A suburb of Chicago is considering a temporary ban on the sale of vaping products. The board for the Village of Vernon Hills voted Monday to draft a moratorium that, depending on the formal language approved, could limit the types of flavored tobacco and vape products businesses can apply to sell for in town.
Credit: Vaporesso
The decision was part of a broader discussion to possibly ban the sale of such products within the village, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune. Board members opted to put that discussion on the back burner until the board and residents can meet in person to hear out both sides of the issue, choosing a moratorium as a stopgap until the discussion could take place.
At the meeting, village staff presented information that broke down what businesses would be impacted if such an ordinance were passed. Village Manager Mark Fleischhauer reported that 15 businesses within town are licensed to sell tobacco and vaping products.
About half those businesses sell flavored products, with one business in particular, Artisan’s Vaping, selling it as their main focal point, Fleischhauer said. While nothing is formal on any ban, trustees kicked around the idea of a grandfather clause if such a thing materialized.
As for the moratorium, officials said there are a few potential ways the ordinance can be written. The range of potential products that could be impacted includes flavored tobacco, flavored vaping or e-cigarettes, to vaping products as a whole, officials at the meeting said.
Trustees will discuss the options at their next committee of the whole meeting, with an eye on passing the moratorium at the board meeting that follows.
The discussion to potentially ban flavored tobacco products was sparked at the village’s last meeting in December, where they received a presentation from a resident that cited the harms and risks associated with using said products, particularly with youth.
During the meeting Monday, Trustee James Schultz took issue with the possibility of a ban, saying the product is legal in the state. He added that the village has done a good job of not allowing flavored and vaping products to be sold to minors.
“Does that mean we shouldn’t be issuing liquor licenses because more people die and start drinking at a young age?” Schultz said. “This is a bridge too far for me.”
The board also received a comment on the matter from a resident. The comment stated it was unfair for a discussion of a potential ban to be taking place without those who sell vape products knowing or having a chance to give their thoughts.
The City of Chicago attempted to ban all flavors of vaping products except tobacco and menthol. It has been sent back to committee. The cities of Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, California were the first two cities in the U.S. to ban the sale of vapor products.
In late December of last year, the Government of Canada announced a proposal to lower the allowable levels of nicotine in vaping products from 66 milligrams per millilitre to 20 mg/ml in an effort to curb youth vaping. The public consultation period would be in effect for 75 days, closing on Mar. 4, 2021.
Credit: Toptop54
The proposed reduction is a move vaping advocates say will minimize their value to adult smokers looking to transition away from cigarettes, according to the Morinville News.
However, the Canada-based Vaping Industry Trade Association (VITA) says smokers having access to sufficient nicotine levels in an alternate product is essential to the effectiveness of vaping as a harm reduction product. “A limit of 20mg/mL is simply too low for many smokers,” Allan Rewak executive director of VITA stated in a media release. “Adult smokers need access to higher nicotine vapor products at the beginning of their journey from smoking to vaping. Lowering this limit is just going to keep more smokers smoking.”
The Canadian government is following a move by Nova Scotia, who in April of this year, instituted a 20mg/mL nicotine cap as well as a flavor ban. VITA says that change in the rules saw a 25 percent increase in legal cigarette sales increase, an increase four times higher than surrounding provinces. The regulations also resulted in half of the province’s specialty vape shops closing their doors.
“Considering the disparity of harm between vaping and smoking, we don’t understand why the federal government would be using Health Canada resources during a global pandemic to explore making it harder for adult smokers to switch to a reduced risk product,” said VITA president Daniel David.
Enforcement the real problem
The Government of Canada has previously put some measures in place to address youth vaping. Those changes include public education campaigns and banning the advertising of vaping products in public spaces if the ads can be seen or heard by youth.
Thomas Kirsop, owner of Alternatives & Options, a vape store in Morinville and St. Albert said he believes the government is taking the wrong approach with the nicotine reduction to handle the rise in youth vaping.
“A 60 percent reduction in commercially available nicotine concentration will impede my ability to assist the heaviest smokers,” Kirsop said. “It is a federal offence to knowingly sell vapor products to minors or for members of the adult population to provide these products to underaged consumers. In practice, however, I find this law poorly enforced. I think enforcing the current law would yield more significant gains than destroying the efficacy of a less harmful solution.”
