Tag: vaping

New Zealand: Vape starter kit sales rise

Photo: Richard R. Schünemann | Unsplash.com
In New Zealand, Ben Pryor, co-owner of Alt New Zealand and Vapo, has seen a 30 percent rise in the sale of vapor device starter kits through the companies’ online stores.
With the outbreak of Covid-19 and the following lockdowns, traditional cigarette sales seem to have gone down, and many smokers are turning to vaping.
“There are a few things at play here. People are quitting cigarettes because of their sheer cost and the increasing pressure many household budgets are now under. At the same time, the threat of Covid-19 has made many smokers more cognizant of their respiratory health and smoking’s secondhand effects on others in their bubble,” Pryor said.
The lockdowns caused 11 Vapo stores to close, negatively affecting the company. But the upswing in online sales has helped temper that. “We’ve really noticed a big increase in our Alt and Vapo Haiz starter kit sales,” Pryor said. “Our call center is reporting that many smokers are using this time to quit tobacco so are seeking advice and turning to considerably safer and cost-effective vape products more than ever.”
May 6, 2020
Vape Clouds Don’t Spread Covid-19
There is insufficient evidence to support the claim that Covid-19 can be spread through vape clouds, according to Neal Benowitz, a University of California San Francisco professor of medicine.
“It is my understanding that exhaled e-cigarette vapor consists of very small particles of water, propylene glycol and glycerin and flavor chemicals, not droplets of saliva,” Benowitz said. “The vaping aerosol evaporates very quickly while particles that are emitted when coughing or sneezing are large particles that persist in the air for a relatively long period of time. Thus, I would not think that vapers present any risk of spreading Covid-19 unless they are coughing when they exhale the vapor.”
Benowitz’s remarks follow comments by Tom McLean, a Scottish microbiologist, who claimed that “blowing vapor out is as good as someone spitting in your face.”
“If anyone has the coronavirus and are vaping, they’d be spreading it to a lot of people at the same time,” McLean said.
Doctors are considering vaping as a possible factor in the large rate of those hospitalized for severe Covid-19 symptoms.
March 27, 2020
Expert Advice
In their response to the recent vaping scare, health authorities may have done the public a disservice.
By George Gay
After listening to a few presentations given at the 2019 Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF), I started to wonder anew about the word “expert,” though I should make it plain that I am not questioning the expertise of the presenters.
The presentations suggested, among other things, that experts in the U.S. were reacting irrationally to health issues recently raised in respect of the use of vapor devices; that some vaping policies developed by U.S. experts were, to say the least, unhelpful; that people were broadcasting on U.S. television information about vaping that appeared to be expert but that was simply wrong; and that any number of governments outside the U.S., presumably advised by experts, were making irrational decisions in respect of vaping.
If it is true that experts are causing so many mismoves, what, you might ask, is an “expert”? Good question. Just after the U.K.—or parts thereof—voted in 2016 to leave the EU, a prominent politician and leave campaigner caused some disquiet when, in refusing to name any economists who backed the country’s exit from the EU, he was reliably quoted as saying that “people in this country have had enough of experts.”
He was clearly talking about expert economists, but his statement was condemned widely, including by one popular scientist whose television programs reach a wide audience. The gist of the responses was that if people shut their ears to the opinions of experts, chaos and anarchy would descend upon the world.
This has a ring of truth about it, but I suppose some might retort that chaos, in the form of environmental breakdown, is being given a clear run even with any number of experts in place. But again, while this retort would have a ring of truth about it, it would sidestep the uncomfortable fact that environmental experts are not in control of the environment. They must compete with experts at plundering our natural resources in the name of making money for the ear of politicians, who, while democracy still stands, have the final say. Like it or not, politicians are the experts of last resort.
One way of getting around the issue of experts failing in their chosen fields is to assume that there is no such thing as an expert. All you must do is extrapolate to all fields of endeavor what William Goldman said about the motion picture business: “Nobody knows anything.” And while that might sound a mite dismissive, it is much less so when you consider that he went on to qualify that remark with, “Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
That raises another issue. What part of being an expert is played by education and intelligence, two concepts that I have to admit I would struggle to define and the latter of which I would have no idea how to measure? Still, such lack of knowledge does not stop me from wondering whether an expert necessarily must be well educated and intelligent. Indeed, are education and intelligence inextricably linked? I would suggest not. Clearly, many people are intelligent without being educated while many well-educated people are not what I would judge to be intelligent because they lack attributes such as common sense, creativity and natural wit.
