Tag: vaping

Blinc Group Raises $1.5 Million in Bridge Funding
The Blinc Group has successfully raised a $1.5 million in bridge funding until its next round of funding, Series A. The financing of was led by Equitas Partners Fund, WGD Capital, LP, and 7thirty Capital.
Credit: Pasja1000
“The Blinc Group puts quality and safety at the forefront of its vape technology and since day one, that dedication to the highest standards has brought us the endorsement of institutional investors focused on the cannabis industry,” said Arnaud Dumas de Rauly, CEO and co-founder of the Blinc Group. “Our team navigated 2019’s vape crisis helping set standards and advise regulators on testing and compliance, and last year the company saw our best quarter yet amid the COVID-19 pandemic as the industry learned the benefits of safety and traceability. We have shown that we are a resilient company that puts consumers first, which has made all the difference.”
In 2020, Blinc Group, a regulatory-focused designer and provider of premium, customized and bespoke vaporizer technologies, more than tripled its orders with over 330 percent YOY growth, showcasing the technology company’s ability to scale and flourish in a difficult regulatory landscape, according to a press release.
Dumas de Rauly attributes much of the company’s success to the emphasis it placed on safety, compliance throughout the vape crisis of 2019 and the Coronavirus pandemic. The company has serves clients around the globe including Canadian heavyweights because of its unique ability to meet Health Canada’s rigorous standards.
Arnaud Dumas de Rauly
“We began underwriting our initial investment in Blinc near the onset of the so-called vape crisis in 2019 and it became quickly apparent that the team’s experience within the vape technology space and its focus on quality, traceability and customer service would see them through and enable them to emerge as a market leader,” said Andi Goldman, Managing Member and co-founder of the Equitas Partners Fund. “While others turned more attention towards safer vaping products after the crisis, safety had always been a major pillar of Blinc’s products and part of its DNA, which attracted us as investors and gave us confidence that they would be able to substantially expand their business into Canada and elsewhere.”
The Blinc Group has also stayed ahead of the industry in part due to its strong ties in Shenzhen, China, and employing a manufacturing line dedicated to their products, which helped eliminate hiccups in the supply chain, according to the release. The Company’s China-based team is the backbone of Blinc’s “Powered By Blinc” offering, a certified product manufactured to the highest international standards of safety and compliance with complete quality control and full traceability of the product, process, and each sub-component across the entire supply chain.
“We have watched the Blinc team over the past few years as they have grown their business and dedicated their focus to safety and traceablity within the vape hardware sector. Blinc’s reputation for putting these important factors first has secured customer wins with some of the leading cannabis operators in North America”, said Michael Mitgang, managing director and Co- Founder of the WGD Opportunity Fund.
Proceeds from this financing will go towards expanding Blinc’s sales team, opening an office in Toronto, as well as expanding the team in Shenzhen, and the research and development of new innovative materials and vape technologies.
“The vape category is one of the primary revenue drivers in every market and satisfies the demands of some of the most committed cannabis consumers. Providing high-quality products is a must for any brand looking to win and retain loyal shoppers,” said 7thirty’s director of Research, Ben Richardson “The Blinc Group’s focus on vape safety and compliance, in addition to CEO Arnaud Dumas de Rauly’s leadership roles with International and European committees on vaping products, position the Company as a leading voice in this fast-growing category.”
In 2020, The Blinc Group worked closely with Colorado’s Science & Policy Committee on the adoption of new testing standards for the emissions from vape devices. This kind of work is just one example of the dedication that the Blinc Group team puts on aligning the cannabis industry with best practices for the safest products possible.
The Blinc Group also received additional funding from the Arcview Collective Fund and the Panther Opportunity Fund.
January 16, 2021
Stroud: Lawmakers Ignoring E-Cig Harm Reduction Potential
A new year and new resolutions. In 2021, many Americans will attempt to lose the weight gained after weeks – and months – of stay-at-home orders. Some may have been inclined to reduce their Zoom time, but for many smokers the beginning of a new year marks a resolution to quit smoking.
