Charlie’s Holdings, parent to the Charlie’s Chalk Dust e-liquid brand, has submitted its initial premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“Today’s submission marks the first of multiple applications that Charlie’s Chalk Dust (CCD) intends to take through FDA’s approval process as it seeks to create a long-term, robust product portfolio. This is a day we’ve long awaited for in our industry,” stated Charlie’s Holdings’ Chief Operating Officer Ryan Stump in a press release. “After spending nearly $5 million over the past two years on our PMTA preparation and submission, we are extremely excited about the application we filed with the FDA.”
The release states that Stump believes “that a significant amount of our competitors will not have the resources, desire, and/or expertise to complete the extensive and costly PMTA process.” However, once approved, CCD’s marketing orders would allow the company “to benefit from being one of only a select group of companies responsibly operating in the flavored nicotine product space.”
The company also announced that it was performing human clinical trials on its products to help detect the biomarkers of exposure associated with smoking combustible cigarettes and determine the nicotine delivery efficiency of CCD products via pharmacokinetic studies.
“A large team of doctors, scientists, biostatisticians, and data analysts are conducting these time intensive clinical trials,” the release states. “We believe that this kind of study will significantly set our application apart from those that are relying solely on the literature-based approach to this critical ‘in human’ assessment of product performance.”
Despite the United States weathering the most severe healthcare crisis in generations, some elected officials are pushing policies that would push death rates even higher.
On August 11, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) the chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, wrote to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn demanding a complete ban on the sale of reduced-risk tobacco alternatives such as e-cigarettes throughout the United States.
This is a misguided and dangerous move because these harm reduction products are proven to be 95 percent safer than combustible cigarettes, and twice as effective as conventional nicotine replacement therapies.
The key is the lack of smoke and corresponding carcinogens that lie in combustible tobacco. Since their inception 10 years ago, these products have provided a lifeline for smokers previously unable to quit their deadly habit.
According to the most comprehensive peer-reviewed research coordinated by the George Washington University Medical Center, if a majority of smokers in the United States quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes over the next 10 years, there would be 6.6 million fewer premature deaths — one of the biggest public health breakthroughs in generations.
Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence on the benefits of smokers switching to vaping products, Krishnamoorthi has decided to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to support Big Tobacco and drive vapers back to smoking.
The lawmaker is using junk science to argue that vaping and smoking were somehow responsible for COVID-19 spread. Unfortunately for Krishnamoorthi, 763 studies published in the world’s most prestigious medical journals such as the European Respiratory Journal and Lancet have concluded otherwise.
These analyses have examined the medical records of millions of people in dozens of countries around the world and have completely and utterly debunked the representative’s spurious claims.
Not one to let “science” or “evidence” get in the way of his ideological agenda, Krishnamoorthi nevertheless was able to find one study he claimed supported his viewpoint. But the study presented is a study in itself on how not to analyze and interpret data.
The study conducted in May was limited to one online survey, with a relatively small number of respondents. Unlike the 763 credible studies that actually examined medical data, this particular analysis was limited to self-reporting by people who chose to engage in a survey on a website.
Even more important, the study does not even say what Krishnamoorthi claims it does. In fact, the study finds vapers — whether current or former — have no statistically significant higher rate of contracting COVID-19 than people who have never used this product.
The “spike” occurred only with dual users. But clearly, if neither smoking nor vaping increase your risk of developing symptoms, then there is no mechanism by which dual use would increase coronavirus risks, making the result a logical impossibility.
That is not the only bizarre thing about the results. The study contends that previous use of cigarettes increase risk, yet consumption over the last 30 days has no association whatsoever with COVID-19 incidence. Unfortunately, the empirical malpractice does not stop there.
The paper fails to adjust properly for the fact that more vapers chose to have a COVID-19 test than the population as a whole. This isn’t too surprising given most vapers are more health aware and health conscious, hence would be more like to opt for voluntary testing.
Clearly, this “study” — the only justification Krishnamoorthi has for his calls for prohibition — is worse than useless. The lawmaker leans heavily on an analysis that excludes all medical data and instead relies solely on a self-reporting online survey.