Nowhere is it better demonstrated that a lack of education and intelligence need not be a bar to be an expert than in the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament. Votes form the only qualification necessary for being a representative of the people in the House of Commons, given that one meets certain criteria to do with such things as age, citizenship and the ability to stump up a nonrefundable deposit, while membership of the House of Lords is down to a complex form of Buggins’ turn that doesn’t bear too much scrutiny much of the time.
That’s worth thinking about. The people who are voting on issues that will affect everybody in the land and some of those overseas, and who might plunge us into war, need not be educated or intelligent, and they need not be what many people would consider to be an expert. Indeed, a person with little education and the wit of a paving slab could become a Member of Parliament and be elevated to a high office of state, depending on just how far she is willing to go in towing the party line or on what Homer Stokes would describe as the state of cronyism, nepotism and rascalism within the system.
But, of course, you don’t have to be thick as a brick to be a politician, and many are highly educated and intelligent. Recently in the U.K., a prominent politician implied that his superior intelligence or common sense would have allowed him to escape from a tragic event in which many people were killed. The politician is, without question, well-educated and intelligent, but, judged only on this comment, you would think him otherwise.
Apart from the fact that his remark was crass, hurtful and politically dumb, he had failed to discern that what divided him from the people who died was not intelligence but the availability of information. He was viewing the tragedy from the safety of his armchair and with benefit of hindsight. Those who died were caught up in fast-moving events and were acting in line with official advice—advice provided by experts.
But I digress. To me, the post-referendum brouhaha about experts in the U.K. came down to the fact that people see things differently. A specialist’s view of an expert is different to that of the person in the street. To the specialist, an expert is somebody learned in their field, though not necessarily somebody the specialist would agree with, while to the person in the street, an expert is somebody who gets things right, and those two attributes don’t always go hand in hand.
Within the field of science, however, these two definitions of what constitutes an expert should not cause so much conflict as in some other fields because, in theory, science is a dynamic process in which theories are raised, confirmed or refuted and then, in either case, used to develop new ideas. This does not necessarily work in the same way in other fields, such as economics, as our post-2008 world amply demonstrates. In the field of economics, I would suggest, expert opinion is like art and philosophy—it is basically whatever you can get away with.
There is a further complication, however, and that is between what I would roughly describe as “big science” and “small science.” We can all watch a television program about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and nod off to sleep happy in the knowledge that if we don’t catch the end of the program, we are not going to be put at any direct disadvantage, no matter how important the principle is to quantum theory.
Nod off, however, during a program on the damage done by the consumption of a certain foodstuff, and you could be shortening your life by a year or whatever. Or perhaps not, depending on whether the scientific experts on the program have got it right—indeed, in the terms of the lay person, whether those scientists are experts.
This is important, in my view, because the person in the street is being asked increasingly often to make judgments when “experts” disagree or rather when there might be broad agreement among experts but there are also loud, dissenting views also from experts—economists in the case of Brexit and globalization, say, public health professionals in the case of vaping and vaccinations, and scientists in the case of climate change and quantum theory.
So how is it possible for nonspecialists to make those calls? Well, there are strategies we can all employ depending on how much time we have. Common sense often helps but is not 100 percent reliable. We can ask ourselves why we think the expert is saying what she is saying—especially, who is funding her research and does she or a close relative or friend have a vested interest in what she is saying?
We can investigate her previous research and intercessions, we can try to chase down her credentials, keeping in mind that her qualifications might have been bought online, and we can investigate what her peers say about her, bearing in mind that we really ought firstly to check out just where they’re coming from. And if we’re retired and have some long winter evenings to fill, we can even try our hand at reading, without nodding off, the scientific literature, and we can revisit all of the information we have gathered to see how much of it has come from sources where lying is seen as part of the great rough and tumble of life.
But all of this gets thrown out of the window when the person in the street has little time to make what appears to be a life-affecting decision quickly and the advice being given out by normally reliable institutions conflicts with some other expert advice and common sense. This is what happened, in fact, when, earlier this year, there was an outbreak in the U.S. of acute pulmonary illness among a relatively small number of vapor device users.
The initial advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was for people to stop using vapor devices with THC oil or nicotine liquids. Common sense indicated, however, that whereas it seemed plausible that the inhalation of THC oil, especially black market THC oil, which was a relatively recent activity, could be the cause of the outbreak, it was implausible that nicotine liquids, which had been consumed in this way around the world for about 10 years, were the cause of the problems. This seemed like a case of science, in the form of scientific experts at the CDC, getting it wrong.