Health Canada says restricting flavors in vaping products, and requiring the vaping industry to provide information about their vaping products, including sales, ingredients, and research and development activities are under consideration.
In late November, the City of Missoula, Montana banned flavored vaping products and not flavored combustible tobacco products. Now, Missoula County is considering using its extraterritorial powers to extend the city’s ban on the sale of flavored vapes and their display five miles outside city limits next week.
If approved, it would be the first time Missoula County applied its extraterritorial powers in four years. The last time it did was related to the city’s smoking ordinance.
“This initially started with the health board adopting a resolution and asking both the commission and City Council to do something to stop the epidemic of youth tobacco, especially using vape products,” said Shannon Therriault, county director of environmental health. “We were seeing a giant increase in the number of kids becoming addicted to nicotine, and a lot of that traces back to flavored tobacco products.”
The city ordinance goes into effect this month.
The city ordinance bans the display of self-service tobacco products of any kind, except where children aren’t permitted. It also banned the sale of all flavored electronic tobacco products, and made it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 18.
“The health board reviewed it and approved. Now, it’s coming to the commissioners to review and approve,” said Therriault, according to the Missoula Current. “If approved, it can be applied five miles outside the city limits. It’s great, because it takes in a large amount of the area – the urban area.”
The original city ordinance included a ban on all flavored tobacco, which had the support of health officials but was opposed by dozens of businesses and tobacco users.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the conventional wisdom about many things, and upended the world and our economy in ways we could not have imagined in January. The proliferation of misleading, conflicting and sometimes outright false information, coupled with the constantly changing norms brought on by the pandemic, have hit business owners particularly hard.
Dimitris Agrafiotis Credit: TSFA
The Tennessee Smoke Free Association is an advocacy group and trade organization with a focus on tobacco harm reduction through the use of personal vaporizers (electronic cigarettes) and other smokeless tobacco products shown to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with smoking. While our primary focus is the prevention of tobacco harm, we are also a group of small business owners trying to stay afloat in these uncertain times.
In the summer and fall of 2019, mysterious lung injuries were making headlines in the United States. By October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had taken notice and given it a name: EVALI, which stands for e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury. They began issuing warnings about vaping devices, and guidelines were issued on treating it. And then, in early November 2019, the CDC reversed course and issued a report naming the actual culprit as tainted vitamin E acetate cartridges in illicit marijuana vaporizers — not the vaporizers themselves.
However, the damage to our industry was already done, and stigma of the original incorrect conclusions persists. Standard vaporizers contain varying levels of nicotine (which can be controlled by the user) but don’t have many of the harmful carcinogens found in cigarettes. We are still fighting the battle of misinformation and working to get our message out that e-cigarettes and vape devices can be used by adults addicted to cigarettes in a responsible way that improves their health.
And then, in the wake of the confusion and misinformation surrounding EVALI, the pandemic hit. Cities and counties began shutting the economy down, separating businesses into categories of “essential” and “non-essential.” In many places, vape shops were designated non-essential and forced to close, while gas stations, grocery stores and convenience stores — all of which sell cigarettes — were permitted to stay open.
We were able to advocate for ourselves, and many cities and counties reversed course and allowed us to reopen with curbside services, which almost all of our members did, following strict safety protocols. We continue to be grateful to the elected officials who responded to our hardship and worked with us so we could operate in a responsible manner.
Prior to discovering vaping, I was a longtime heavy smoker with a family history of poor health and even death because of smoking cigarettes. I feel that e-cigarettes saved my life, and many members of the TSFA have had similar experiences. We are knowledgeable and honest about our products and are small-businesses owners who contribute to our communities.
However, as small-business owners, though, we are still struggling with the aftereffects of the EVALI fallout, which were compounded by the pandemic. At the Tennessee Smoke Free Association, we will continue our work to put out critical scientific information and bust myths surrounding the use of e-cigarettes.
Dimitris Agrafiotis is the executive director of the Tennessee Smoke Free Association.This article first appeared on Knoxnews.com.