Credit: Marko Tomic
This particular resolution is difficult. A 2016 study from the UK’s Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) reported that “quitting smoking is the most difficult resolution to keep,” and that among Brits who reported making a resolution to quit smoking, “41% kept this for a month, [and] 13% [stuck] with it after a year.” A study from the University of Scranton found “only 8 percent of people who make resolutions [to quit smoking] meet their goal.”
Regardless if one is choosing to quit smoking as a New Year’s resolution, giving up cigarettes is difficult any time of the year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less “than one in 10 adult cigarette smokers succeed in quitting each year,” and in 2018, only 7.5 percent of smokers had successfully quit smoking.
There are many options for smokers to use to help aid their smoke-free journey, including traditional nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) like gum and patches, medication, and switching to electronic cigarettes and vapor products. In the aforementioned RSPH report, the agency noted vapor products “are becoming increasingly popular, and RSPH [recognizes] the growing body of evidence that for many they can be an effective smoking cessation tool.”
This school of thought – that e-cigarettes are less harmful and help smokers quit – is also found among other public health organizations including Public Health England, the Royal College of Physicians, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
A landmark October 2020 review published in the Cochrane Library Database of Systematic Reviews examined 50 completed studies on e-cigarette use, which represented more than 12,400 e-cigarette users. The authors found that there was “moderate-certainty evidence, limited by imprecision, that quit rates were higher in people randomized to nicotine [e-cigarettes] than in those randomized to nicotine replacement therapy.” Indeed, the authors found that of “every 100 people using nicotine e-cigarettes to stop smoking, 10 might successfully stop, compared with only six of 100 people” using NRT or “nicotine-free e-cigarettes.”
Despite the science presented, many lawmakers are disregarding the evidence and seeking to limit and/or prohibit adult access to vapor products. Currently, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island have banned the sale of flavored vapor products. Massachusetts has a current ban on both flavored combustible cigarettes and e-cigarettes, and California’s own flavored tobacco and vapor ban is currently delayed as officials verify signatures for a referendum that would create a ballot measure to repeal the flavor ban in 2022.
Worse, politicians have used the novel coronavirus to push through legislation that bans the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering vapor products. Literally “buried” in the thousands of pages in the December COVID-19 relief package is the “Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act” which orders the USPS to “promulgate regulations” to apply the Jenkins Act – which currently forbids the shipment of cigarettes by the USPS – to vapor products. The legislation also imposes greater tax reporting requirements on business sales of vapor products that are shipped by the USPS.
Although addressing youth use of e-cigarettes is laudable, essentially preventing online sales of vapor products will harm consumers of those products as retailers are forced to rely on an even limited number of delivery services to ship their products. FedEx recently announced that beginning on March 1, 2021 the delivery service “will begin prohibiting electronic cigarettes, vaping liquids, and other vaping products in the FedEx global network.”
New Year’s resolutions shouldn’t be broken because of government regulations. Former smokers should not be fearful of a possible return to cigarettes because policymakers are preventing access to tobacco harm reduction products. Perhaps the only good thing is that this year, unlike other New Year’s resolutions, smokers can blame the government on their broken resolution to quit smoking.
The views expressed in the above opinion are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Vapor Voice or its parent organization.
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. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
January 14, 2021
Health Experts: WHO Must Embrace Vapor to Save Lives
New Year resolutions always include commitments to quit smoking. Most people fail not for want of trying but for want of options that can help them. Our interventions to date are not good enough. Will the World Health Organization’s (WHO) campaign to help 100 million people quit tobacco (WHO News Release Dec 8, 2020) make a difference? Is the WHO willing to embrace new methods and emerging scientific data to course correct and in the process save millions of lives?
Credit: Martin Budenbender
The WHO depends upon “new contributions from partners” to help smokers quit (WHO News Release Dec 8, 2020), Derek Yach and Chitra Subramaniam write in an opinion for Business Insider. They are as diverse as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, and Google. These digital giants are not known for their solutions to help people quit. Worse, WHO has turned to Allen Carr’s Easyway that has published studies of dubious quality and has a strong opposition to the use of nicotine even in nicotine replacement therapy (NRT Allen Carr, BMJ 2006).