At the time of writing, the CDC seems to have come around to a position closer to that dictated by common sense—an approach, by the way, that had the backing of some healthcare professionals. The problem, however, is that much damage has been done already. The fear raised in the minds of the public slowed the conversion of smokers to vapers and caused some converts to relapse.
It is worrying that this development seems to support the idea that “good” vaping science is always going to be playing catch-up with “bad” vaping science and that sometimes it is never going to catch up. What I mean by this is that the shock-horror headline on page one might be overturned the next month but only with a piece at the bottom of page 32. One of the presentations at the GTNF, which was held in Washington, D.C., in September, included a number of clips from a television program. One of these clips implied that vaping with nicotine liquids could reduce the IQs of young people by 10–15 points from what they might have otherwise been. It was then pointed out that measuring such IQ deficits was difficult, something that could probably be accurately interpreted as being impossible and therefore never having been done.
But as the GTNF presenter pointed out, even though there were only a few seconds between the statements being made, the damage had surely been done. Most viewers, especially those with children still at school, were going to remember the 10–15 point IQ deficit because it was aimed at the heart and because it would later be in 72-point type on page one while few were going to remember the retraction, which was aimed at the head and was bound for an 18-point presentation on page 32.
There is a further problem here. Once those viewers who watched the program and who absorbed the 10–15 point statement passed this information on to their friends at the school gate, they were probably well on their way to becoming experts. Their friends would ensure this in quoting them while passing on the information to others.
Perhaps we are all bound to become experts for 15 minutes. What a frightening thought.

George Gay
December 23, 2019
Outside the Box
The VFolk is using quality materials and innovative design to try to stand out in a crowded market.
By Timothy S. Donahue
Pod systems are popular. They are so prevalent that nearly every vapor industry hardware manufacturer and brand has a pod system on the market. It isn’t easy to stand out in such a crowded field. However, that is exactly what Sunny Lee set out to do with her VFolk Pro closed pod system.
“As a global company, we are working on providing a healthier alternative for 1 billion smokers,” said Lee, who started the company in 2016 and now serves as its CEO. “Every day, we go to work hoping to do two things: share great flavor with our friends and make the world a little better.”
VFolk began in the U.S. with a focus on producing hightech vapor products. VFolk has increased in size by 30 percent year-over-year and has offices and/or factories in the U.S., U.K. and China. The company has grown from only Lee to a staff of 58 today.
Lee hired several designers from the U.S. and the U.K. in an attempt to find a device that would help the everyday smoker switch from combustible cigarettes. She brought on team members that served as executives, senior product engineers and scientists from some of the most successful technology companies on the planet, including Philips, Schneider, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, YouTube, Sonos, IBM, Oracle and Lenovo.
Lee challenged her team to design the best possible pod device that overcame many of the issues other pod devices haven’t been able to fully overcome. These challenges included not providing enough flavor and pods leaking liquid. The design they found that worked best in tests was an elongated spherical stick that was the same length as a traditional cigarette, according to Lee.
“It also needed to be about as wide and thick as an average-sized adult index finger while being easy to carry and use,” said Lee. The first test the team faced was finding a coil atomizer that provided a better vape and more flavor than other pod devices on the market. The VFolk engineers settled on the Feelm coil produced by Smoore in China. Smoore is one of the oldest heating technology companies in the world.
Designed primarily for prefilled pod systems, the Feelm atomizer uses no cotton or wicking material and has a large surface area that comes in contact with the e-liquid. The Feelm atomizer uses a ceramic base that has a flat, medical-grade stainless steel metal film material on top of it. The circuit is also on the top, and it works very well, especially with prefilled pods, because of the increased surface area, which allows for a better vaping experience, according to Lee.
“Feelm is also a very efficient coil. It uses up to 20 percent less battery life, which can be a huge benefit to closed-pod systems,” says Lee. “Right now, Feelm coils set the standard for atomization technology in the vape industry. As we know, the most important part of a quality vape is atomization. We choose Feelm coils because we wanted to use the highest quality products. The VFolk pod uses the world’s most advanced trapezoidal funnel-shaped honeycomb ceramic core, which costs much more than a general ceramic core. Atomizing to 0.01 mm and evenly heating tens of thousands of honeycomb holes helps to maximize the conversion rate, which ensures VFolk’s consistently smooth, mellow and continuous taste.”
By using such advanced ceramic atomizing technology alongside a battery with a 350 mAh capacity, the VFolk easily lasts through a full day of heavy use, according to Lee. “You can fully charge it through USB in less than 60 minutes. A 1.2 mL pod can last the average vaper approximately 2–3 days,” she says. “The 5 percent nicotine concentration is strong enough to satisfy smokers with a strong habit but light enough to keep infrequent smokers away from throat irritation.”