Two California cities have become the only jurisdictions in the U.S. to eliminate the sale of all vaping and traditional tobacco products. On January 1st, Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, both in the Los Angeles area, began to enforce the strictest vaping rules in the country. The law also included a phase-out period for retailers to empty their shelves of e-cigarettes. Other cities are considering enacting similar bans.
The Beverly Hills City Council, the first to pass its ordinance, proposed the rule nearly three years ago during a meeting discussing the potential ban of flavored vaping products. Ultimately, the council settled on a total ban of all vaping and traditional tobacco products.
Credit: Haiberliu
“Somebody’s got to be first, so let it be us,” said then-Mayor, current Councilmember John Mirisch, who first proposed the concept in 2017, according to a press release. Mirisch recently joined the Board of Trustees of the advocacy group Action on Smoking & Health (ASH), which coordinates Project Sunset, an effort to phase out tobacco sales worldwide.
“Cigarettes have become so normalized that to some this might seem like a drastic step,” said Chris Bostic, ASH Policy Director. “But if another product emerged tomorrow that was highly addictive and killed when used as intended, of course we’d ban its sale. We’d probably charge the people who marketed it with manslaughter too.”
Total vaping and tobacco bans have been gaining traction more recently, within the public health community and more broadly. The Danish Institute for Human Rights, after concluding a human rights assessment of Philip Morris International in 2017, concluded that “there can be no doubt that the production and marketing of tobacco is irreconcilable with the human right to health. For the tobacco industry, the UNGPs [United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights] therefore require the cessation of the production and marketing of tobacco.”
Vapor industry advocates say that banning e-cigarettes only pushes former combustible cigarettes smokers back to combustibles. They also say that vaping bans increase the size of the black market. Black market THC vaping products were the cause of a lung disease that sickened and killed numerous youth in 2019.
RLX Technology, parent to the RELX brand of vaping products, has filed with the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO).
Credit: RELX Technology
The $100 million request is well below the $1 billion the company said it expected to raise when it announced Citigroup as the bank of record for its planned initial public offering in the U.S., people with knowledge of the matter said.
The Shenzhen-based company, which counts Sequoia Capital among its backers, boasts a 62.6 percent market share in China for closed-system vaping products in terms of retail sales, according to a press release.
“The company has partnered with 110 authorized distributors to supply its products to over 5,000 RELX Branded Partner Stores, and over 100,000 other retail outlets nationwide, covering over 250 cities in China,” the release states.
Revenue for the company nearly doubled in the nine months ended September 30, 2020 to $324 million, with net income of $16 million.
The Beijing, China-based company was founded in 2018 and booked $400 million in sales for the 12 months ended September 30, 2020. It plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol RLX. RLX Technology filed confidentially on October 26, 2020. Citi is the sole bookrunner on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.
Uwell accomplished the impossible by improving on the success of Caliburn with the new Caliburn G.
Mike Huml
Uwell’s follow-up to the sleeper hit, the Caliburn, is every bit as good as its predecessor and more. The Caliburn G builds upon the success of the original Caliburn and represents the culmination of all the best pod system innovations to date. In terms of both features and performance, the Caliburn G does not lack in any respect.
The Caliburn G is a lightweight pod system that features both an automatic draw and a manual, button-activated draw. The battery is rated at 690 mAh, which is surprisingly adequate for all-day vaping, and it’s quickly charged via a USB-C cable. Each 2 mL pod is refillable and replaceable, and the 0.8 ohm mesh coil can be replaced as well.
Additionally, the Caliburn G has two airflow options depending on how the pod is inserted, one for mouth-to-lung vaping and the other for direct-lung vaping. The pod can be refilled quickly and easily from the top, and the Caliburn G is free of any leaks, gurgling and spitback of any kind. All in all, the Caliburn G might very well be the most consistent, easy-to-use, convenient and well-performing pod system on the market.
The original Caliburn was surely ahead of its time, and the Caliburn G offers some key refinements that really give it the edge. The Caliburn G incorporates a single button that can be used to fire the device or toggle the power with five quick clicks. Whether utilizing the button or the automatic draw, a multicolored LED will illuminate at the tip to indicate that the coil is receiving power. This LED will cycle between red, blue and green depending on the remaining battery life.