The results contradict 763 credible studies, rely on methodological pyrotechnics, and torture the data so brutally it would make a Bond villain blush. Yet it still doesn’t say what Krishnamoorthi wants it to say and has the unavoidable conclusion that e-cigarettes do not lead to higher rates of COVID-19.
For Krishnamoorthi to deny the science and condemn Americans to a preventable death just to fulfill a personal vendetta against reduced risk products is simply repulsive. There is absolutely no doubt that any ban on the sale of reduced risk tobacco alternatives would lead to countless easily preventable deaths as people once again take up the deadly habit of smoking.
The FDA must ignore this nakedly political letter, and instead act in accordance with the evidence. Millions of lives depend on it.
Tim Andrews is the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
While there is little evidence that flavor bans prevent youth use, bans are forcing businesses to close.
By Timothy S. Donahue
As of Aug. 1, Jeff Barry no longer owns a vape shop. Barry, who once owned three retail stores in the state of New York, had to close his last store because of New York’s ban on flavored vapor products. During the past nine years, Barry has had to close six vape shops across two states. All because of overregulation.
Barry started vaping in 2008 to quit smoking combustible cigarettes. He was the part-owner of a logistics company. Soon he was buying devices for several other smokers to help them quit. A few months later, Barry was selling 30–50 devices a day and lots of e-liquid from his house. His vapor side business soon grew too large for his home. He sold his half of the logistics company. Barry then used $15,000 of his savings to open his first vape shop in New York. Then New York legislatures started talking about banning vapor products. So, Barry moved his business to Warren, Pennsylvania, in 2012.
Barry then opened a second and third vape shop in 2014 and 2015. He was going to open a fourth store in 2016 when it happened. That year, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed off on a budget bill that included a massive new tax on electronic cigarettes. The estimated 350 vape shops scattered across Pennsylvania were devastated. The new 40 percent wholesale tax on all vapor equipment and supplies was even more crippling because the same 40 percent tax applied not only to purchases made after Oct. 1—the day the tax took effect—but also covered all inventory on store shelves on that date. A store with $100,000 worth of inventory owed the state $40,000.
Credit: Jeff Barry
“Fifty percent of all vapor stores closed in six months. I closed two stores in September of 2016 and my last store on Jan. 1, 2017,” says Barry. “I moved to one small location in New York in April 2017 and quickly opened two more stores over the next two years.” The entire time he was also doing advocacy work to help fight to keep life-saving vapor products on the market.
Like a bad dream, it happened again. Regulation would ruin Barry’s businesses. New York became the first state in the nation to restrict the sale of flavored vapor products. Snuck into a budget without debate on April 3 while most of the state’s citizenry was focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic, New York banned the sale of all flavored vapor products other than tobacco flavors. This was labeled a huge win for public health and the only real solution to the youth vaping issues. The e-liquid flavor ban went into effect on May 18, 2020, for brick-and-mortar sales and July 1 for online sales.
The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA), a nonprofit group, said in a release that the New York budget was passed under the guise of dire circumstances and that it was necessary to keep the state functioning in the midst of a crisis, but all of this was introduced by Governor Andrew Cuomo well in advance of the coronavirus outbreak in New York.
“Even under normal circumstances, voters and lawmakers are hard-pressed to amend or remove even the most egregious sections of the governor’s budget proposal,” the release stated. “There are deep cuts and rollbacks to other programs and reforms that will arguably threaten the health and financial security of millions of New Yorkers and, again, all of this was on the table before anyone was recommending austerity measures to slow the spread of Covid-19.”
Barry closed his first location on April 1. Then the second on July 1. He closed his last store on Aug. 1. “I have lost many nights’ sleep over these choices. Many people with no other option or accessibility to products in a convenient local will simply go back to smoking,” explains Barry. “Some will go to the Indian reservation (where products are not banned). Some will travel to other states to get their product.”
According to the Vapor Technology Association (VTA), in 2018, the vapor industry directly generated 87,581 jobs, including manufacturing, retail and wholesale employment. Those jobs generated more than $3.2 billion in just wages. The vapor industry has also created thousands of secondary jobs in the United States, bringing the industry’s total economic impact in 2018 to $24.46 billion.