The second major challenge for the VFolk team was minimizing leakage. There is an adage in vaping: Everything leaks eventually. It has been an industry issue since the very beginning. Closed pod leakage is very hard to fix, harder even than fixing leaks on an open tank system. The pod connection must fit right with the battery while still allowing the vapor to come from the top. The VFolk team knew they needed a pod that could outperform the other pod systems on the market alongside having the lowest leakage rates available.
“VFolk uses an advanced double-sealed design to separate the pod and atomizer,” says Lee. “There will be no e-juice leakage with this device even when the device is violently swung, tilted or placed on different surfaces. The VFolk pods also use an advanced magnetic lock technology to secure pods into place. The process is intuitive and user-friendly.”
In order to further stand out from the crowd, Lee wanted to offer customers variety in how their pod looks. Currently, the VFolk comes in eight different color coats, including classic black, space gray, navy blue, scarlet ruby, live coral, champagne gold, pine green and lavender violet. She says the VFolk is also available in several markets.
“VFolk products are not only just for selling in China but also for the worldwide market. For the EU, we are a TPD2 registered brand,” she says. “In the U.S., we were on the market before Aug. 8, 2016 and are preparing to file for a premarket tobacco [product] application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Our products passed CE, RoHS [and] FCC certification, [and] we also have more certification plans for other major markets.”
VFolk offers seven pod flavors that include tobacco, mint, mango, cucumber, mung bean, lychee and coffee. “Users can choose tobacco and mint flavors to satisfy the craving of traditional tobacco products and mimic how they taste. They can also try something special like fruit or a coffee flavor to bring that extra kick into your day,” says Lee, adding that there may be more flavors coming in the future. “VFolk will launch products according to customers’ requirements periodically. For example, we are looking at launching new flavors, a new refillable pod, 0 mg nicotine e-liquid pods, and even functional e-liquid pods such as a collagen pod, a vitamin C pod or a melatonin Pod … etc.” The company is also considering pods for cannabidiol and THC oils.
Moving forward, Lee says she understands that closed pod systems are quick and convenient, but e-liquid choices are limited. Open systems, however, allow vapers to use any e-liquid they want. Having the ability to choose between the best of both worlds is another way that VFolk plans on helping smokers make the switch from combustible cigarettes. That is why VFolk is launching a refillable pod in its next-generation system.
“Our next generation will see a major improvement in flavor production and cartridge capacity. We will also offer a new system that is both refillable and a closed system,” says Lee, adding that if you want a VFolk, it depends on where you are located. “For some countries, which already have VFolk distributors, we will hand over the distributor contact to a client. If you come from a blank market, we will support you with product and keep moving the business between us,” she says. “The vapor industry is getting bigger and bigger, and it’s only just beginning. We believe VFolk is unquestionably a shining star in the industry.”

Timothy S. Donahue
August 21, 2019
To Vape or Not to Vape
The decision to vape turns out to be a result of careful consideration.
By Marina A. Murphy
A study has shown that a combustible cigarette smoker’s decision to switch to vaping is a deliberate one and not something that happens by chance.
Smokers of combustible cigarettes who successfully switch to vaping go through a very specific deliberation process that contrasts with the rather passive process by which smokers are thought to initiate cigarette smoking.
The authors of the study say that we could use what we learn about this decision-making process to develop communication strategies that might stimulate more smokers who would otherwise not have considered using e-cigarettes to give them a try. These communication strategies could, for example, provide would-be vapers with information on the risks of smoking and the health benefits of switching to e-cigarettes.
“There is significant evidence that e-cigarettes are one of the most effective quitting aids for smokers, yet this information is not always getting to the people who need it or indeed to the health professionals who should be advising them,” says Pooja Patwardhan, a general practitioner and the medical director of the Centre for Health Research and Education (CHRE) in the U.K. “Understanding the decision-making process used by those who have successfully made the switch to e-cigarettes would certainly go some way towards changing this,” she says.
This study is thought to be the first to examine the decision-making process of vapers. It explored if and how vapers, smokers, and nonusers differ in their knowledge and attitudes regarding e-cigarettes and whether they use what knowledge they do have to consider the pros and cons of vaping. The results were published in The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.¹
The researchers from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment as well as Maastricht University, both located in the Netherlands, conducted several focus group interviews with vapers, smokers and nonusers. The results reveal differences between vapers and smokers in the knowledge they have about e-cigarettes, their attitudes toward e-cigarettes and their views on the harmfulness of continuing smoking.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
In general, vapers were more knowledgeable about e-cigarettes than smokers or nonusers. Smokers and nonusers did have information about e-cigarettes, but when asked, vapers could provide far more detailed information. Vapers reported seeking out information on e-cigarettes in order to make the decision to take up vaping in the first place. Typically, they sought information on product characteristics, ingredients of e-liquids and legislation regarding e-cigarettes. When asked how informed they felt about e-cigarettes, smokers and nonusers stated that they did not search for information about e-cigarettes and that they didn’t know much about them. By contrast, vapers felt very informed.