When above 60 percent power, the light will display green. When between a 30 percent and 60 percent charge, the light will illuminate blue, and when below 30 percent, the LED will be red. When charging, the LED will pulse or breathe in the same color corresponding to battery life until fully charged when the light will illuminate as solid green. A full charge can be achieved in under one hour, and the device can continue to be used while it is charging.
At 690 mAH, the battery lasts a surprisingly long time and should be capable of a full day of use. If not, charging is extremely quick, and downtime is kept to a minimum since it can be used while charging. Additionally, by using the increasingly popular USB-C port, there is a good chance that the Caliburn G can be charged with the same cable as most any modern mobile phone or device, further increasing convenience.
As far as appearances go, the Caliburn G features vertical lines machined into the matte, anodized aluminum body that give the device an attractive and unique but not over-the-top aesthetic. It’s also strangely satisfying to hold as the texture of the lines feels good under one’s finger. It’s a small thing and one that goes about largely unspoken, but it can be important that a vapor device feels good to hold. And as a bonus, the Caliburn G’s finish is virtually impervious to fingerprints. Save for any blemishes caused by dropping the device, the Caliburn G will look like new indefinitely.
Both the Caliburn G pods and coils are replaceable; however, each new pod will not actually include a pre-installed coil. One could feasibly never purchase new pods and only ever replace coils on a regular basis. However, replacing pods as well as coils allows the user to swap e-liquids more easily with no overlap in flavor. The coil is very easily replaced by removing the pod, flipping it upside down, sliding out the coil and inserting a new one.
The base of the coil and the corresponding area on the bottom of the pod are asymmetrical so that it can only be inserted one way. While the coil is replaced from the bottom, it is refilled from the top, and as such, it can be done without removing the pod. By simply applying leverage to the broad side of the mouthpiece, the tip can be popped off to reveal the fill port.
The fill port is kept sealed with a silicone flap to eliminate leaking due to a lack of pressure, which gives way when a bottle is inserted for filling. The opposite side features a pinhole to release the pressure when the pod is filled so that e-liquid does not get backed up and cause a mess. The tip snaps on and off, and a clear window on the narrow side of the battery section reveals how much e-liquid is remaining.
The pod also snaps into the battery section without magnets, using grooves and protrusions in the inside of the battery and the outside of the pod, respectively, to hold everything together securely. It doesn’t have the same satisfaction as the smoothness of a magnet, but the pod is held in place much more securely and won’t weaken over time.
The pod’s airflow inlet lies on the bottom of the pod on only one side and receives airflow via a small hole in the side of the battery section. This simple system is what allows the user to choose between open airflow for restricted lung hits and tighter airflow for mouth-to-lung drags. If the hole in the pod and the hole in the battery are on the same side, this allows for open airflow.
By reversing the direction of the pod, the pod’s air hole is now on the opposite side of the battery’s air hole, which introduces more resistance and therefore a tighter draw. The difference between the two airflow settings is admittedly small, but combined with the actual vaping performance as a whole, it ends up being a perfect system.
Performance is generally the most important aspect of any vapor device, and the Caliburn G makes large strides in a very subtle way in this regard. It’s been known since the inception of vaping that most devices are not to be used in the same way as traditional analog cigarettes. Smoking generally involves fast, sharp drags followed by a fast inhale.
Conversely, vaping, particularly mouth-to-lung vaping, requires long and slow pulls to give the coil time to heat up and start producing vapor. That is not the case when it comes to the Caliburn G. This device can be used exactly like an analog cigarette, and other than the physical shape, it feels nearly identical to smoking.
The airflow is similar, but the airflow turbulence is dead-on accurate. The 0.8 ohm mesh coil heats up instantly, and drags can be sharp and quick. Every pod system feels different, but for anyone looking for the best vaping experience to simulate smoking, this is it. The vapor production is more than adequate, the throat hit is significant yet smooth and the overall feel is spot on.
As for the direct-lung airflow setting, this is very good as well. Naturally, it can’t be compared to smoking, but it works just as well as anyone could expect. Even with the increased airflow, e-liquid never backs up or leaks into the mouthpiece. Full inhales aren’t feasibly possible like with any device that allows for restricted lung hits but also aren’t necessarily due to the almost nonexistent ramp-up time.
