Tag: e-cigarettes

Malaysia to Place Excise Tax on Vapor Starting 2021

Credit: Peter Nguyen
All imported electronic cigarettes, e-juices and other vaping products, including non-nicotine types, will face an excise duty beginning Jan. 1, 2021. Exceptions will be given to local manufacturers, Customs Department director-general Abdul Latif Abdul Kadir said today.
Excise duty would be charged on the devices at an “ad valorem” (according to value) rate of 10 percent, while liquids and gels will be charged a rate of SEN0.40 for each millilitre, he said.
Abdul Latif said local manufacturers would be licensed under Section 20 of the Excise Act 1976 with a licence payment of RM4,800 a year ($1,779), while the warehouse licence fees under Section 25 of the same Act would be RM2,400 a year, according to an article in Free Malaysia Today.
“Local manufacturers have to apply at the respective zone or state Customs Department offices where the factory or warehouse is located before Dec 15, 2020,” he said in a statement today.
Among other things, the applicants will have to declare the raw ingredients list, finished products list, manufacturing flow chart, annual manufacturing capacity, and acknowledgment of nicotine content in liquid or gel.
“Licence holders are required to comply with licensing guidelines and to attach a bank guarantee to secure the duty or tax,” he said.
Abdul Latif said manufacturers could refer to the FAQ page regarding the excise duty at the Customs website.
December 8, 2020
Covid-19: Study Finds 32% of Youth Ended E-Cigarette Use
E-cigarette use among teens and young adults decreased dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of e-cigarette users reporting that they’ve either cut back or quit, according to a new study.
Credit: Tomkohhantsuk
About 32 percent of e-cigarette users said they quit this year and another 35 percent reported cutting back, according to survey results published Dec. 3 in JAMA Network Online.
Concerns about lung health were a major factor in their decision, the results indicate. One in 4 respondents who cut back or quit said they were motivated by concern that vaping could weaken their lungs.
Research has shown that smokers have a higher risk of severe COVID-19 infection, noted senior researcher Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a developmental psychologist and professor of pediatrics at Stanford University in California.
Vapers’ worries were probably also motivated by the 2019 nationwide outbreak of EVALI, which involved thousands of lung injuries related to e-cigarette use, she added.
“One of the main reasons they quit is that they were worried about lung health, and we think that’s important, that they thought they could hurt their lungs,” Halpern-Felsher said. “This really provides an opportunity to talk about and provide education about lung health.”
December 3, 2020
Missoula Votes Monday to Ban E-Liquid Flavors Not Cigarettes
The Montana city of Missoula wants to ban flavors in e-cigarettes and vapor products, but not combustible tobacco products. The Missoula City Council will vote Monday on the flavored “tobacco ordinance that prohibits the sale of flavored electronic tobacco products,” according to an article in the Missoulian.
Credit: Marko Sokolovic
The ordinance would also prohibit self-serve access to all tobacco products. The vote comes after the city’s Public Safety and Health Committee approved Wednesday amendments to a proposed ordinance which previously sought to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco products in the city. The bill was originally proposed last month.
On Wednesday, the Public Safety and Health Committee approved the amendments in a 9-2 vote with Councilor Jesse Ramos absent and Councilors Sandra Vasecka and John Contos voting against the changes. The ordinance will go before council for final consideration on Monday, Nov. 23.
The changes to the proposed ordinance came after extensive public comment and criticism by some, including the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce, who said the ban was too broad and would harm local businesses. The ordinance aims to prevent youth access to and use of tobacco and nicotine, and is sponsored by council members Mirtha Becerra, Gwen Jones, Stacie Anderson, Heidi West and Julie Merritt.
Becerra said the new ordinance focuses on flavored electronic tobacco products because they come in an array of flavors and packaging that she said is targeted to children.