In the same year, the industry generated more than $4.9 billion in taxes, according to the VTA. In 2016, 78 percent of e-liquid sales were flavored products, and 69 percent of disposable vapor product sales were flavored and menthol products.
Unreasonable action
Several state and local governments have now passed laws banning the sale of flavored e-liquids. In 2020, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island enacted bans on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. In 2019, eight states—Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington—issued emergency rules to temporarily ban the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Barry says that New York’s government and other states that enact flavor bans will effectively eliminate a product that is 97–99 percent safer than combustible cigarettes. With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) due date looming (Sept. 9), the future of the vapor industry is still unknown.
“Just because the government took the legality away does not mean they took the passion to help people quit smoking away,” explains Barry. “I was not a criminal two months ago, and now I am? Vaping is on the right side of science; the government will not be able to lie forever, so myself and people like me will not go away because we can’t.”
Bans on flavored vapor products began as an attempt to curb rising rates of youth use. According to 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) data, current e-cigarette use among middle and high school students increased between 2017 and 2018, with more than 3.6 million kids using e-cigarettes in 2018. Flavors, however, may not even be the real cause for the increase of youth vaping. There is also no evidence to support that bans lower youth initiation.
The FDA has said that Juul was the most popular e-cigarette brand used by youth. In response, Juul ended sales of all flavors other than tobacco flavors in the U.S. However, in May, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study on its website that concluded that youth are not using Juul for the flavors.
In a JAMA study text survey of 1,129 respondents between the ages of 14 years and 24 years, only 4.7 percent of respondents cited “flavors” as a reason for people their age to use Juul. Conversely, 62.2 percent of respondents cited social reasons.
According to Tobacco Harm Reduction 101 (THR 101), overwhelmingly, youth are using vapor products because friends and/or family members are using the products. In a Heartland Institute analysis of available youth surveys in five states, only 15.6 percent of high school students cited using e-cigarettes because of flavors.
“Existing evidence indicates that flavor bans have not reduced youth e-cigarette use in several localities that track this data. Adults rely on flavors in tobacco harm reduction products. In a 2018 survey of nearly 70,000 American adult e-cigarette users, 83.2 percent and 72.3 percent reported vaping fruit and dessert flavors” respectively, according to THR 101.
Credit: Ali Yahya
In 2019, researchers from the University of Texas and the University of North Texas set out to look at the impact of e-cigarette advertising. They found that adolescents exposed to e-cigarette ads in retail stores are twice as likely to start vaping within several years. Some countries, Canada for example, have banned all vapor product advertising.
Another reason used to justify various bans on vapor products had nothing to do with nicotine-based products. In the summer of 2019, public health authorities identified an outbreak of a deadly vaping-related lung injury. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) later called the condition e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI). In November of 2019, the CDC admitted that marijuana (THC)-based vapor products containing vitamin-E acetate were responsible for the lung illnesses, but the damage to the nicotine vapor industry was already done.
“The latest national and state findings suggest products containing THC, particularly those obtained off the street or from other informal sources (e.g., friends, family members, illicit dealers), are linked to most of the cases and play a major role in the outbreak,” the CDC said in a statement.
Many of those who advocate for bans on vapor products also claim that e-cigarettes are a “gateway” to smoking combustible cigarettes. A study released in July found this to be untrue. The study, “Association of initial e-cigarette and other tobacco product use with subsequent cigarette smoking in adolescents: a cross-sectional, matched control study,” was published in Tobacco Control.
Researchers from University College London in the U.K. concluded that “over the time period considered, e-cigarettes were unlikely to have acted as an important gateway towards cigarette smoking and may, in fact, have acted as a gateway away from smoking for vulnerable adolescents; this is consistent with the decrease in youth cigarette smoking prevalence over the same time period that youth e-cigarette use increased between 2014 and 2017.”
Unintended consequences
Many legislatures have argued that adults don’t use flavored e-liquids to quit; however, several studies have found that adults do use flavored e-liquids to quit smoking cigarettes. A study from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, that was released in May of this year, found that most regular vapers in Canada and the U.S. use nontobacco flavors. It also concluded that greater satisfaction and enjoyment with vaping are higher among fruit flavor and candy flavor users.
