The WS-23 cooling agent has limited impact on the experiment animals at the tested dose, according to a study performed by RLX Technology and published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology.
The RLX Technology study showed that there were no deaths in any of WS-23 treated groups in the acute and subacute inhalation studies, with no remarkable changes occurred in body weight, organ weight, hematology and serum biochemistry and no toxic effects in the histopathologic analysis.
It was the first study published on the Science Citation Index (SCI) indexed journal conducted by the Chinese e-cigarette industry.
WS-23 is a well-known artificial synthesis cooling agent widely used in foods, medicines and tobaccos. As a common cooling agent in e-cigarette liquids, WS-23 has led to concerns about the inhalation toxicity with the proliferation of e-cigarettes in recent years. The study shows that at the tested dose level, inhalation of WS-23 will not bring toxic side effect to test animals.
“Product safety has always been RLX’s top concern, and it is also the direction and commitment in our research and development,” said Xingtao Jiang, head of RELX Lab, which is part of RLX Technology, in a statement. Before the study was published, RELX Lab conducted vitro tests to prove the aerosol containing WS-23 is safe to use in the products.
Jarvis Vaping Supply (JVS), parent to four of 21 Ohio-based Vapor Station vape shops, announced that its premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) has been accepted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). James Jarvis, co-owner of JVS with his wife Gerri, announced the receipt of the acceptance letter on his Facebook page. The acceptance includes all 998 SKUs submitted to the FDA for authorization, James confirmed in a text.
“I’m so proud of my wife … she spent so many late nights, so many hours, frustration, stress and a lot of patience went into this,” James wrote. “She helped many others once she finished ours on top of this.”
JVS is a wholesale vaping supply store. Alongside the four Vapor Station retail stores in and around Columbus, Ohio, James also serves as president of the Ohio Vapor Trade Association, and both Gerri and James are avid advocates of the vapor industry.
Gerri and James Jarvis
While James continued to run the business, Gerri worked day and night over six months to fill out PMTAs for 998 products (SKUs). In the end, she dumped roughly 3 million pages off at the FDA. With just the help of a Facebook group called PMTA Sharing, Gerri was able to climb the PMTA mountain without any help from firms experienced in submitting PMTAs. The Jarvis’ were among 1,600 vapor company representatives who joined this and other private groups to help them navigate the PMTA process.
“With Covid-19 hitting right in the thick of the PMTA process, money was so tight that we needed to be careful with spending. Thanks to the help of the Facebook group, we were confident that we could turn something in to the FDA,” Gerri said in a recent interview with Vapor Voice.
After submitting JVS PMTAs, Gerri then went on to help her friend Jason Gang of Westside Vapor as well as several other small companies negotiate the PMTA process, including Dripology, Vapor Generation, KL Labs and E Cig Cafe. Gerri said Westside Vapor’s PMTAs for its 1,800 products totaled over 6 million pages. Westside Vapor also received an acceptance letter according to James, but that has not yet been verified.
In 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared a so-called youth vaping epidemic. Lawmakers across the country, from city council members, to state leaders, to Congress, have been attempting to reduce youth use of e-cigarettes and vaping products ever since, Lindsey Stroud wrote for Inside Sources. Addressing youth use of any age-restricted product is laudable, but it should not come at the expense of adult users of such products. And all policies introduced by well-intended lawmakers threaten adult access either through bans, arduous regulations, or unfair taxation.
A quick glance at existing data on youth e-cigarette use finds many of these “solutions” fail to address the real reason why youth use e-cigarettes. Officials completely disregard that youth smoking rates are at all-time lows. Such legislation threatens adult access to tobacco harm reduction products and is unlikely to reduce youth e-cigarette use.
Take, for example, the impending ban on mailing vapor products. Crammed into the 5000+ pages of the December 2020 COVID-19 relief bill was an amendment to include electronic cigarettes in the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act. Not only will the new regulation ban the shipment of e-cigarettes in USPS mail it will also require retailers to register with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well require sellers, to submit monthly reports to the state agency that handles tobacco taxes in all states where their products are sold.
Lindsey Stroud
The amendment was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who erroneously claimed “[b]uying e-cigarettes online is one of the easiest ways for children and teens to get their hands on these harmful products.”
Several state-based youth surveys have shown youths are not relying on the internet to obtain e-cigarettes. For example, in 2019, in Vermont, among current e-cigarette users, only three percent of high school students under 18 years of age reported buying vapor products online. Conversely, 52 percent of minors reported borrowing e-cigarettes. In aggregate data of all students from five different state high school surveys including Arkansas, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, only 0.9 percent of high school students reported purchasing vapor products from online retailers. With very few youths using the internet and mail to obtain e-cigarettes, a ban on the shipment of such products is highly unlikely to reduce underage e-cigarette use.
