not the time to let the opportunities offered by new generation products slip through our fingers. And in this regard, I would like to put in a word for Kind Consumer and Voke, whose fortunes I have followed on and off for a number of years. Voke, as I wrote about last year, is a product that was developed by Kind and licensed by the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency as a medicinal product that is a safer alternative to smoking. Voke is not a vaping product but an alternative nicotine-delivery system that uses pharmaceutical-standard inhaler technology in a device that closely resembles a traditional cigarette in both the way it looks and in the way a consumer, in using the device, mimics most of the rituals of smoking.
Voke, which has no batteries and no electronics and therefore generates no heat and no chemical reactions, produces no smoke nor vapor, just an invisible, odorless aerosol, so it can be used anywhere. And its environmental credentials are good given that it is a relatively simple device made of metal, card and plastic: materials that can be recycled.
Last year, I wrote that, in theory at least, Voke should be a game-changer and that it would be interesting to follow its fortunes on the market to discover how committed smokers and vapers were to the pursuit of reduced risk.
I’m now concerned that I may never know. Voke was launched in November 2019 exclusively online, but when I visited the Voke website in January this year, this is what I was told: “Due to Covid-19 and the current financial climate, we are unable to accept any orders.” Meanwhile, a Sky news story toward the end of last year said it was understood that Kind, which had raised £140 million from investors since it was set up [in 2006], had, at the beginning of December, called in the administrators and that they had signed off on the sale of Kind’s assets to OBG Consumer Scientific, a subsidiary of Pharmaserve, a privately owned group, for £1.6 million.
Pharmaserve, which is based in Runcorn, U.K., did not respond to requests for information, so I am unaware of what fate awaits Voke. However, one source told me that Pharmaserve had been part of the Voke supply chain, providing the device’s cannisters, and this aligns with information provided by Kind, which said last year that one of two manufacturing sites it was using was at Runcorn (the other was said to be at Waterford in Ireland). If this is the case, it is quite possible that the product will be relaunched.
It would certainly be a crime if Voke were allowed to disappear without fully testing whether it can become a game-changer. There is no doubt that, because it delivers a cool aerosol rather than a warm vapor, it presents a challenge to smokers wishing to switch. But, at the same time, its nicotine delivery is efficient enough that it has to deliver only a low dose, 0.45 mg, from which, if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is correct, it could be inferred that it creates a significantly lower risk of sustaining addiction than do cigarettes or e-cigarettes.
And Voke seems to have some as-yet untested advantages over cigarettes and electronic cigarettes when it comes to sales channels. While the product had a medicines license that allowed it to be prescribed by a doctor in the U.K., it had also an over-the-counter drug or general sales list label, so it could have been sold anywhere from pharmacies to major retailers, corner shops and garage forecourts. And there was no reason why Voke, under another name and possibly modified, could not be sold in other jurisdictions simply as a consumer product.
Many societies that claim they want to become smoke-free have thrown obstacle after obstacle into the path of vaping devices. Surely, we are not going to let Voke fail for the want of a little investment. According to the Sky story, Kind had been looking to raise only another £36 million to deliver a revised business plan, so here, perhaps, was an opportunity for a tobacco company—or even the U.K. government.
Credit: Martin Budenbender
Of course, the U.K. government is ideologically opposed to public involvement in the private sphere, but there were some good reasons why it could have justified keeping Kind and Voke going. I don’t know why Kind got to the point where it had to call in the administrators, but certainly, fate had not been kind to it. When, in 2009, Kind set out in earnest on the development of Voke, it immediately found itself in a commercial bind.
At that time, when vaping devices were still something of a novelty, it was believed that, under the then forthcoming revised EU Tobacco Products Directive, all such products sold in the EU would need to have a medicines license. But such a requirement fell by the wayside; so Voke, a device being developed at great expense within the constraints necessary to make it conform with a medicines license, was destined to compete with devices developed at less expense without such constraints. And to cap it all, Voke was launched just as the world was hit by the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
If societies believe that tobacco smoking is as harmful as it is generally made out to be, and if they are truly aiming to go smoke-free, they cannot afford to allow the army of naysayers to keep throwing vaping devices under the bus, and they certainly cannot allow a promising product to die of neglect.