If necessary, using the manual switch is always an option both for direct-lung and mouth-to-lung vaping styles. To top it all off, no matter which way the Caliburn G is vaped, flavor representation is just about perfect as well. The Caliburn G is fantastic for any vaper, from first-time users to veterans. Usage is just about as simple as it can possibly get, and performance is perfect all around. Battery life is adequate, charging is fast, refilling is clean and easy, swapping coils is a snap, and the whole package is very intuitive.
In all fairness, if there were to be one negative aspect attributed to the Caliburn G, it would be that the button protrudes slightly, which could lead to the occasional accidental firing of the coil if the battery is not powered off. Even to say that this is a minor gripe would be an overstatement, but in the interest of safety, it could be argued that a button that sits flush to the rest of the body would be preferable.
There is absolutely no good reason to pass on the Caliburn G. Uwell is a reputable company with a history of supporting its products long-term, and the device itself is nearly perfect. For as well received and appreciated as the original Caliburn was among vapers, it’s truly a feat that it could be improved upon at all, but the Caliburn G stands as evidence that it was possible. A series of small changes and tweaks only served to enhance the Caliburn design, and vapers are left with a pod system that will be hard to beat for the foreseeable future.
Vaping studies often contain a lot of modal verbs like can, could, may and might. For example, an updated study on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation by the Cochrane Review suggest that vaping “could” help smokers quit using deadly combustible cigarettes.
The Cochrane study looked at 50 studies that took place in the US, the UK, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Belgium, Canada, Poland, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland and Turkey. The review found that e-cigarettes “could” be the answer many smokers are looking for according to an article in The New Strait Times.
Among the key findings were that smokers were likely to stop smoking for at least six months by switching to a vaping device with a nicotine e-liquid as compared to nicotine replacement therapy (such as gum and patches), nicotine-free vaporizers or behavioural support.
The researchers, made up of multiple independent and internationally-renowned healthcare experts, found that vaping with a nicotine e-liquid can help 10 in 100 people to stop smoking, compared to only 6 in 100 people who have tried using nicotine-replacement therapy or vaping nicotine-free e-liquids. Only an estimated 4 in 100 who try to quit without support, or those who rely only on behavioural support, are likely to succeed.
They also did not detect any clear evidence of serious harm from vaping a nicotine e-liquid.
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce from the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group said there is an increase in evidence of smoking cessation through the use of e-cigarettes compared to the last review in 2016.
“The randomised evidence on smoking cessation has increased since the last version of the review and there is now evidence that electronic cigarettes with nicotine are likely to increase the chances of quitting successfully compared to nicotine gum or patches,” said Hartmann-Boyce, the lead author of the review. “While there is currently no clear evidence of any serious side effects, there is considerable uncertainty about the harms of electronic cigarettes and longer-term data are needed. Scientific consensus holds that electronic cigarettes are considerably less harmful than traditional cigarettes, but not risk-free.”
In contrast, a recent study from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), led by Richard Wang, determined that that e-cigarettes do not lead smokers away from addiction. Wang also claims that e-cigarettes “could” increase a users risk of disease. “If the use of consumer device products is not associated with increased smoking cessation, there is no health benefit,” he said. “Also, as people who smoke add e-cigarettes to their smoking, their risk of disease could increase.”
Wang worked with fellow UCSF researcher Sudhamiyi Bhadriraju and disgraced former UCSF researcher Stanton Glantz, who has recently had multiple studies retracted for what has been labeled by fellow scientists as “explicit dishonesty.”
This latest study was based on the collection of 64 trials in which participants were examined. All of them are e-cigarette users, according to an article on Explica.com.
“In observational studies you are asking people about the use of the devices they bought themselves. But they did it without specific guidance to quit smoking,” says Wang. “In a randomized trial, you test a product, treating it as a therapy or drug to quit.”
Wang then goes on to say there “may” be a cessation effect. “When certain electronic devices are treated as medicines, there may actually be a smoking cessation effect,” explains Wang. “But it has to be balanced against the risks of using cigarettes.”
Vaping can have a negative effect on memory, thinking skills and the ability to focus, particularly for young people, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Rochester (New York) Medical Center.
“Our studies add to growing evidence that vaping should not be considered a safe alternative to tobacco smoking,” said Head researcher Dongmei Li.