Unfortunately, most of the countries listed as priorities for this campaign have yet to include NRTs in their national drug formularies despite WHO having included it in the Essential Drug list way back (Application for Inclusion of Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) in the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, WHO, 2009).
WHO should conduct an independent review of the evidence of each partners’ interventions in the very diverse set of countries where they will be tested. Such a review is a basic requirement for making global recommendations. It must be as rigorous and science-based as the processes that were put into action to approve COVID 19 vaccines. (WHO News Release Dec 31, 2020)
Florence, WHO’s robotic digital health worker was launched with this campaign to help smokers quit. Dr. Yach tried it (see Speak to Florence) but found Florence true to its name – robotic and unable to answer simple questions and clearly out of depth when asked real world questions outside of the algorithm. A gimmick of this nature is disrespectful as it mocks those seeking to quit.
It seems that WHO is far more interested in ending the use of tobacco harm reduction products than in saving lives.
The latest Global State of Tobacco Harm reduction (GSTHR) report (GSTHR, Burning Issues 2020) indicates that almost 100 million people are now using a range of such products with most completely off combustible cigarettes and toxic smokeless tobacco products. This report provides convincing evidence that harm reduction products, including snus, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, are more effective means of quitting than the use of NRTs, and substantially lower exposure to harmful products of combustion seen in cigarettes and bidis.
In contrast, WHO’s latest report from their expert committee on Tobacco Product Regulation, released December 23rd, recommends banning and prohibiting e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. This echoes a call by the Union, a Bloomberg Philanthropy financed NGO, to all low and middle income countries (LMICs) to ban such products to “avoid being distracted” by them (WHO Expert Committee Meeting Report, Dec 23, 2020).
Distraction from what one may ask?
This “expert” report did not address snus. That may be because WHO accepts the EC ban as being the basis for its policies despite the recent USFDA decision that led to it being the first class of tobacco harm reductions products to pass its rigorous evaluation process (FDA News Release, Jul 2020).
Before the FCTC negotiations began 20 years ago under Dr. Yach’s leadership of the Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) WHO invited tobacco industry scientists to present to the fledgling Tobacco Products Regulation Expert Committee on their progress in developing safer tobacco products. The presentations were not useable then for any specific harm reduction recommendations to be made. The hope remained that in time scientific progress would follow. For that reason – and in good faith – harm reduction found its way into the very definition of tobacco control used in the FCTC (WHO FCTC 2004).
Decades have passed and tobacco consumption continues to kill people mainly in LMICs. Science and innovation have permeated every sector of society. Dirty legacy industries are now leaders in driving sustainable development. This is underway in the oil and gas, transport, mining and food sectors. And as the GSTHR and our Tobacco Transformation Index (https://tobaccotransformationindex.org/) bears out, such transformation is underway in the tobacco sector as well. This transformation should be embraced by the WHO not shunned.
Instead of looking into the future and enabling global leadership, the United Nation’s (UN) top health agency is digging into its past with a ferocity that is difficult to comprehend. Ignoring decisions by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Cochrane Collaborating Centers and other regulatory and science oversight groups indicating the power of THR to increase quit rates more effectively than NRTs for example, or the potential to sharply reduce risks associated with combustible cigarettes or toxic smokeless products.
One hopes that as 2021 unfolds, WHO will take a fresh look at the power of THR to accelerate an end to smoking. A good way to start would be to summon the leading scientists from tobacco and e-cigarette companies to present to the WHO Tobacco Product Regulations Expert Committee in a series of open sessions. The aim could be simple: to assess whether industry has made material progress in developing products able to end smoking in order to truly judge whether the unilateral bans and prohibitions are warranted.
From what we know, the answer is yes. WHO’s unambitious aim of helping 100 million of the 1.1 billion tobacco users quit could be revised upwards dramatically if they were to open up to rapid progress underway in the very companies we rightfully condemned 20 years ago.
