The Philippine Tobacco Industry (PTI) has called on the Philippines’ Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to crack down on illicit vapor products, reports The Manilla Times.
In a letter sent recently to BIR Commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr., the group emphasized that the full implementation of the Vaporized Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Act “will ensure that the public is protected against the dangers of using illicit products as well as the collection of appropriate taxes aimed at helping our economy.”
The Act, which became law in July 2022, regulates the importation, manufacture, sale, packaging, distribution, use and communication of vaping products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.
Under the laws implementing rules and regulations (IRR), e-commerce platforms, e-marketplaces and other similar online platforms are mandated to allow only Department of Trade and Industry and BIR-registered distributors, merchants or retailers of vape products, devices and novel tobacco products to sell on their website or platform.
To ensure vape products are made inaccessible to minors, the IRR also requires vapor product refill receptacles to be tamper- and child-resistant. Products packaged or labeled with flavor descriptors appealing to minors are prohibited.
“We are also hoping that the BIR will closely work with enforcement agencies such as the Philippine National Police, The Armed Forces of the Philippines as well as relevant anti-illicit trade groups from the Bureau of Customs to make sure the law and its IRR are effectively implemented,” the PTI said.
The PTI members include Japan Tobacco International Philippines, Associated Anglo-American Tobacco Corp. and Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Co.
According to UK Trading Standards officials, shops selling illegal vapes and the sale of vaping products to children are the top threats on the country’s High Streets.
Hundreds of thousands of vapes that flout current laws have been seized, according to BBC.
UK laws limit how much nicotine and e-liquid is contained in vapes, and which health warnings are required on packaging.
But some shops are selling vapes containing 12,000 puffs of e-liquid, when the law permits only about 600. Others contain illegally high levels of nicotine.
In the north-east of England alone, more than 1.4 tonnes of illegal vapes were seized from shops in the second half of last year, while in Kent there was a dramatic rise in counterfeit vaping products seized at Channel ports in December, with more than 300,000 removed.
Criminals in Singapore are not using just trucks and trailers to smuggle vaping products. They are also using luxury cars in an attempt to evade detection and capture.
Based on seizures and captures carried out by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) enforcement, many different types of luxury vehicles are being used for smuggling activities, namely Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi and high-end Toyota Vellfire and Alphard MPVs (Multi Purpose Vehicles), according to media reports.
“Perhaps these syndicates feel that the ‘status’ of being perceived as being rich by driving luxury vehicles can evade detection by enforcement. This is why the syndicates choose all sorts of different luxury vehicles to carry out smuggling of e-cigarettes and vape liquid,” according to an unnamed source.
The ICA’s employs hi-tech X-Ray machines to detect smuggled items. Based on information received, the Singapore enforcement authorities recently confiscated 792 e-cigarettes that were smuggled from Malaysia using an Audi vehicle.
Also confiscated were 3,093 e-cigarette refill pods, apart from 4,000 e-cigarettes and 3,120 e-cigarette refill pods that were hidden in another luxury vehicle, a Mercedes Benz.
“On Nov 23 last year, the syndicate used an Audi vehicle to smuggle 2,700 pods filled with e-cigarette refills apart from 100 disposable e-cigarettes. The seizure also yielded 145 e-cigarette products that were concealed under the seats and floor of a Toyota Vellfire MPV,” the source said.
Health officials in Australia are demanding a crackdown on vaping sales violators with stricter laws and stiffer penalties due to a surge in illegal vape importers, vendors and advertisers.
Australian shop keepers that have sold outlawed nicotine vapes have been fined more than $730,000 in the last 13 months, up $110,000 from the previous year, according to the Daily Mail.
New data from the Therapeutic Goods Administration shows the continuous sale of illegal e-cigarettes is taking a massive toll on health budgets. However, fighting the black market trade is a major expense as the suspected illegal e-cigarettes have to undergo laboratory testing to find traces of nicotine.
Australia took action against the growing epidemic by outlawing nicotine vapes in Oct. 2021, but the products have remained readily available on the black market.
The Consumer Protection Authority (CPA) in the country of Oman raided a number of shops suspected of selling vaping products.
The Sultanate banned the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes in 2015. However, importing, use and possession are legal.
According to a statement by the CPA, during inspection field visits carried out by a CPA control team to shops and markets in the Wilayat of Shinas in the capital city of Muscat, “a number of electronic cigarettes were seized in shops selling tobacco and its derivatives.”
The Authority clarified that this behavior is in violation of its rules regarding the ban on the circulation of e-cigarettes and hookahs, according to media reports.