The mail ban isn’t the only flawed “solution” proposed by lawmakers. Many localities and states have banned, or are attempting to ban, the sale of flavored vapor products. Yet again, the data overwhelmingly indicate youth use e-cigarettes because of “other” reasons and because friends and family members use them. For example, in the aforementioned Vermont survey, when asked about the “primary reason” for using e-cigarette products (among current users) only 10 percent reported “flavors,” compared to 51 percent who cited “other,” and 17 percent who cited friends and family. This data is similar to other states including Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Again, banning flavors is unlikely to reduce youth use of e-cigarettes and it may also have adverse effects. In San Francisco, which banned the sale of flavored e-cigarettes in 2018, youth vaping still increased after the ban, but so did youth smoking rates. In fact, current combustible cigarette use among high school students increased from 4.7 percent of San Francisco high school students in 2017, to 6.5 percent in 2019.
In order to protect adult access, youth use of e-cigarettes and vapor products must be addressed, but bans are ineffective measures and ultimately punish adults. States do have one solution in place, borne by the pockets of the very smokers that are trying to quit by using flavor vapor products: the monies received from tobacco taxes and settlement payments.
Each year, states allocate a pitiful amount of existing tobacco dollars towards tobacco control measures, including cessation, education, and youth prevention. In 2019, states collected an estimated $16.7 billion in cigarette taxes and $6.2 billion in tobacco settlement payments, yet spent only $655 million in state funding on tobacco control programs. This is a paltry 3 percent.
Given the lack of funding dedicated towards programs to help smokers quit, policymakers should embrace e-cigarettes as they have been more effective at reducing smoking than the insufficiently-funded tobacco control programs.
As a tool that has helped millions of American adults quit smoking, lawmakers must avoid policies that preventing adult access to e-cigarettes and vapor products. They must also rely on existing data on why youth are using e-cigarettes when putting forth policies to limit youth e-cigarette use. To fail to do so harms millions of American adult smokers – and former smokers – and fails to reduce youth use.
Lindsey Stroud is the creator and manager of Tobacco Harm Reduction 101 (www.thr101.org), a website that provides analysis and insight on tobacco and vapor products.
The China Patent Office has approved Next Generation Labs’ (NGL) patent application covering the process for the preparation of R-S [synthetic] nicotine, issue number 201580069647.2.
The approval will give NGL the ability to better enforce its intellectual property rights. NGL is the world’s largest manufacturer of S-isomer, R-S isomer and R-isomer synthetic nicotine sold under the registered brand name TFN.
According to NGL, the U.S. and Korean markets have been inundated with dozens of fake synthetic nicotine products and brands, and many manufacturers have misleadingly labeled bulk pure nicotine, bulk vape liquid mixtures and vaping and oral nicotine products as made with TFN. In many instances, the nicotine contained in these products is not synthetic, tobacco-free or non-tobacco, but is in fact derived from tobacco sources.
For almost a decade, NGL has spent considerable effort establishing a strong global intellectual property portfolio that has become distinctive of the company’s goodwill and of the high-quality adult consumers expect of TFN-branded nicotine.
NGL now intends to fully enforce its rights against many of these so-called synthetic nicotine brands.
NGL has been taking direct action in the United States and through its sole South Korean distribution partner NextEra to limit the misleading claims of unscrupulous sellers of pseudo-synthetic nicotine, and against manufacturers and brand owners who misrepresent that their product contains TFN branded synthetic non-tobacco-nicotine.
“With the assistance of the Chinese authorities, NGL now intends to fully enforce its rights against many of these so-called synthetic nicotine brands at their point of manufacture, and will take the lead with national customs agencies to limit the flow of fake synthetic nicotine products at trade exit and entry points in China, the U.S., EU, UK, South Korea, India, Canada, and Australia,” the company wrote in a press release.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted all of Nicopure Labs’ Halo products’ premarket tobacco product applications (PMTA) for the substantive scientific review phase.
Just over six months after submission, Nicopure Labs’ PMTAs for Halo Turkish Tobacco E-liquid, Halo Triton II Starter Kit, Halo ZERO Starter Kit and all supporting consumable components have been accepted and advanced to the final phase, substantive scientific review, by the FDA. Halo FDA accepted premarket tobacco product applications include:
Halo Tribeca Tobacco e-liquid
Halo SubZero Menthol e-liquid
Halo Turkish Tobacco e-liquid
Halo Fusion Unflavored Tobacco e-liquid
Halo Triton II Starter Kit (and supporting consumable components)
Halo ZERO Starter Kit (and supporting consumable components)
“Halo’s more than 12 years of commitment to producing the highest quality vaping products available for adult consumers has been our organization’s mission for more than a decade,” said Jeffrey Stamler, co-founder of Nicopure Labs, in a statement. “We believe in science, and we believe in transparency; we are honored to continue to work with the FDA, and as always, in the best interest of the industry and the most important thing of them all, our loyal customers.”