Knowledge that ignores science cannot help public health. We are seeing it with the COVID 19 crisis. We are seeing it differently in tobacco control. Time is not on our side.
The views expressed in the above opinion are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Vapor Voice or its parent organization.
Derek Yach is president of the Smoke Free Foundation, USA. He has spent four decades advancing global public health especially chronic diseases. He was a key architect of the WHO’s FCTC.
Chitra Subramaniam is the founder of CSD consulting Switzerland. A journalist by training and a media entrepreneur she writes on public health, development and trade
January 14, 2021
Macau Health Authorities Say Smoking Rules Apply to Vaping
Vaping devices and e-cigarettes are included and treated the same as combustible cigarettes in accordance with Macau’s local smoking control laws, according to Macau health authorities. Vaporizers or e-cigarette devices have become growingly popular in the city, and although their use outside designated areas is not forbidden, sales of vaping products are not allowed in Macau.
Credit: Timothy S. Donahue
The Health Bureau (SS) noted that some 2,368 smoking law infractions were recorded last year, with 21 cases referring to the use of electronic cigarettes in prohibited areas. The SS has called on the public to stay away from all tobacco products and all types of electronic cigarettes, to comply with and not violate the smoking law.
Some 92.5 percent of infractions were committed by men, with 40 percent of the total comprising of tourists. Most infractions were reported in parks/gardens and leisure areas, restaurants or commercial establishments.
Last year 409 inspections were also carried out in casinos, with 165 people indicted for smoking in prohibited places. Smoking is banned on the main floors of casinos, but is permitted in closed-off ventilated smoking areas, which are located on the casino floors. Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.
Macau health officials have claimed that e-cigarettes are no safer than smoking traditional cigarettes.
January 13, 2021
Connecticut Lawmakers Want More Vape Legislation
Vaping products are going to be much harder to sell in Connecticut under bills that are being introduced in the General Assembly, including a ban on the sale of all nicotine products in pharmacies, and e-cigarettes within five miles of schools.
Credit: Haiberliu
Lawmakers are also expected to reintroduce legislation from Gov. Lamont that failed in the closure of the General Assembly last March, to ban flavored vaping devices, in attempt to prevent teenagers and young adults from starting what data show can become lifetime habits, according to an article in the Middletown Press.
Several of the bills, including the outright ban on refillable e-cigarettes and vaping products in the state, have been introduced by state Sen. Saud Anwar, a physician from South Windsor who serves as vice chairman of the Public Health Committee.
“Many of the children are facing life-long addictions and we must do something,” Anwar, a Democrat, said in a Friday interview. He said that it is hypocritical for pharmacies on the one hand to be places where health aids, drugs and vaccines are available, while the nicotine-based e-cigarettes and vaping materials are in the same place.
The five-mile zone around schools would also include neighborhood variety stores and gas stations. Another bill would require Connecticut buyers of online nicotine-delivery products to produce proof of their age before transactions can be completed.
Kevin O’Flaherty, regional director of advocacy for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said Friday said the organization’s main goal this year is to eliminate all flavored tobacco products, including cigarettes, mirroring a law that took effect last year in Massachusetts.
“We’ve got to protect kids from these flavors,” O’Flaherty said. “We really want all flavors off the market. You just have to do it that way. Smoking overall is going down. If we are serious about ending the cycle of addiction, we have to nip it in the bud. All of Connecticut’s neighbors have banned all flavored e-cigarettes, but only Massachusetts has banned flavored tobacco too.”
A spokesman for the vapor company Juul Labs, said Friday that with a customer base of one billion adults, it is committed to keeping children away from using its products, while helping grown-ups wean themselves from smoking. In September of 2019, the company ceased all marketing and advertising.
“We will continue to reset the vapor category in the U.S. and seek to earn the trust of society by working cooperatively with attorneys general, legislators, regulators, public health officials, and other stakeholders to combat underage use and transition adult smokers from combustible cigarettes,” the spokesman said.