The port town of Dover, England, with the view facing towards France. The port is used for passengers and commercial goods. (Credit: Credit ProMicroStockRAW)
The number of potentially unsafe disposable vapes being seized at English Channel ports has risen “dramatically”, according to trading standards.
More than 300,000 of the counterfeit products had been seized during December, Kent Trading Standards said, according to the BBC.
“A lot of our work has been focused on retail outlets but this is now higher up the supply chain,” James Whiddett, spokesperson for KTS, said. “We’re stopping these devices which may have about 10 times the legal limit of nicotine in them.”
He said the current legal limit on the tank on disposable vapes is 2ml, which is the equivalent of 600 puffs.
“The products which we’re seeing coming into the country at the moment have 3,500 puffs on them and some have 7,000 puffs, so they are illegal and cannot be supplied to anyone,” he said.
Whiddett said the demand for disposable vapes had risen dramatically over the last nine months.
“The flavors, the fact that people don’t have to put their own liquids in, means it’s convenient and easy,” he said. “We’re not sure where these illegal vapes were going, and our investigations are ongoing.”
Gillian Golden, CEO of the Independent British Vape Trade Association, said non-compliant vape products are also associated with non-compliant sales, “often to underage consumers.”
She said the association would continue to assist trading standards over non-compliant vaping products.
China’s Intermediate People’s Court of Fangchenggang City, Guangxi has sentenced a number of people for smuggling the hardware and tobacco sticks used in heated tobacco products.
It’s the first time China has made a judgement in a heat-not-burn smuggling case, according to the Fangcheng Customs Anti-smuggling Branch of the Nanning Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau.
The defendants were found guilty of smuggling ordinary goods and articles (IQOS Heatsticks and hardware), and were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonments ranging from 4 to 12 years and fines ranging from ¥200,000 to ¥1 million. The exact number of people sentenced was not reported.
One defendant was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for one year, fined ¥20,000 yuan, and more than ¥420,000 in money laundering illegal proceeds was recovered.
The investigation began on April 21, 2021, under the unified deployment of the Anti-smuggling Bureau of the General Administration of Customs, the Nanning and Hangzhou Customs Anti-smuggling Bureaus, in conjunction with the tobacco departments of Guangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan and other places, synchronized in Fangchenggang, Guangxi, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and Shenzhen, Guangdong, according to the release.
The illicit goods were collected and seized, and three criminal gangs smuggling the illegal products were successfully detained, and about 4,500 heat-not-burn products were seized.
Potentially dangerous counterfeit disposable vaping products are flooding into the UK market, according to an investigation by ELFBAR, a Chinese manufacturer. Retailers and consumers are being warned that the illegal products are being produced in “squalid Chinese factories with no license for manufacturing and regard for product safety,” according to a press release.
Since the launch of counterfeiting action by ELFBAR in June 2021, it has cracked down on more than 120 counterfeit production and sales targets, including factories, warehouses, logistics, and foreign trade companies, seizure of more than 2 million finished counterfeit ELFBAR products, millions of packaging boxes, anti-counterfeit codes, semi-finished vaping pipes and other accessories.
Victor Xiao, the Chief Executive of ELFBAR, said consumers would be horrified if they saw the conditions in which these products are made. “The criminals behind these counterfeit products care nothing about product safety or the health of consumers and they cut every corner possible to maximize their profits,” he said. “Quite frankly, the conditions in these factories are absolutely squalid where workers man production lines in filthy conditions with no regard to hygiene at all.”
ELFBAR is clamping down hard on the illegal vape market and is building up an intelligence dossier on fake products as the counterfeiters get smarter and more efficient. While ELFBAR works hard to stop the fraudsters at source it realizes that it is impossible to stop all the fakes from getting through and is now warning retailers that they are the last line of defence to protect consumers.
“While it can be hard to tell a fake product from the real thing just by looking at it, there is no excuse for any retailer to sell a counterfeit ELFBAR product. Retailers can scan a code on the packaging to check the authenticity of the product and we urge them to do this for every product they sell,” Xiao said. “Fighting fakes is a priority for ELFBAR and we remain zero tolerance for these fake vapes right across the entire industry. The UK market is very important to us and we will continue to do all in our power to ensure that British consumers have confidence in their vapes.”
John Dunne
John Dunne, director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), said he applauds ELFBAR for standing up against the counterfeiters.
“They pose a significant risk to the harm reduction reputation of the global vaping industry. It’s why we have called for a retail licensing scheme here in the UK to prevent the sale of illicit products and much higher penalties of at least £10,000 per instance for retailers who break the law in this way,” he said. “Similarly, the counterfeiters and those who trade fake vapes along the supply chain need dealing with in a way by the relevant authorities that put them off from doing it ever again.”