THAT’S JUST WEIRD!
Another important difference between vapers, smokers and nonusers is in their attitude toward e-cigarettes. Successful switchers (vapers) are generally very positively predisposed toward e-cigarettes, emphasizing positive aspects like the varieties of flavors available and the adjustability of nicotine levels. Vapers tended to be negative about smoking. By contrast, smokers tended to be negatively predisposed toward e-cigarettes, in general mentioning that vaping was “weird,” but were positive about cigarette smoking. Regardless of the negative health effects associated with smoking, smokers said that they really enjoy smoking.
PERCEPTION
Another important difference between vapers and smokers was in their perception of the health risks. Vapers perceived smoking to be harmful to health but did not perceive any health risks with vaping. Smokers’ on the other hand, while acknowledging that smoking is harmful, did not understand how smoking causes smoking-related diseases and perceived that these diseases were only something that they needed to worry about in the distant future. Nonusers perceived both smoking and vaping to be addictive behaviors, so they indulged in neither.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS …
This study showed that vapers make a conscious decision to seek out and deliberate information with which to make the decision to vape. Smokers and nonusers, by contrast do not consciously deliberate information to make the decision not to vape.
The authors suggest that insights into the conscious decision-making process of vapers who switched from smoking combustible cigarettes could be used to stimulate smokers to consciously deliberate vaping, despite the fact that, initially at least, they might consider it to be “weird.”
“Surely one of the most important steps in stimulating a smoker to consider switching to vaping is to ensure that their health practitioners have all the information they need to help them in the first place,” says Patwardhan. “That is why we at CHRE are developing an education and outreach program designed to bring doctors in the U.K. up-to-date on the latest policy recommendations so that they can clearly communicate with smokers on the range of services and devices available to help them in their attempts to stop smoking.”

Marina A. Murphy
Marina A. Murphy is a scientific communications and engagement expert with more than 20 years of experience, including 10 years in the tobacco sector.
1. 2019 Feb 20;16(4). pii: E624. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16040624. [↩]
April 30, 2019
Public Misinformation
Increasing rhetoric and false statements are preventing progress in the debate about vaping.
By Josh Church
A new year and still the same tired rhetoric. With anti-vaping groups being dangerously considered by many as the defenders of public health, we are moving too close to something we have all seen, experienced and been defined by in the history of the United States.
Go back almost 100 years and a shockingly similar story was just being written: In the 1920s and 1930s, a campaign utilized fear and misinformation to push for regulations in favor of those who opposed cannabis and an endless amount of other “narcotics.” The campaign was so extremely effective that it took the better part of a century for public opinion to mature intellectually. It was the age of “reefer madness.”
When you compare the propaganda used by marijuana antagonists during the cannabis prohibition period, it is unmistakably like what we are currently seeing regarding nicotine and the wildfire of misinformation that is taking our country by force. George Santayana explained it best when he said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Have we not moved past allowing nonfactual propaganda and blatant misinformation to drastically influence our opinions, emotions and, most of all, our decision-making?
It is of the utmost importance that 2019 be a year of defining the conversation among vapor industry stakeholders, advocacy groups and consumers. We must come together and create a platform based on substantiated science with the purpose of educating people inundated by bad science and opinion. It is important that we are passionate but not emotional. It is too easy to discredit information delivered in a way that could be misconstrued as combative. If we accomplish this, we may have an equal, united voice against the anti-vaping and anti-nicotine zealots.
We must realize that there is a very large and discrete change happening on the opposing side. We have moved past the era of people and groups being able to say that e-cigarettes have not been studied for long-term health effects, or that the vapor industry exists unregulated or even that nicotine on its own is largely the cause for tobacco-related diseases. These things are blatantly untrue.
During the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) youth cessation hearing held in January (see “Angle of Attack”), I witnessed a woman from one of these so-called public health groups stand in front of the FDA and make a statement that e-cigarettes have never been proven to help people quit smoking combustible cigarettes and that there are no long-term studies regarding the health effects of e-cigarettes.