At Puff City on River Road in Shelton, Matt Genc, a partner in the three-year-old smoke shop, says any state laws are part of the cost of doing business. He said that banning flavored vapes would hurt sales, but that the store obeys all rules. “Whatever is legal, we’re selling and whatever is not legal, we’re not selling,” Genc said in a Friday phone interview.
January 12, 2021
CPSC Sends Warning on Repackaged 18650 Batteries
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has warned that consumers should not buy or use 18650 lithium-ion battery cells — used in some vaping products, flashlights and toys — due to a possible fire and even death risk.
Credit: Lithium Battery China
The Commission said it is working with e-commerce sites like ‘eBay’ to remove listings of loose or repackaged “18650 lithium-ion” batteries, according to a press release. A superior court in California recently denied a request by Samsung to dismiss a lawsuit about an exploding e-cigarette lithium-ion batteries.
The market does have single 18650 batteries that are intended for use in consumer products. The CPSC warning is about batteries separated from cells that use multiple 18650s such as battery packs for electric automobiles.
“These cells are manufactured as industrial component parts of battery packs and are not intended for individual sale to consumers. However, they are being separated, rewrapped and sold as new consumer batteries, typically on the Internet,” the CPSC said in a statement on Saturday. “Specifically these battery cells may have exposed metal positive and negative terminals that can short-circuit when they come into contact with metal objects such as keys or loose change in a pocket.”
Once shorted, loose cells could overheat and experience thermal runaway, igniting the cell’s internal materials and forcibly expelling burning contents, resulting in fires, explosions, serious injuries and even death.
“Unfortunately a growing number of small consumer products such as vaping devices, personal fans, headlamps and some toys are using loose 18650s as a power source,” the CPSC stated in the release.
January 11, 2021
Study Claims Non-Nicotine Vaping Disrupts Gut
A recent study claims that the chemicals found in vapor products without nicotine disrupt the gut barrier and trigger inflammation in the body, potentially leading to a variety of seperate health concerns.
Credit: Priscilla du Preez

In the study, published in the journal iScience, lead authors Soumita Das, associate professor of pathology, and Pradipta Ghosh, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center at UCSD School of Medicine, found that chronic use of nicotine-free e-cigarettes led to a “leaky gut,” in which microbes and other molecules seep out of the intestines, resulting in chronic inflammation.
Such inflammation can contribute to a variety of diseases and conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, dementia, certain cancers, atherosclerosis, liver fibrosis, diabetes, and arthritis, according to a press release.
“The gut lining is an amazing entity. It is comprised of a single layer of cells that are meant to seal the body from the trillions of microbes, defend our immune system, and at the same time allow absorption of essential nutrients,” said Ghosh. “Anything we eat or drink, our lifestyle choices in other words, has the ability to impact our gut microbes, the gut barrier and overall health. Now we know that what we smoke, such as e-cigarettes, negatively impacts it as well.”
The researchers say that two chemicals used as a base for all most e-liquids — propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin — were the cause of inflammation. Both chemicals are used in many food products that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stated are safe for human consumption.
“Numerous chemicals are created when these two are heated to generate the fumes in vaping that cause the most damage, for which there are no current regulations,” said Ghosh. “The safety of e-cigarettes have been debated fiercely on both sides. Nicotine content, and its addictive nature, has always been the major focus of those who argue against its safety, whereas lack of chemicals in the carcinogens that are present in the cigarette smoke has been touted by the makers of e-cigarettes when marketing these products as a ‘healthy alternative.’ In reality, it’s the chemicals making up the vapor-liquid that we should be more concerned about as they are the cause of gut inflammation.”
January 11, 2021
Judge Dismisses Investor Lawsuit Against Juul Labs

Photo: Okan Caliskan from Pixabay
A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, has dismissed investors’ lawsuit against tobacco distributor Greenlane Holdings, reports Reuters.
Investors filed a class action lawsuit, claiming Greenlane should have mentioned a pending ban on e-cigarettes before publicly offering stock in 2019.