In the recent past, three stories have come to my notice that have recorded how vaping products have been seized by various authorities: in Hong Kong, where such products are banned; in Australia, where they are prescription devices; and in the U.K., where they are freely available. In Western Australia (WA), the ABC reported, WA Health recently seized 950 e-cigarettes, bringing the total seized for three years to about 16,000 “nicotine vaping products.”
In Hong Kong, the HKFP reported, about 360,000 products had been seized since the implementation on April 30 of a ban on alternative smoking products including e-cigarettes. And in the City of Westminster (population an estimated 250,000), the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) reported, 4,500 disposable vapes were seized because they did not conform to local standards along with 420 counterfeit vapes and 2,366 snus products “with no English labeling.”
The three stories were different, but they had one thing in common: None of them indicated what became, or what was to become, of the seized products, and I find this extraordinary and worrying, especially given that the three stories cited are probably the tip of the worldwide seizure iceberg.
We are deeply into a global existential crisis caused by, among other things, climate change and pollution, so you might imagine that the first questions to come up would concern, among others, the carbon footprint of the manufacturing processes that produced the seized products, and how we can prevent these products, which will include batteries, from ending up in landfills.
It would be hugely damaging if the products seized in the U.K. were just disposed of, even if they were recycled, but in Australia and Hong Kong, where, respectively, a ridiculous restriction and a ludicrous ban are in operation, disposal would simply heap one act of stupidity on top of another.
If no such mechanism exists already, a way should be found to allow seized products to be diverted from markets where, for one reason or another, they have arrived but are unacceptable to other markets where they are acceptable. This, admittedly, would prove difficult, though not impossible, where counterfeit products were concerned, but otherwise should not be beyond the wit of those skilled in marketing and distribution.
For instance, products seized in Hong Kong could be sent to countries that don’t ban them and where they comply with domestic standards, keeping the carbon footprint of the shipping as low as possible and selling them at the cost of the shipping to local suppliers to compensate for any market displacements.
Credit: Earnest Tse
A similar scheme could be applied to the disposal of vapes seized in the U.K., which apparently had “excessive levels of nicotine.” They could be shipped to someplace where such restrictions are not in place, once again keeping the carbon footprint of the shipping as low as possible and selling the products at the cost of shipping to local suppliers to compensate for any market displacements. Otherwise, in this case, simply change the rules.
As far as I am aware, nicotine-level restrictions are usually based on arbitrary figures devised by bureaucrats who have never smoked or vaped and whose scientific advisers probably couldn’t justify such restrictions on a rational basis. I think I am right in saying that the EU imposes delivery limits on traditional cigarettes while, at the same time, denying that there are any health benefits in doing so. In fact, probably the only significant effect of imposing such delivery limits is to make it easier for young people to start smoking.
In the past, policies based on irrational ideas were frustrating; now, faced with a mounting existential crisis, we simply cannot afford to allow rank stupidity to prevail because, applied on a wider basis, as they are, such policies are driving the planet further and further down the tubes.
In my view, it is time to face the facts, but I’m not sure that everyone agrees. As part of the UKVIA story, Raj Mistry, executive director of environment and city management at Westminster City Council, was quoted as saying the raid that uncovered the illicit goods showed the local authority’s commitment to keeping Westminster clean and safe.
“We are putting these questionable traders on notice that they will not be tolerated in our city,” he said in part. “We’ll continue to take action against such unsafe trading activities in order to keep our residents and visitors safe.”
This emphasis on clean and safe makes nice newspaper copy, but it is a bit misleading. As far as I can see, none of the seized vaping products could be seen as being unclean, whatever that might mean, and there was no suggestion that either the off-standard or counterfeit products were unsafe, though that couldn’t be ruled out in the case of the latter.
Credit: Adobe Stock
On the other hand, London, of which the City of Westminster is a part, is certainly not clean or safe because air pollution throughout the capital is a huge public health issue, causing the premature deaths of thousands of people each year.
In fairness, I should point out that Mistry’s comments would have concerned all of the illicit products discovered in the raid that uncovered the tobacco and nicotine products, which included, as well as the tobacco and nicotine products already mentioned, counterfeit mobile phone covers, counterfeit Apple AirPods, counterfeit Sony PS4 consoles, USB chargers with no safety labeling and unlabeled packs of shisha tobacco. Even so, the potential safety problems raised by all of these products would be infinitesimal compared with those associated with pollution, which is where I would concentrate my efforts if I really wanted to keep things clean and safe.
I wrote the above just ahead of the arrival on May 31 of the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day (WNTD). Normally, I pay no attention to this annual event, which I have always assumed is observed only by those who have no positive interaction with tobacco during the rest of the year as well. But this year, something has changed.