November 20, 2020
Australian C-Stores Want Ability to Sell E-Cigarettes

Credit: Simona Sergi
Retailers in Australia want the government to allow small businesses that sell cigarettes and other nicotine products to also be allowed to sell less harmful alternatives such as vaporizers and e-cigarettes.
The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) and the National Retailers Association (NRA) both claim that the federal Government’s decisions regarding the sale of smoke free tobacco products will hurt Australian retailers.
NRA Chief Executive Officer Dominique Lamb said that after the government’s reversal on its previous ban on vapor products, its policy position was getting weirder by the day, Convenience and Impulse Retailing.
“Last month, smoke-free tobacco products were deemed so harmful that the government decided they could only be sold at a chemist, by prescription, with visits to a doctor every three months,” Lamb said. “The same government says it will reverse its looming ban on importing vaping products, so individuals will be free to buy them from overseas dealers and have them shipped into Australia.”
Lamb said that the laws confuse consumers by regulating e-cigarettes and vaping products as controlled substances, yet anyone one can purchase them online from overseas retailers. “The only people who will be banned from selling smoke-free tobacco products will be the tens of thousands of mum-and-dad retailers who currently rely on cigarette sales but are desperate to offer their customers a less harmful alternative,” he said. “This government clearly supports overseas retailers as much as it supports big-box corporate pharmacy. It’s just a shame that it won’t support small, local Australian businesses.”
AACS has also pointed towards a growing black market for e-cigarettes and has highlighted the urgent need for Government to regulate the sale of these products through legitimate and responsible channels, according to the story.
“There are positive health outcomes available to Australians through the regulated, legal sale of e-cigarettes, given they are significantly safer for people to use than traditional tobacco. Unfortunately, by restricting the legal sale of products which are clearly in demand, the health impacts of the Government’s approach are decidedly negative,” AACS CEO Jeff Rogut says. “This refusal to catch up with the rest of the world in making safer choices easier for consumers has allowed the black market for vaping products of unknown ingredients and from dubious sources to grow in Australia.”
“Clearly, consumers are looking for safer alternatives to smoking. If health authorities are serious about helping people quit tobacco, they need to make vaping products legally available through responsible retailing channels urgently.
The recent interim decision by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to make vaping products only available to people from pharmacies with a prescription is both dangerous to health and a missed opportunity for responsible retailers, the AACS says.
“Australia’s approach of making it harder for our citizens to access products that are safer for them is unique in a global context,” Rogut says.
October 27, 2020
Relx Receives Red Dot Award
Relx Technology has been awarded the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2020 for its latest e-cigarette, Relx Infinity. The Red Dot Award is awarded to products that feature exceptional design.
The Red Dot Award: Product Design is one of the world’s largest design competitions. The international jury comprises experienced experts from different disciplines and has been convening for more than 60 years. True to the motto “In search of good design and innovation,” their assessment focuses on criteria such as innovation, functionality, formal quality, longevity and ergonomics.
Unveiled in Shenzhen, China, in January, Relx Infinity is the company’s latest product.
March 31, 2020
Study: E-cigarettes Cause Higher Cancer Risk
A recent study shows a connection to e-cigarette use and bladder cancer risk.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and New York University Langone Health looked at 22 different studies analyzing the urine of people who used e-cigarettes or other tobacco products to check for cancer-linked compounds or biomarkers. Six compounds or biomarkers with a link to bladder cancer were found.
“Smoking is the No. 1 modifiable behavioral risk factor for bladder cancer,” said Marc Bjurlin, associate professor of urology in the UNC School of Medicine. “There is now evolving literature showing that people who vape may have similar carcinogens in their urine as combustible cigarette users.”
March 27, 2020
Unintended Consequences
A new study suggests anti-vaping measures may achieve the opposite of their objectives.
By Marina A. Murphy
Regulation is supposed to encourage good behavior for the public good. But sometimes it just doesn’t. Sometimes it has the opposite effect. Like naughty children, if you tell us we should do one thing, we will just go ahead and do the opposite.