It was also upsetting to see the people on both sides of the aisle bringing more emotion and opinion to the table rather than factual evidence. While I wholeheartedly understand the worries and concerns from parents and administrators on the front lines of the youth initiation issue, making unsubstantiated claims benefits no one, especially youth. We are dealing with situations that have absolutely zero room for emotions. The industry and its antagonists can no longer use anecdotal evidence to back their respective opinions.
All parties have been doing this for years, and it has gotten us nowhere. There is no longer an excuse for these types of responses. The research has been done. There are thousands of studies that have been published on e-cigarettes and vaporizers. If you truly feel you are a defender of your right to vape, please take a little time and educate yourself. Review both the good and the bad research.
It does more harm than good when advocates promise friends and family that there is no risk involved with e-cigarettes, telling them that they are 100 percent healthy. It’s not our job to make people believe these products are without their own set of inherent risks. We must educate them with the information that is available. If we do this properly, we can help adult smokers form educated opinions about vapor products, and they can then spread their knowledge.
It has become a consistent occurrence at many health conferences, smoking ordinance meetings and other public forums where vaping is the subject being discussed. The anti-vaping groups seemingly have nothing to lose and do anything to make sure their voices are heard.
It’s hard to believe that there is a motive larger than the critical matter of public health. That opinion is challenged when groups of researchers, such as Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, attack the vapor industry with false facts and fearmongering. Glantz doesn’t mention that his group received a massive amount of funding from the FDA in 2018 for research regarding e-cigarettes. He is hired to be the opposition. For example, his recent tweet: “Using e-cigarettes increases exposure to toxic chemicals. For most users: They would be better off just smoking.”
His purely fictitious statement, directed at people who may not understand enough about e-cigarettes, causes vapers to question their choice. In fact, the statement should be considered criminal because it could cost human lives by sending former smokers back to combustible cigarettes. Yet, the FDA allows it to go on.
We have seen regulators act swiftly and effectively in other industries where a company or research group publicizes any unsubstantiated claims for health benefit, and this situation is no different. I would even say it’s more dangerous as they push people toward a product that is known to kill 50 percent of its users.
Sadly, the whole atmosphere surrounding nicotine has become incredibly dangerous and polarizing. You can no longer have a moderate opinion toward either side of the bench. If you support an adult’s choice to be able to use vapor products, you also support addicting children to nicotine. You cannot lobby for stricter regulations for next-generation tobacco products without advocating for the complete elimination of recreational nicotine use.
This must stop. I have reached out to many health groups as well as other organizations concerned about vapor products and youth initiation. The outreach was done with the hope of providing some understanding to what they are witnessing. With this information, we intend to make the most educated decisions on how to assist and hopefully end the reported epidemic of youth vaping.
Too many times in this process I have been greeted with bared teeth and the same common response: “We are not letting the fox into the hen house.” While I understand the cautiousness of these groups, I also believe that they are doing an entire nation of youth a disservice by not working with the people that know these products better than anyone else.
My hope is that one day soon we can all sit down and have an open and educated conversation to solve these important issues. We need to draw back the proverbial curtain with the hope of seeing what’s happening that is creating this problem of youth uptake. If we don’t, we will only continue to make drastic decisions based on what many consider to be anecdotal information.
We live in an era of mass information. It’s sad that when it comes to public health regarding nicotine, we are reliving the era of McCarthyism. In today’s world, anyone and everyone can have a public forum to advance their agenda, even if it’s evil. Do we as a nation no longer question the Stanton Glantzs of the world who spew lies while standing on a stack of taxpayer money?
It is easy to demonize “Big Tobacco” and lump everyone in the vapor industry into that box. However, the largest portion of the vapor industry is made up of businesses that have existed for fewer than 10 years. It would be irresponsible to immediately assume that all these companies operate under the same archaic agenda built by tobacco companies in the past.
The vapor industry is young and has never been given the opportunity to prove its mission to end the death caused by combustible cigarettes. Instead, the industry carries the burden of generations of misinformation and disillusion from those vehemently opposed to the tobacco industry. E-cigarettes were created as a true alternative for adult cigarette smokers, and these products continue to be the only disruptive space for those seeking safer options than combustible tobacco products.

Josh Church
Josh Church is the chief regulatory and compliance officer of Joyetech Group, the largest vapor industry manufacturer in the world.
February 18, 2019
Worlds Apart
Despite a shared culture and heritage, the U.K. and the U.S. find themselves at polar opposites of the spectrum in their attitudes toward vaping.
By Maria Verven
While there are more vapers in the U.S. than there are in the U.K., vaping is more prevalent in the U.K. when calculated as a percentage of the overall population.