This year, it seems to have come to the WHO’s attention that it is supposed to be a body concerned with health issues that cannot, like smoking, be dealt with at a national level— issues, such as those to do with pandemics, that don’t observe borders. So, this year, the theme of its WNTD is “Tobacco: Threat to our environment.”
To my way of thinking, this represents a smart move and a good move. It is a good move, I believe, because it pushes at the door of reality. It doesn’t say so, but it offers the slightest of hints that the biggest threat to the health of the world isn’t tobacco or smoking but environmental collapse. At the same time, it is a smart move from the point of view of those implacably opposed to tobacco because it helps to underline the growing alignment between health and environmental activists.
The tobacco and nicotine industry needs to be aware of this alignment and to take action wherever it can to ameliorate the negative effects it is having on the environment, and, wherever possible, to publicize what it is doing. It needs to do this because of the historical problems it has created through its lack of significant action in respect of such issues as deforestation and the careless disposal of cigarette butts and in respect of the more contemporary problems associated with e-cigarettes and some other lower risk products. And there should be no greenwashing. The industry should address these matters because it is the right thing to do, and it possibly needs to address them if it wants to keep on operating.
Credit: Kulichok
Ahead of WNTD, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in the U.S. issued a report titled “Tobacco and the environment: Case studies on policies to protect our environment and our health from tobacco.” As the title suggests, the report looks at how, in ASH’s view, the tobacco industry passes to society in general the health and environmental costs it creates. And it talks up possible remedies, such as that based on the “polluter pays” principle and the application of extended producer responsibility, and even the shuttering of the industry through policies such as those concerned with what is known as the tobacco endgame.
Much of the report is based on the problems caused by traditional tobacco production and consumption, but e-cigarettes are included. “From mining to manufacturing, using and disposing, each stage of the e-cigarette product lifecycle presents novel environmental harms compared with traditional cigarettes,” the report says in part, quoting the American Public Health Association. “Tobacco companies already recognize that e-cigarettes pose new environmental burdens, necessitating them to manage new areas of impact due to the increasing use of electronics and batteries in [their] products.”
I don’t agree with all aspects of the report, but it is impossible, in my view, to disagree with the underlying message that the industry has a duty to act decisively to greatly reduce the impact it has on the environment—a duty that, as far as I can see, supersedes any other duty that it might have.
But let’s return to the Australia story and what might turn out to be a more positive outcome than is suggested by the seizures in WA. The story gets off to a depressing start with a WA Health spokesperson, Michael Lindsay, saying e-cigarettes are a major concern for health officials.
“It’s very uncontrolled; the sorts of things that have been found in e-cigarettes include heavy metals and volatile organic compounds,” he was quoted as saying. “Several of these chemicals are known to cause damage to human cells and DNA and cause cancer. These are not chemicals that people should be breathing in or inhaling, and it’s really important that they are removed from the marketplace to protect public health.”
Readers of this magazine will not be surprised that Lindsay did not mention that e-cigarettes were used largely by people as a low-risk substitute for high-risk traditional cigarettes or that he made no mention of pollution. But there is hope because a recent federal election in Australia saw a change of government. “Unfortunately, the outgoing Health Minister Greg Hunt was a fierce opponent of vaping, and let’s hope future health ministers are much more sensible and rational,” said a director of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, Alex Wodak.
Earlier in the piece, Wodak was quoted as saying that in Australia, e-cigarettes were disproportionately regulated compared to traditional cigarettes. “We know that the overwhelming majority of people who vape in Australia are current smokers or, even more so, former smokers, and they’re doing it to reduce the harm from smoking,” he said.
“We’re trying to enforce laws which are really stupid.”
Amen to that.
This article first appeared in Vapor Voice 3, 2022.
The CB Control unit of the Mumbai Police on Thursday conducted simultaneous raids at 11 locations in Mumbai, arresting 12 e-cigarette vendors and seizing illegal vaping products contraband worth over Rs 14 lakh ($17,000).
According to CB Control officers, the raids were the culmination of an eight-day-long operation, during which information about people illegally selling e-cigarettes was collected and verified. E-cigarettes are banned for sale, purchase and use in India under the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act 2019.
Police also contacted an online vendor through a dummy customer and placed an order for 100 e-cigarettes, asking him to come to Nagpada with the goods. As soon as he showed up, the call went out and all the other markets were raided at the same time.
“We seized a total of 2030 e-cigarettes worth Rs 14.60 lakh, along with 963 boxes of scented tobacco and 53 bottles of refilling liquid. Three of the shops we raided were also selling e-cigarettes to minors when we conducted the raids. They were additionally charged Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act,” Patil said.