There have been a number of studies showing that when it comes to vaping, it’s no different. According to a study from the Yale School of Public Health, U.S. states that banned e-cigarette sales to minors in a bid, presumably, to drive these youngsters toward a nicotine-free lifestyle instead drove an increase in smoking in 12-year-olds to 17-year-olds. A Cornell study showed that increasing the vaping age had the effect of increasing smoking in youth—but then it really shouldn’t be surprising that if you make access to something difficult, people will turn to something else. Now a new study from Duke University suggests that misguided regulations on e-cigarettes could not only potentially negatively impact the group they were developed to protect but others as well.
This latest study suggests that the effect of restricting access and availability of e-cigarettes in an effort to discourage youth vaping could have the unintended consequence of driving existing vapers back to smoking. Clive Bates, a well-known advocate of tobacco harm reduction, argues that not proactively assessing the potential unintended consequences of misguided regulations is professional negligence. And if this negligence leads to harm, “then it is a form of corporate manslaughter,” he says.
“The youth card is often played to justify dubious policies,” says Martin Cullip, chairman of the New Nicotine Alliance, a consumer advocacy group in the U.K. “So often, we see suggestions like banning e-cigarette flavors to discourage youth use—that is, of course, except the flavors traditionally associated with smoking (tobacco and menthol), the very activity we are supposedly trying to discourage. How does that make sense at all?” he asks.
Indeed, the results of the Duke University study revealed that almost one-fifth of respondents said that if e-cigarette flavors were to be restricted to tobacco and menthol, they would likely not use e-cigarettes as much, and they would smoke more conventional cigarettes. “Effectively, you would be throwing adult vapers under the bus,” Cullip says.
The Duke University researchers used on online survey to ask 240 participants aged 18 to 29 to predict their use of two products—e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco cigarettes, which they already used—in response to hypothetical regulations to limit e-cigarette flavors, limit the customizability of e-cigarettes or eliminate the nicotine in e-cigarettes.
About 47 percent said if regulations eliminated nicotine in e-cigarettes, they wouldn’t use e-cigarettes as much and would increase their use of traditional cigarettes. About 22 percent said if regulations limited the customizability of devices, such as features allowing users to adjust nicotine dose or vapor temperature, they would use e-cigarettes less and smoke more tobacco cigarettes.
“The FDA now has regulatory authority over all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, and we know that some communities have taken action to ban flavored e-cigarette products,” said Lauren Pacek, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “We wanted to take a first pass at seeing what users’ anticipated responses to new regulations might be,” she said. “Our findings suggest that while some regulations, such as banning certain flavors to limit appeal to adolescents, might improve outcomes for those young users, the new regulations might have unintended consequences with other portions of the population.”
But this study is small, and we are talking hypotheticals—that is, asking people what they might do in certain circumstances. “True,” says Cullip, “but the authors themselves have said that this study was not designed to predict behavior. They also say, however, that their data highlights the importance, when considering changes to e-cigarettes, of considering the downstream effects of new regulations on other users. And lest we forget, it was data from studies based on hypotheticals that were used to justify bringing in plain packaging,” he adds.

Marina A. Murphy
Marina A. Murphy is a scientific communications and engagement expert with more than 20 years of experience, including 10 years in the tobacco sector.
August 21, 2019
Joining Forces
A new EU legislative term calls for a strong vaping association willing to fight for the industry.
By Holger Knappenschneider
A new political cycle has kicked off in Brussels, Belgium, with attention increasingly focused on the vapor products sector. With legislative threats once again on the horizon, some in the industry have banded together in the EU’s administrative capital to tell the public health story around vapor products.
The European Parliament vote that saw Ursula von der Leyen appointed as the new president of the European Commission was too close for comfort. Only nine votes separated her victory from a need for the EU member states to go back to the drawing board.
Such a narrow margin shows the fragile nature of the new Parliament’s majority. The two traditional parties—the Socialists and the European People’s Party—can no longer command a majority between them. Smaller parties, such as Renew Europe, the Greens and a nationalist group led by Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, will play a much stronger role in future agreements.