The study showed adult vapers use a wide range of flavors, with 63.1 percent using a nontobacco flavor. The most common flavor categories were fruit (29.4 percent) and tobacco (28.7 tobacco) followed by mint/menthol (14.4 percent) and candy (13.5 percent).
“While it does not appear that certain flavors are associated with a greater propensity to attempt to quit smoking among concurrent users, nontobacco flavors are popular among former smokers who are exclusively vaping,” the researchers wrote. “Future research should determine the likely impact of flavor bans on those who are vaping to quit smoking or to stay quit.”
Additionally, flavor bans bring a potentially bigger problem. Writing in RealClear Policy, Elizabeth Sheld described a June meeting of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Illegal Tobacco Task Force in which participants expressed fear that the ban will lead to increased smuggling and black market sales.
“I’m concerned that placing an added burden and tasking law enforcement with the enforcement of flavor bans will only stand to create a significant new black market, this includes both cross-state border smuggling and counterfeit tobacco,” said Charles Giblin, a retired special agent in charge of the New Jersey treasury’s office of criminal investigation. “At the onset, you’ll start to see an increase between Massachusetts and New Hampshire in smuggling and illegal importation via the internet of counterfeit flavored cigarettes from countries including China and Paraguay. They will skyrocket almost incredibly instantaneously. Another underestimated source will be Canadian First Nations reservation cigarette manufacturers, who are rather robust.”
The black market is already growing, writes Sheld. Rich Marianos, who served 27 years at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the task force that “the illegal tobacco trade along Interstate 95 on the East Coast is a $10 billion industry that is already working to fill the void created by Massachusetts’ new law.”
Distributors know vape shops are closing from flavor bans. Many have said that they expect to see a major change in the number of vape shops after Sept. 9. Chris Howard, from EAS, says he knows from personal experience that owners are closing brick-and-mortar vape shops. He says it isn’t easy for business owners to survive the PMTA deadline, flavor bans and then the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s almost a perfect storm.
Credit: Vaporesso
“I know they’ve closed numerous shops and the PMTA deadline hasn’t even passed. That is definitely happening. These are some die-hard vapor advocates, and they’ve been left with no choice,” says Howard. “That’s unfortunately a reality. With regard with what we are seeing happening with the consumers, we’ve seen the reports that Altria’s Marlboro brand’s sales are up whatever percent. I mean, I think a lot of people are going back to smoking. I hate it, but that is an unintended consequence.”
Despite such challenges, Barry believes the industry will survive. He says that some responsible business owners and innocent consumers will become criminals instead of going back to traditional cigarettes. “The Industry will survive. It started as a grassroots product. It will simply go back to that. We won’t stop. We only tried to help people quit smoking and make a legal business income from doing something we were passionate about,” says Barry.
Numerous public health groups, including the Royal College of Physicians, Public Health England and the American Cancer Society, have stated that the use of vapor products is significantly safer than traditional cigarettes. “E-cigarettes are also twice as effective in helping smokers quit. Further, their use could save states billions in healthcare-related costs,” writes THR 101. “As with any policy area, lawmakers should refrain from outright bans and seek out alternative solutions that reduce youth use while maintaining adult access to tobacco harm reduction products.”
There is little doubt that flavor bans and other regulations will crush small businesses. The real loser in all of this, however, is the end-user, according to Barry. “I see little hope for small business in this industry to continue to survive,” he says. “The demographic all of this regulation will hurt the most is the consumer—the smokers trying to quit by using a safer product.”
CBD vaping manufacturers and retailers in Germany will now be regulated starting in January after recent changes to the country’s tobacco law.
Under legislation passed by the German Bundestag on July 2, non-nicotine e-cigarettes and refillable containers will be regulated the way that their nicotine counterparts are, and additional advertising restrictions will apply to all vaping products, regardless of nicotine content, according to hempindustrydaily.com.
photo: Jeremynathan | Dreamstime
THC products in Germany are considered narcotics and fall under different rules entirely. “Many of my clients offer CBD-containing liquids for e-cigarettes and are concerned about the changes,” said Julia Seestaedt, a Hamburg-based attorney for the cannabis industry. “At the moment, manufacturers and retailers are most concerned about the comprehensive advertising ban associated with the change.”