The reason? In the U.K., vaping is far less stigmatized socially, and it has been heartily endorsed by key public health organizations for “preventing almost all the harm from smoking.”
Let’s find out the other reasons why these two countries are worlds apart.
THE U.K.: ACKNOWLEDGING WHERE E-CIGARETTES ARE ON THE RISK CONTINUUM
While the U.K. has imposed very strict regulations on e-cigarettes and e-liquids, key organizations including Public Health England (PHE) and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) agree that vaping is far less harmful than smoking traditional tobacco products.
The EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) provides the framework and regulations for all e-cigarettes and e-liquids containing nicotine. The TPD’s regulations outline minimum standards of safety and quality for anyone who manufactures, imports, or rebrands e-cigarettes and e-liquids.
Among the guidelines are limits on the capacity of vapor tanks and e-liquid bottle sizes as well as restrictions on certain ingredients and coloring agents. There is a six-month approval period for new e-liquids and hardware. The TPD also regulates the allowable level of nicotine, so portable vapor devices such as the Juul that contained higher nicotine levels were not allowed (Juul Labs recently developed reduced-nicotine pods that meet the guidelines).
Consumers and healthcare professionals can report adverse events and safety concerns to the U.K.’s Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) through a “Yellow Card” reporting system.
But compared with the U.S., the U.K. sees much less disruption, thanks in part to the huge increase in e-cigarette use and a regulatory environment that appears to be informed on how e-cigarettes factor into the risk continuum. In fact, e-cigarette campaigners have even been assured by the Department of Health and Social Care and the designated approval agency that they will turn a blind eye toward any advertising promoting vaping as a safer alternative.
MEANWHILE IN THE U.S.: BANS AND INCREASING RESTRICTIONS
The Tobacco Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over all tobacco products, and in May 2016, the FDA extended this authority over all electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS), including e-cigarettes and vape pens.
Manufacturers and importers selling vapor products and e-liquids made on or before Aug. 8, 2016, were required to submit a list of all ingredients to the FDA by November 2017; small-scale tobacco product manufacturers were given another six months.
Submission of premarket tobacco product applications (PMTAs) for all noncombustible products, including e-cigarettes, is due on or before Aug. 8, 2022, when manufacturers must demonstrate that marketing the new tobacco products “would be appropriate to protect public health.” The FDA claims it will consider the risks and benefits to both users and nonusers when reviewing each product’s components, ingredients, additives and health risks in addition to how the product is manufactured, packaged and labeled.
Ironically, the FDA’s deeming regulations don’t impose the same types of specific manufacturing guidelines as the TPD. They don’t outright prohibit any particular ingredients, set maximum nicotine levels or even require the use of child-resistant packaging. Since many e-liquid manufacturers also sell across the pond, they have been engineering their products and packaging to comply with the TPD’s guidelines. In fact, many bolstered their quality-assurance measures by implementing good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and building ISO 7 state-of-the-art cleanrooms in an effort to build public confidence and to stay one step ahead of potential FDA requirements.
Despite this, many U.S. legislators continue to express concerns about e-cigarettes and who’s using them—particularly teens—siding with the popular stance that these products are “bad.” Coupled with a huge increase in the popularity of vapor devices such as the Juul, regulators and legislators have tried to outdo each other by proposing even more forceful actions to “stem this dangerous trend, including revisiting our policy that extended the compliance dates for e-cigarette manufacturers, including flavored e-cigarettes, to submit applications for premarket authorization,” according to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
So it came as no surprise when in November 2018 the FDA announced new restrictions on the sales of flavored e-cigarettes, except those flavored with menthol and mint. They have yet to specify a timeline for implementing the new proposal, which also requires stores to have secure areas that are restricted to adults over the age of 18. Ironically, this keeps e-cigarettes off the shelves of most convenience stores and gas stations, where traditional cigarettes continue to be sold. They also proposed new age-verification standards for online retailers selling e-cigarettes.
THE U.K.: ENDORSEMENT BY THE HEALTH COMMUNITY
London’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) not only endorsed the use of e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids; it also concluded that e-cigarettes can “prevent almost all the harm from smoking.”
“Large-scale substitution of e-cigarettes for tobacco smoking has the potential to prevent almost all the harm from smoking in society,” the RCP states. “Promoting e-cigarettes and other nontobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking is therefore likely to generate significant health gains in the U.K.”
In fact, in the U.K., the health community is launching a new campaign to convince smokers that vaping is not only less harmful than smoking combustible cigarettes; it’s also a good way to quit. In one short video, an experiment was conducted to collect the sticky black tar that accumulates in the lungs of a heavy smoker in a jar, while showing that vaping the same amount of nicotine collects only a trace of residue.