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman dismissed the proposed class action, saying the distributor for Juul Labs had no duty to flag San Francisco’s then-pending ban on e-cigarettes to investors ahead of its initial public offering in 2019, according to Reuters. Altman called the class action “nothing more than a hammer in search of a nail.”
Altman ruled that the investors did not have a viable claim under the Securities Act of 1933 because Greenlane warned them of the risk of increased tobacco regulation in its registration statement, and the proposed e-cigarette ban was already public.
January 11, 2021
London Leads Vype Survey of Top UK Vape Cities
UK adults spent close to £7 million on vape products between January and October of 2020, with nearly 3 million adults now vaping. These are just some of the findings of a recently released study by the Vype e-cigarette brand. Vype launched the study to discover which UK cities had embraced vaping the most.
The British American Tobacco-owned brand took a comprehensive look into the vape industry both on and offline, delving into which of the UK’s cities were the biggest buyers of their products, and where is home to the most physical vape shops in the UK.
Vype conducted a survey of 2,000 of the UK’s over 18 population, to explore the nation’s vaping perceptions and who is most open about their habit, according to an article in Retail Times..
London leads cities by sales
It’s no surprise that London leads the charge when it comes to top cities by sales, spending more than double that of Birmingham residents in the same time frame. In fact, purchases made by Londoners make up 40% of Vype’s total UK sales to date in 2020, and 83% of the sales from the top 10 biggest spending cities.
Looking at the offline culture, it may be surprising to learn that Leeds is home to the most bricks-and-mortar vape shops per square mile. The northern city has 18 vape shops per square mile, while London only just features in the top five with only 13 shops per square mile. Rounding out the top five are Edinburgh with 17 shops per sqm, York with 15 shops per sqm, and Sheffield with 14 shops per sqm.
When it comes to the products adults have been buying, the top selling flavours across the UK were consistent across England, Scotland, and Wales. Crisp Mint is currently leading as the best-selling Vype flavour, followed by Blended Tobacco and Dark Cherry. The only region this differs in, is Northern Ireland, where Crushed Mint is their best-selling Vype flavour. With the UK’s Menthol Ban implemented back in May, it isn’t surprising that varieties of mint are the favourites for online buyers this year.
Insight into attitudes around the UK
Around the UK, Vype uncovered a range of cities with positive sentiments towards the vapers of the population. It was discovered that adults in Brighton are the least affected by others vaping around them, with 43% of respondents answering that it doesn’t bother them when this happens.
While in Belfast, Vype found that people would be more likely to allow another person to vape in their home or car, with 23% saying they would – this is more than any other city! Belfast is also home to the largest group of adults who vape as an alternative to smoking (21%), followed by adults in Glasgow (also 21%).
To uncover the cities with residents who feel like their habit is most accepted, Vype also questioned the nation about their feelings of being judged. Almost half of Glaswegians (48%) say they don’t feel judged by others for vaping in public, and they are followed closely by adults in Nottingham (44%) and Liverpool (42%).
Liverpool is also home to adults who have vaped the longest – almost two thirds (58%) of respondents say they have vaped for three years or more. Adults in Liverpool are also the most likely to vape at their place of work, with 33% admitting to doing so.
Nearby in Manchester, over a third of respondents (39%) from the city do already or would consider vaping in the future – that’s more than any other city. With only three vape shops per square mile, it’s no wonder Manchester makes the top ten list for online sales.
Vocal about vaping
Two in five (40%) of the UK’s adult vapers are open about vaping, saying that everyone that knows them knows that they do. Females are more likely to be open about this fact, with 42% saying that everyone knows they vape, compared to only 39% of men saying the same. Of those truly vocal about vaping, the over-55s are the most open, with 78% saying everyone knows that they vape. Only 51% of 45-54-year-olds say the same thing – the next closest age group.
Looking at the cities which are most open about vaping, adults living in Norwich top the list, with 63% saying everyone knows they vape. They are closely followed by Southampton, with 62% of adults in the southern city saying the same thing. Residents in Bristol follow this with 56%, Liverpool close behind on 50% and rounding out the top five is Glasgow with 48% of vapers being open about their pastime.
