Tag: ecigarettes

House Committee to Question Acting FDA Leader Today
Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock is set to testify before a House subcommittee on Wednesday morning about youth vaping. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chair of the panel, plans to press Woodcock to do more to stop kids from vaping and becoming addicted to nicotine.
“We still have a youth vaping epidemic, even amidst our pandemic,” said Krishnamoorthi, in a story for Yahoo Finance.
Krishnamoorthi has been an advocate for cracking down on the vaping industry over the past several years. In 2019, amid an outbreak of vaping-related illness linked to black market THC products not nicotine, there was bipartisan support for a crackdown — leading the Trump administration to issue a vaping flavor ban in an effort to curb teenage use.
The ban covered flavors that critics argued targeted children — like fruit, mint and candy flavors — but allowed menthol and tobacco flavors to remain legal. The ban only applied to cartridges or pre-filled pod devices, like the ones sold by Juul, not disposable e-cigarettes. Some critics argued the move wasn’t enough.
“You’ve got to get rid of all the flavors. Secondly, you have to make sure that disposable cigarettes are subject to the same flavor ban that all other products are subject to — and then third, we have to regulate the nicotine content,” said Krishnamoorthi. “These vapes that are currently on the market are so addictive.”
June 23, 2021
New Zealand Group Wants Vape ‘Starter Packs’ Like UK
In the UK, the National Health Services (NHS) is trialing a program that will provide some smokers who are admitted to emergency departments free vaping starter kits and instruction on how to use them. This is in combination with ongoing quit-smoking support. Now, a group of vapor advocates in New Zealand wants its country’s Budget 2021 to supercharge already established smoking cessation programs by adopting the UK plan.
“Our Government is now determined to get Smokefree 2025 back on track. Budget Day on 20 May is the first opportunity to put its money where its mouth is. Our District Health Boards and Maori health organizations have had huge success with switching smokers into vapers. It’s time for the Government to back them more,” says Nancy Loucas, co-director of Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (AVCA), in a recent statement.
Credit: Gustavo Frazeo
Public Health England has repeatedly endorsed vaping and has never wavered from its scientific conclusion that it’s 95 percent less harmful than smoking. Recently, a new Cochrane review reinforces the effective role vaping plays in reducing smoking rates across the globe. Based in the UK, Cochrane is an independent network, involving 130 countries, health professionals, and researchers. With the strategic goal of putting Cochrane evidence at the heart of health decision-making all over the world, it represents the gold standard for high quality, trusted health information, according to a statement.
Titled “Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation (Review),” the Cochrane Library researchers reviewed 56 international studies, involving 12,804 adults who smoked. The study concluded that e-cigarettes could increase the number of people who stop smoking compared to other forms of nicotine replacement therapy, such as chewing gum and patches.
It comes as a Georgetown University-led study published in the journal Population Health Metrics concludes that nicotine vaping in the US could help prevent 1.8 million premature deaths and see 38.9 million life-years gained in a span of 47 years. “Health officials in the UK believe tens of thousands of Brits stop smoking every year after switching to vaping. In fact, latest PHE estimates show that around 2.7 million adults now vape in England alone, compared to nearly seven million who smoke tobacco,” says Loucas. “What has happened over in the UK over the past decade is an impressive story. It’s one our Government needs to investigate if it is serious about rebooting New Zealand’s 2011 ambition of being smoke-free by 2025.”
The AVCA is encouraging Kiwis to review and submit on the government’s discussion document before 5.00pm on Monday, 31 May 2021.
May 18, 2021
TSFA Leader Says PACT Act Impacts Older Vapers More
When former President Donald Trump signed the amended Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act, or PACT Act, into law late last year, the goal was to stop teenagers from buying nicotine vape products online.
However, the Tennessee Smoke Free Association’s (TSFA) executive director Dimitris Agrafiotis cited the “Youth source of acquisition for E-Cigarettes” survey from 2019 that shows most teenagers don’t get their e-cigarette products online. Instead, the survey, published in Science Direct, found that most kids get them from friends.
Dimitris Agrafiotis Credit: TSFA
A quarter of youth surveyed reported living with someone who uses e-cigarettes (26.1 percent). The most common location or source for getting e-cigarettes was a friend (51.5 percent), followed by a family member (16.4 percent), a vape shop (16.2 percent), and a retail location (12.3 percent).
Few of the survey participants reported getting e-cigarettes from another person that was not a family member or a friend (6.1 percent), the Internet (3.8 percent), or another place not listed (3.5 percent). The majority of adolescents reported getting e-cigarettes from one place (92 percent, data not shown), according to the survey data.
Agrafiotis says this law will do more harm to the older generation who rely on vape products to quit smoking cigarettes.
“The main point that I wanted to get across in this story is that in every corner of America you can buy cigarettes and a much less harmful product … [than] smoking is being squashed and eliminated,” Agrafiotis said.
If anyone wants to try to make a change, there are two things you can do, says Agrafiotis. First, call your representatives in Congress. Second, submit a comment to the U.S. Postal Service. Interested parties have until March 22nd to comment.
The PACT Act requires the Postal Service to begin enforcement starting on April 26, 2021.
March 7, 2021