And last year, PHE, the world’s oldest public health commission, even recommended that e-cigarettes be made available by prescription because of how successful they were in helping thousands of U.K. citizens quit smoking. PHE even recommended that the devices be made available for purchase in U.K. hospitals.
PHE says that although e-cigarette use did rise among young people in England, the numbers have flattened off since 2015. “There are no studies that show vaping increases tobacco use among young people in the U.K.,” said Martin Dockrell, head of the tobacco control program at PHE.
PHE says that e-cigarettes could help many more people quit smoking. Data from its smoking cessation program showed that 65 percent to 68 percent of people who used e-cigarettes as well as nicotine-replacement therapies succeeded in quitting.
“It would be tragic if thousands of smokers who could quit with the help of an e-cigarette are being put off due to false fears about safety,” said John Newton, PHE’s director of health improvement. “We need to reassure smokers that switching to an e-cigarette would be much less harmful than smoking.”
MEANWHILE IN THE U.S.: FEARMONGERING PERSISTS
Despite all of the e-cigarette studies that have been conducted, including the Drexel University study that concluded, “It’s about as harmless as you can get,” the U.S. public health community continues to fuel concern and controversy.
Myths persist around what’s in e-liquids, despite the rigorous testing and numerous studies that have been conducted not just on e-liquids but also the resulting vapor that is produced. Undocumented, unsubstantiated reports of diacetyl, formaldehyde and other aldehydes stoke fear and spread the gross misperception that e-cigarettes are as harmful as traditional combustible cigarettes.
Follow the money, and you’ll find that health organizations receive millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies. So it’s no surprise that they demonized vaping and lobbied for bans, according to Bill Godshall, the founder and executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania and a passionate advocate of vaping.
“If you want to keep money flowing in from Big Pharma, you’ll keep hawking their products. That’s not public health information,” Godshall said.
But by far the greatest hurdle to the industry is the FDA, according to Godshall, Gregory Conley of the American Vaping Association and other vaping advocates. Recent moves by the FDA to restrict or ban the sale of flavored nicotine pods will only serve to make it harder for adult smokers to switch to a far less harmful alternative, Conley said.
“For many smokers, it will be much easier to pick up a pack of Marlboros or Camels—or even an unrestricted cherry-flavored cigar at a local convenience store—than it will be to make the switch to a vaping product that truly helps him or her break their desire for cigarettes,” said Conley.
“Cigarette smokers have a human right to truthful health information and legal access to less hazardous alternatives,” Godshall said. “The FDA and public health agencies have an ethical duty to inform smokers that e-cigarettes are far less hazardous alternatives to cigarettes and to keep these alternatives on the market as long as highly addictive, lethal cigarettes remain legal.”
In summary, the burdens being imposed on the U.S. vapor community by federal, state and local legislators raise serious ethical questions. Taken altogether, the bans and restrictions on vaping, scare tactics and misinformation campaigns, as well as egregiously high taxes on vapor products can potentially doom millions of people—particularly those crippled by poverty and mental illness—to a lifetime of smoking.
All Americans have to do is look across the ocean to see how another country is providing the facts and endorsing a product that could save millions of lives.

Maria Verven
The original “Vaping Vamp,” Maria Verven owns Verve Communications,
a PR and marketing firm specializing in the vapor industry.
February 18, 2019
Raids target vape stores in Malaysia
Vape stores in Malaysia have been the target of nationwide raids carried out to seize nicotine-based vapes, according to the country’s Health Ministry.
An official from the Health Ministry told The Star that the move was undertaken to monitor the nicotine content in vaping fluids. The sale and use of e-cigarettes containing nicotine are subject to the Poisons Act 1952 and Food Act 1983 under the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 2004.
Deputy health director-general Datuk Dr. Lokman Hakim said in a statement that action would be taken against sellers and users of e-cigarettes that contained nicotine under the Poisons Act 1952.
Malaysian Organisation of Vape Entities president Samsul Kamal Arriffin says that more than 300 stores have been raided by the Health Ministry.
Among the stores raided following the discovery of products containing nicotine was a vape store in Shah Alam.
The store’s owner claims officers from the Health Ministry have confiscated more than 3,000 bottles of vape liquid worth RM100,000.
Dr. Lokman announced Nov. 4 that the Health Ministry would intensify the campaign against e-cigarettes or vaping: “The ministry’s message to the community is do not use e-cigarettes or vaping as it is harmful to your health in the long-term,” he said.
November 6, 2015