It is against this backdrop that we could see the next iteration of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) as well as new rules on tobacco excise taxes.
A medical doctor by training, von der Leyen is expected to put a strong emphasis on health in the upcoming term and has already promised a “European plan to fight cancer” to assist member states in improving cancer control and care. Smoking is, of course, a leading cause of cancer, and the logical response would be for the commission to follow Britain’s lead in encouraging the proliferation of reduced-risk alternatives among smokers.
THE PRESIDENT’S IN-TRAY
Last year, the European Commission quietly announced that it would review the market for electronic cigarettes via its Scientific Committee on Health, Environment and Emerging Risks weeks after that same committee named vaping in its top ten emerging health threats for Europe.
In parallel, the commission convened a working group of member states to review the implementation of the TPD. Known as Joint Action on Tobacco Control, the group’s job will be to sift through the information provided to EU member states in their TPD notifications and look for trends.
A separate group on TPD enforcement convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, earlier this year, with presentations from regulators across Europe discussing issues such as child resistance, short-filled e-liquids and the use of cannabidiol. The event was attended by Katja Bromen, deputy head of the commission’s tobacco control unit. In their downtime, delegates took a canal tour and had a late-night dinner at a local pizza parlor.
We are expecting a report from the commission on the functioning of the current Tobacco Excise Directive any day now. The last three years have seen two public consultations and one report on the subject—and vapor products have featured heavily in all of them. Almost half of EU member states have some form of excise duties imposed on vapor products—although the data shows that consumers find ways around the resulting higher prices—either through parallel imports or short-fill e-liquids.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
After the summer break, new commissioners will be appointed to run the Departments for Tax and Public Health. Once the identities of these people are known, the full commission will adopt a work program (expected in November or December) from which we will get a clearer picture of what else is to come before the end of this term in 2024.
Based on what is known so far, we might see proposals for a revised Tobacco Excise Duties Directive and TPD with a strong focus on e-cigarettes. At a push, the new commission might aim to have these key files concluded before the end of the term in 2024, which does not give the industry a lot of time for planning and strategy development.
The fragmented nature of the new Parliament will make it harder for the commission to deliver concrete pieces of legislation, but it makes working with the political system harder for the private sector too.
In anticipation of future developments, several industry representatives came together and formed a pan-European independent vaping alliance: The Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA).
IEVA is a Brussels-based trade association that wants to unite and represent the vapor sector to promote robust, proportionate and evidence-based regulation for vapor products. The association seeks to ensure that smokers have accurate information about vaping and the harm reduction potential; that the debate around vaping differentiates between vaping and smoking; and that regulation and taxation of vapor products is sensible and takes account of the public health opportunity vaping presents.
“The association gives a strong, singular voice to the [vapor] industry, representing their interests independently from the tobacco sector,” said Dustin Dahlmann, president of IEVA, during a recent roundtable with industry representatives. “One of the main objectives of the association is to ensure that local and community regulations are suited to [vapor]products by obtaining a maximum level playing field in terms of legislation.”
Past experience confirms the importance of a unified approach toward the European Parliament, Commission and Council. More than half of the Members of European Parliament have never served in the chamber—a higher turnover rate than we have previously seen. As a result, policy makers have yet to understand the difference between vaping and smoking, and it is essential that the correct information is conveyed to avoid misunderstandings and legislative proposals based on inaccurate information. By joining forces across Europe, the industry’s arguments can carry more weight, increasing its credibility with policy makers.
Holger Knappenschneider
Holger Knappenschneider serves as secretary general for the Independent European Vaping Alliance. He can be reached at hk@eurovape.eu.
August 21, 2019
Location Matters
Where you buy your e-cigarettes may determine if you will be a successful quitter.