According to Peter Homberg, who heads the European cannabis practice for Dentons Europe LLP in Berlin, the new legislation is just one facet of an increasingly restrictive market for all CBD products in Germany. “German regulation is very strict on CBD products, and it is to be expected that this will not change in the future,” Homberg said.
The German CBD retail landscape, he said, is markedly different than in the U.S. “It’s not as free as in the U.S. It is a very wide-open liberal market in the U.S., but we don’t have that here in Germany, despite the fact that there are products available on the market.”
With Germany set to put non-nicotine vapes on equal footing with their nicotine counterparts, these rules will soon apply to CBD vape manufacturers as well. Subjecting nicotine-free vape products to the same requirements and restrictions as their nicotine counterparts was “necessary to protect consumers from damage to their health,” the draft text reads.
Lawmakers wrote that the new advertising bans for CBD and other non-nicotine vape products were created in part to shield children from their influence. The legislation’s new restriction on outdoor advertising dictates that ads can be displayed only in shop windows or on exterior walls at retail stores that sell the products in question.
This means that “manufacturers will no longer be able to advertise nicotine-free CBD vapes on sidewalk advertising columns or billboards,” Seestaedt noted.
The changes are set to take effect beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, though outdoor advertising restrictions don’t take effect until 2024.
Non-nicotine e-cigarettes or refillable containers that were manufactured or placed on the market and labelled before Jan. 1, 2021 and complied with earlier provisions may remain on the market until March 31, 2021, according to the legislation.
Lawmakers have called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take e-cigarettes temporarily off the market during the pandemic, citing a new study suggesting that vapers are significantly more likely to contract Covid-19.
“If we reduce the number of vapers in America, we will reduce the unnecessary stress we are putting on our testing system,” Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote in a letter sent to the FDA by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy. “People should not have to wait weeks for Covid-19 test results—removing the risk posed by vaping will help.”
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that among young people who were tested for the coronavirus, those who vaped were five to seven times more likely to be infected than those who did not use e-cigarettes.
The study, which was published online Aug. 11 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, is the first to examine connections between youth vaping and Covid-19 using U.S. population-based data collected during the pandemic.
“Young people may believe their age protects them from contracting the virus or that they will not experience symptoms of Covid-19, but the data show this isn’t true among those who vape,” said the study’s lead author, Shivani Mathur Gaiha.
“This study tells us pretty clearly that youth who are using vapes or are dual-using are at elevated risk, and it’s not just a small increase in risk; it’s a big one,” Gaiha said.
Remarkably, the researchers did not find a connection between Covid-19 diagnosis and smoking conventional cigarettes alone, perhaps because the prevalent pattern among youth is to use both vaping devices and traditional cigarettes. Other research has shown that nearly all nicotine-using youth vape, and some also smoke cigarettes, but very few use cigarettes only.
In addition to warning teenagers and young adults about the dangers of vaping, the researchers said they hoped their findings will prompt the FDA to further tighten regulations governing how vaping products are sold to young people.
“Now is the time,” said senior author Halpern-Felsher. “We need the FDA to hurry up and regulate these products. And we need to tell everyone: If you are a vaper, you are putting yourself at risk for Covid-19 and other lung disease.”
Vaping advocates expressed concern about the study.
“While we welcome any research which can assist people in staying safe during the Covid-19 pandemic, the UKVIA is disappointed by the Stanford-led study, which appears to dismiss the vital harm-reduction role of vaping for smokers, and draws disproportionate conclusions,” said John Dunne, director at the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA).
Insisting there is no scientific evidence linking smoking and vaping with Covid-19, Dunne said the UKVIA was looking forward to seeing the peer review of the Stanford study.
“It is also somewhat reckless in stating that vapers are putting themselves ‘at risk of Covid-19’ by vaping,” he said. “Vaping products are designed only for smokers and ex-smokers to help them quit conventional cigarettes, which is the most positive action someone can take to improve their health.”
The U.S. House of Representatives has not yet voted on a bill that would end online sales of vapor products to minors. The bill has been “held at desk” for nearly a month. No announcement has been made for when the House would bring the bill to the floor.