Borgwaldt KC has launched the NGX10, a 10-port linear vaping machine for next-generation products.
Exceeding ISO 20768 and CRM 81 specifications with gas analyzer options to match the specifics of these products, the NGX10 is a new, professional, flexible, efficient and reliable member of Borgwaldt KC’s well-known analytical vaping machines.
The NGX10 incorporates all the design and feature improvements specific to the emission testing of next-generation products.
The machine can handle all device sizes and shapes. For more information, visit www.borgwaldt.com.
Cerulean has launched a new stand-alone Aerosol Temperature Measurement System (ATMS), the company announced on its website.
The ATMS is designed for research and quality assurance applications to measure the temperature of aerosol generated from e-cigarettes and heated-tobacco products.
The ATMS monitors and records aerosol temperature on a puff-by-puff basis in real time and is available in multiholder configurations of one, four, five, eight, 10 and 20 channels.
Comprising a supplied portable computer with an intuitive user interface and ISO-compliant Cambridge Filter Holders, the ATMS can be fitted to any vaping machine and will record and display in real time the aerosol temperate during the experiment.
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.
Public Health England’s (PHE) latest evidence review reinforces vaping’s role in smoking cessation as well as the low rate of use among underage never-smokers.
As the U.K. prepares to reevaluate its Tobacco & Related Products Regulations following Brexit, the report shows great successes in harm reduction and smoking cessation linked to vaping products.
In every region of the country, quit rates among adult smokers were found to be higher with the use of vaping than with other products, ranging from 49 percent success in the South West to 78 percent in Yorkshire and the Humber.
PHE states that the use of nicotine-replacement therapies (NRT) among long-term former smokers is declining while the use of vaping products is increasing. Citing data from Action on Smoking and Health, the review highlights that the most common reasons given for vaping were to quit combustible cigarettes (29.7 percent), stay off cigarettes after quitting (19.4 percent) and to reduce tobacco consumption (11.2 percent).
Flavors remain an important driver for those using vaping products, with 31.6 percent of vapers reporting fruit flavors to be their preference.
Uptake among “never-smoker” youth remains very low, between 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent, with PHE confirming that this rate has not increased in recent years.
John Dunne
“This a defining moment for the vaping sector and truly shows the considerable progress it has made against a backdrop of significant misinformation around the industry, with Public Health England once again stating that perceptions of the harm caused by vaping compared with smoking are increasingly out of line with the evidence,” said John Dunne, director general of the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA).
“This latest data, which the review is based upon, provides incontrovertible evidence as to the importance of vaping to successful smoking cessation and the nation’s public health.”
Dunne also pointed to challenges that need addressing by the industry and policy makers.
“Despite the many positives in this report, a great deal remains to be done,” he said. “Action on Smoking and Health, for example, has found that just 11 percent of local authority stop-smoking services are offering vaping products to some or all of those trying to quit smoking. With the clear efficacy of vaping evidenced in this report, we must ensure this figure grows.
“As an industry, we also share PHE’s views on stronger enforcement in preventing underage sales. In our response to the government’s TRPR consultation, which we will be publishing shortly, we call for fully funded regional and national test purchasing schemes to better understand compliance and to help educate retailers on their legal requirements. The UKVIA has already published the first ever Preventing Underage Sales Guide for vape shops and online retailers, which has been supported by Trading Standards.
“The review’s finding that more than 50 percent of people believe vaping to be as harmful or more harmful than the use of combustible cigarettes means we need to keep educating smokers about the fact that vaping is a fraction of the harm of smoking, has literally changed the lives of former smokers for the better and is acknowledged as one of the best ways to quit conventional cigarettes.”
A recent survey from South Korea found that 8 in 10 South Korean e-cigarette users said they had secretly smoked stealthily in non-smoking areas. At 83.5 percent, the vast majority of e-cigarette users said they had vaped illegally, dwarfing the 16.5 percent who said they did not participate in such activity.
Credit Sungho Song
Under the National Health Promotion Act, those who use e-cigarettes in non-smoking areas can be fined, just like for smoking conventional tobacco cigarettes.Heat-not-burn products were not mentioned in the study and would face similar fines, according to a story by The Korea Bizwire.
A research team from the Asan Medical Center conducted a survey of 7,000 men and women between 20 and 69 years of age. Of the total, the number of people who had used e-cigarettes in the previous month stood at 394. Among vapers, 44.6 percent between 20 and 34 years old, while men accounted for 74.1 percent of the total.
Most participants said the smoked at home indoors, which accounted for the largest share at 46.9 percent, followed by private cars at 36.9 percent and outdoor non-smoking areas at 28.3 percent. Men and women accounted for 44 percent and 55.6 percent of the violators, respectively, indicating that more than half of female vapers users are vaping secretly at homes.