By Marina A. Murphy
The popularity of e-cigarettes these days means that you can buy them almost anywhere: online, in general retail or in specialist vape shops. But new research shows that where you buy your e-cigarettes may not only determine the price you pay for them or what selection you have to choose from, but also the likelihood that you will be a successful quitter—that is, whether you’ll be successful at quitting smoking if you are a smoker.
Scientists at the University of California conducted a two-year survey¹ of vapers and concluded that those who buy their e-cigarettes from vape shops or online are far more likely to give up smoking than those who get their e-cigarettes in general retail. This proved to be true regardless of how heavy a smoker they had previously been, whether they had intended to give up smoking in the first place and their willingness to use medicinal products like nicotine-replacement therapies.
The researchers say that given the influence the place you purchase your e-cigarettes may have on your ability to quit, regulators should consider how the rules they make might impact smokers’ access to different options for vapor products. For example, in March this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that it was going to ban the majority of e-cigarette flavors in general retail but not online or in specialist vape shops.
The question then becomes whether limiting the choices of vapers who shop in general retail puts these vapers at a disadvantage in terms of their likelihood to quit smoking, compared with those who buy in specialist shops or online (who have more choices).
The University of California study involved 1,600 vapers and was conducted between 2014 and 2016. During this time, researchers collected information on smoking and quitting behavior and primary choice of place of purchase.
Survey results revealed a number of differences between vape shop customers and retail customers. Vape shop customers were more likely to use open systems. Retail customers were more likely to use FDA-approved cessation aids. A total of 92.8 percent of vape shop customers used open systems compared to only 17.3 percent in retail customers.
Vape shop customers were also more likely to vape daily. More than half of vape shop customers were daily vapers whereas only one in five retail customers were daily vapers.
Previous studies found a correlation between daily vaping and using open systems with smoking cessation. This would seem to be borne out here, as vape shop customers were also more likely to have quit smoking. Among those smoking 12 months prior to the survey, smoking cessation rates were higher for vape shop and internet customers at 22.2 percent and 22.5 percent, respectively, than for retail customers at 10.7 percent.
The researchers point out that previous studies have depended mainly on data from retail stores, which accounted for only 30 percent of purchases in 2016. They say that further studies must therefore include a broader range of purchase channels.

Marina A. Murphy
Marina A. Murphy is head of scientific media relations at British American Tobacco.
1. Researchers investigated a number of reasons why this should be the case. “A Comparison of E-Cigarette Use Patterns and Smoking Cessation Behavior Among Vapers by Primary Place of Purchase” Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(5), 724; doi:10.3390/ijerph16050724 [↩]
June 25, 2019
E-cigs should be banned, Health Ministry maintains
The Health Ministry of Malaysia has remained firm in its view that e-cigarettes containing nicotine should be banned.
The Health Ministry will not support any activity that could contribute to increased health problems, according to health deputy director-general Datuk Dr. Lokman Hakim Sulaiman. He said the decision was reached based on a study conducted by the technical committee to review the effects of e-cigarettes and shisha on health.
The Health Ministry has defined electronic cigarettes containing nicotine as e-cigarettes and electronic cigarettes without nicotine as vape.
“But most people cannot differentiate between e-cigarettes and vape,” Dr. Lokman Hakim told a press conference in Putrajaya on Nov. 4. “For them, vape and e-cigarettes are the same thing. In addition, there is also nicotine-contained liquid vape.”
“The sale and use of e-cigarettes containing nicotine liquid are subject to the Poisons Act 1952 and Food Act 1983 under the Control of Tobacco Products Regulations 2004,” he said, adding that only licensed pharmacists in licensed premises could sell products containing nicotine.
Dr. Lokman Hakim stated that the ministry would take action against sellers and users of e-cigarettes that contained nicotine under the Poisons Act 1952. He also said the ministry also would intensify the anti- e-cigarette and vape campaign.
“The ministry’s message to the community is do not use e-cigarettes or vaping as it is harmful to your health in the long term,” he said.
November 6, 2015