Vaping gaining acceptance
Just under a third (31%) of survey respondents said it doesn’t bother them if someone vapes near them. In fact, 10% of respondents across the nation who don’t vape said they would still allow someone else to vape inside their home and car. Females are the least likely to be bothered by someone vaping near them – but only just. With 32% of women saying they didn’t mind people vaping around them, there was only 1% in it with 31% of men saying the same.
Looking into the differences between adult age groups, 45-54-year olds are the least bothered by someone vaping near them, with 35% of them saying it doesn’t matter to them. This group is followed by the over 55s at 33%, and the 18-24-year-olds at 31%.
Of all UK adults who would consider vaping as an alternative to smoking, it was the Bristolians who lead the charge, with 6% saying they would consider the option in the future. The same percentage of UK adults who live in Nottingham, don’t currently vape but are most intrigued by the variety of flavours.
Going smoke-free
The residents of Plymouth have taken up vaping the most lately, with the biggest number of new vapers – fifty percent of respondents from Plymouth have been vaping for less than one year. Plymouth is also home to the greatest number of vapers who only vape once a week too; three quarters (75%) of respondents from Plymouth said they only vape once a week. The next largest group vaping just once a week are living in Sheffield, where. almost a quarter (23%) of residents of this northern city vape once-a-week too.
Cardiff has the most residents that have been vaping for between one and two years (72% have) – way more than any other city. However, they are also the city which spends the least online but buy the most products in each purchase – almost 3 times as many with every online sale this year, compared to other cities. . However, as well as spending the least online, they also only have 1.4 physical vape stores per square mile to rely on too!
On the back of the research, Aftab Saleem, head of e-commerce, UK&I at Vype said: “it’s great to see that the biggest reason adult nicotine consumers are turning to vape products is that they are looking for a smoke-free alternative, followed by the fact they enjoy the taste. That certainly is represented in the UK’s top flavours, with classic flavours coming out on top across the board. We are glad to be giving consumers an alternative to physical shopping too to allow them to continue to choose an alternative nicotine product. Now more than ever we need to help consumers achieve their shopping goals in other ways, whilst some non-essential stores are closed for business”
January 10, 2021
Courts Pave Way for Samsung Vape Battery Explosion Suit

Photo: 정수 이 from Pixabay
A superior court in California has denied a request by Samsung to dismiss a lawsuit about an exploding e-cigarette lithium-ion battery.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff had purchased the Samsung batteries on the recommendation of an e-cig retailer, and used them without issue until April 14, 2018, when the Samsung battery exploded in his pocket, inflicting second- and third-degree burns on his left leg and genitalia, requiring skin-graft surgery, and leaving him with permanent scarring, discoloration and hyper-sensitivity.
According to the lawsuit, Samsung had known since at least January 2016 that individual consumers were purchasing and using Samsung batteries for use in electronic cigarettes—a use that Samsung allegedly knew would subject consumers to potential harm. Instead of taking meaningful action to limit the risk or remove its batteries from the marketplace, Samsung ignored the problem, resulting in at least 88 cases filed against Samsung for similar battery explosion issues.
Samsung filed a motion for summary judgment/adjudication attempting to dismiss the case, including a request to dismiss claims for punitive damages. The Court denied Samsung’s motion in its entirety, leaving it to the trier of fact to determine not only Samsung’s liability for the harm caused by its batteries, but Samsung’s culpability for punitive damages as well.
“Samsung has known for years that its batteries were being used in e-cigarette products,” said Greg Bentley of Bentley & More, the law firm representing the plaintiff, in a statement. “Instead of getting them off the market, Samsung has taken the greedy path putting profit over safety, evidenced by the huge uptick in sales of just this one model alone—from 14.1 million sales in 2015 to 63.7 million in 2017, and many millions more over the last three years. Enough is enough. We look forward to the jury seeing the evidence and holding Samsung accountable.”
It is believed that this is the first of its kind ruling regarding punitive damages claimed against Samsung involving injuries suffered as a result of an e-cigarette battery explosion.
January 8, 2021