On July 1, the U.S. Senate passed the Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act (S.1253) by unanimous consent. The legislation aims end online e-cigarette sales to minors by applying the same measures that are required when traditional cigarettes are purchased online.
The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) said it strongly supports S. 1253, which “ensures responsible retailing of e-cigarettes and age verification across all channels. The legislation would require online sellers of e-cigarettes to ensure the delivery carrier verifies the age of the recipient upon delivery. It would also require online sellers to collect and remit the appropriate state and local taxes,” according to a story on the NACS website.
These rules are already in place for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products purchased over the internet after Congress passes the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act, in 2010. Language for vapor products was not included in the law.
The House passed its version of the bill (H.R. 3942) on suspension. Given that the Senate bill is slightly different than the House version, the House will need to pass the Senate’s version before it can become law, according to NACS.
An amendment to protect all U.S. state-run marijuana programs from federal interference passed the U.S. he House of Representatives on Thursday. The bill passed in a 254-163 vote on the floor. Earlier in the day, it had been approved in an initial voice vote.
If enacted, the measure would prevent the Department of Justice (DOJ) from using its funds to impede states from implementing cannabis legalization laws. The bipartisan effort was led by Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Tom McClintock, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Barbara Lee.
The amendment builds on an existing provision that only protects state medical cannabis laws from DOJ intervention that has been enacted through appropriations legislation each year since 2014.
As a growing number of states have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes, “we’ve watched across the country shifting attitudes,” Blumenauer said in the floor debate prior to the vote, according to marijuanamoment.net, a cannabis advocacy group. “The federal government, sadly, is still trapped by the dead hand of Richard Nixon’s war on drugs, declaring cannabis a schedule I controlled substance.”
The congressman also talked about separate House-passed legislation to protect banks that service the marijuana industry and another standalone bill to federally deschedule cannabis.
Vaping is on the verge of being banned in Melbourne’s CBD as the council votes on whether to redefine e-cigarettes as ‘smoking’, angering civil libertarians. The City of Melbourne Council will decide on Tuesday whether to ban vaping from all of council’s existing smoke-free zones, according to an article in the Daily Mail.
Melbourne city centre (also known colloquially as simply “The City” or “The CBD” is the central built up area of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, centred on the Hoddle Grid, the oldest part of the city laid out in 1837, and includes its fringes. It is not to be confused with the larger local government area of the City of Melbourne which includes this area and the inner suburbs around it, according to wikipedia.
A total of 11 smoke-free zones in the CBD and surrounds including the Bourke Street Mall would be covered by the ban. The popular Tan running track which loops around Kings Domain and the Royal Botanical Gardens, south-east of the CBD, would be off-limits to vapers if the motion passes the council vote.
Anyone who is younger than 21 will be prohibited from buying tobacco products in Minnesota beginning Saturday, Aug. 1.
A new statute is set to take effect that day, squaring state law with a federal measure that outlaws purchases of tobacco and e-cigarette products to those younger than 21, according to an article in the Duluth News Tribune. Under the law, those under 21 would also be prohibited from entering tobacco or vape shops.
Businesses that sell tobacco products to those younger than 21 would face a $300 penalty after the first offense with higher fees on subsequent offenses. And anyone under 21 found buying tobacco products would face license suspensions and adults who furnish the products to them would face a $50 fine, the story states.
The federal government has hiked the minimum age of sale of tobacco products from 18 to 21, and local governments around the state have enacted similar ordinances in their communities. But state lawmakers and advocates aiming to prevent tobacco addiction in young people said the measures weren’t being enforced evenly across the state.
The State Duma MPs in Russia have adopted a bill restricting the use of electronic cigarettes and hookahs.
According to a statement from the lawmaking authority, the measure sets restrictions on the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and hookahs inside certain territories, premises and objects; issues requirements for demonstration of electronic smoking articles in audiovisual works for minors and adults.
Moreover, the document restricts the sale of vapor products and bans their sale to minors and involvement of children in the use of them, according to a Russian state information agency.
There is also a proposal to introduce administrative fines for violations of the imposed restrictions.