The study is based on data analyzed from the over 886,000 participants involved in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey and the more than 18,000 responses from the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
The researchers concluded that those who vaped or smoked cigarettes were more likely to struggle with cognitive function than those who had never smoked in any capacity. Also, the researchers noted that age played a large role in the participants’ cognitive abilities as they found that when participants were younger than 14 when they started vaping or smoking, they were even more likely to have cognitive struggles as adults.
“With the recent rise in teen vaping, this is very concerning and suggests that we need to intervene even earlier. Prevention programs that start in middle or high school might actually be too late,” Li added.
Nicotine is addictive. Most people who have smoked 60 cigarettes are going to be daily smokers. According to Jonathan Foulds, professor of public health sciences and psychiatry and co-director of Penn State Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, the average middle-aged smoker has made about 20 serious attempts to quit.
Jonathan Foulds, Penn State Cancer Institute
After deciding to try to quit, the average smoker has a 95 percent chance of still smoking a year later. Even with counselling and using a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cessation medicine, there is still an 80 percent chance they will be smoking again in a year.
Speaking during the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF), Foulds said that people smoke for the psychological effects of nicotine, but they suffer the health effects created by inhaling combustible tobacco. To lessen the harms of nicotine consumption, regulators should focus on ways to get cigarette smokers to switch to less-risky forms of nicotine intake.
“If it were not for the nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke than they are to blow bubbles,” he said. “Blowing bubbles is fun, but no one wants to do it 20 times a day for the rest of their life. It’s the nicotine that’s key to [people smoking].”
Despite the addictiveness of nicotine, cigarette consumption in the United States has been falling consistently over the past 20 years. Cigarette consumption has fallen more than 50 percent since 1997. That is equal to approximately 200 billion fewer cigarettes being sold per year since 1997, and there are now many more people in the U.S. Foulds said there is also evidence that the decline has been accelerating over the past few years [alongside the growing popularity of vapor products].
Meanwhile, youth smoking rates have declined dramatically. In the 1970s, an average of 30 percent of high school seniors smoked cigarettes. In 1995, that number dropped to 25 percent. Today, less than 2 percent of high school seniors smoke cigarettes.
“The massive cigarette sales that the industry has been used to—clearly, that is coming to an end. I mean, the end is in sight from the cigarette industry,” Foulds told the GTNF audience. “What I’m trying to get across here to many of you—who are from the industry—is that we may be coming to a tipping point where it would be much better, rather than to just fight [regulators], it may actually be a wiser strategy to accept that this is happening sooner or later in terms of cigarettes and get ahead of it and embrace it.”
For cigarette manufacturers to survive, Foulds said they must promote less-risky forms of nicotine intake. Lower nicotine cigarettes are one example of how manufacturers can help push people to other products, such as e-cigarettes. He was unconcerned about consumers compensating for lower amounts of nicotine by smoking more cigarettes. “There’s now a bunch of studies—almost a dozen studies and they’re fairly consistent—showing that compensatory smoking really isn’t a thing that happens with these kinds of cigarettes,” he said. “The smokers learn pretty quickly that they can puff as much as they like, and they’re not going to get any satisfying amount of nicotine out of them.”
Another concern is that if only lower nicotine cigarettes are available, this would push smokers to the black market for higher nicotine cigarettes. Foulds says several studies have shown that that is not true. Smokers would be more likely to move to products such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn systems to get the nicotine they crave.
E-cigarettes are not without health risks, according to Foulds. “They are likely to be far less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes,” he clarified. “E-cigarettes contain fewer numbers and lower levels of toxicant substances than conventional cigarettes. There’s been more and more evidence that e-cigarettes deliver far, far lower levels of harmful toxicants than cigarettes. It’s become very, very consistent … e-cigarettes can help people quit.”
If regulators allow high-nicotine, reduced-harm products, like e-cigarettes, to remain in the market, Foulds says that it is highly likely that many current smokers will reduce their smoking, quit or switch to reduced toxic-exposure products, resulting in a substantial improvement in overall public health. “It is time for major cigarette manufacturers to support nicotine reduction in combustibles as perhaps their best chance of still being in business in 2030,” he said.
