1account, a technology provider to online vendors of age-restricted products and services, has created a new advisory board to support its ambitious plans in the vaping sector, which includes the rollout of a new business-to-consumer ID app to prevent underage access to vape devices and e-liquids online and offline.
Joining the new board are Mark Aylwin, former managing director of Booker; Ralph Topping, former chief executive of bookmaker William Hill; Simon Bazalgette, former CEO of the Jockey Club; and Murray Perkins, former policy director at the British Board of Film Classification.
Following 1account’s success in providing age verification technology to the vaping and gambling sectors, Aylwin will help drive the continued rollout of the company’s online technology and help businesses in the vaping sector make the transition to accepting the company’s new consumer digital ID app, 1account ID, for their online and offline commerce.
The new B2C product will help to prevent unlawful access to vaping products online and in vape retail outlets, convenience stores and supermarkets, aligning with the British government’s strategy to build a Digital Identity Trust Framework.
“The creation of a digital ID for the purchase of vape products online and offline represents a major step forward and will enable vape retailers to take the most proactive stance possible in preventing underage sales of vape devices and e-liquids,” says Aylwin. “1account can offer vape retailers a solution both online and offline that enables compliance for now and the future.”
A Canadian vapor trade group extended an open invitation to Nova Scotia’s new government. The Canadian Vaping Association (CVA) letter to Premier Iain Rankin and 16 cabinet ministers stated that the organization wants to “work with industry to repair the destructive vaping legislation implemented by the previous administration.”
The Canadian province’s current legislation prohibits all flavored vaping products excluding tobacco and has a .50 cent per/ml tax. The policies have resulted in a drastic increase in traditional cigarette sales, as confirmed by the Atlantic Convenience Store Association and Abacus Data finding 30 percent of adult vapers are at risk of returning to smoking, according to the letter.
“Vaping has conclusively shown to be less harmful than smoking, and as such, vaping regulation must balance adult smokers’ constitutional right to life, liberty, and the security of the person with youth protection. In acting to protect youth, Nova Scotia has overcorrected to the detriment of public health,” the letter states.
The flavor ban has resulted in the closure of over 85 percent of Nova Scotia’s specialty vape retailers, job losses and broken lease agreements. The regulation has also strengthened illicit marketing of the products.
“The CVA has developed solutions to balancing youth use with adult harm reduction that have been successful within Ontario and British Columbia,” said Darryl Tempest, executive director of the CVA. “We continue to work to seek solutions to prevent use with youth and never smokers. The CVA asks for the opportunity to meet with the new administration to discuss solutions and present the science.”
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is scheduled to publish in the Federal Register its rules for mailing electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) products tomorrow, Feb. 19. The unpublished rule states “that the prohibition on mailing ENDS will apply immediately ‘on and after’ the date of the final rule.”
However, the Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act, which placed ENDS under the PACT Act, was enacted on December 27, 2020 and becomes effective 90 days after enactment (March 27, 2021). The USPO rule states that the agency will mail vapor products under narrowly defined circumstances:
Noncontiguous States: intrastate shipments within Alaska or Hawaii;
Business/Regulatory Purposes: shipments transmitted between verified and authorized tobacco industry businesses for business purposes, or between such businesses and federal or state agencies for regulatory purposes;
Certain Individuals: lightweight shipments mailed between adult individuals, limited to 10 per 30-day period;
Consumer Testing: limited shipments of cigarettes sent by verified and authorized manufacturers to adult smokers for consumer testing purposes;
Public Health: limited shipments by federal agencies for public health purposes under similar rules applied to manufacturers conducting consumer testing.
Many business were unsure if B2B mailing would be allowed. The unpublished rules say they will be allowed. According to Azim Chowdhury, a partner at Keller and Heckman, the PACT Act has historically exempted businesses-to-business deliveries from the USPS ban. Specifically, the USPS ban does not extend to tobacco products mailed only for business purposes between legally operating businesses that have all applicable state and federal government licenses or permits and are engaged in tobacco product manufacturing, distribution, wholesale, export, import, testing, investigation, or research.
“Companies seeking to use USPS for business-to-business deliveries must first submit an application to the USPS Pricing and Classification Service Center and comply with several other shipping, labeling, and delivery requirements,” said Chowdhury.
The USPS rules also state that the listed exceptions cannot feasibly be applied to inbound or outbound international mail, mail to or from the Freely Associated States, or mail presented at overseas Army Post Office (APO), Fleet Post Office (FPO), or Diplomatic Post Office (DPO) locations and destined to addresses in the United States. Because of this inability, all ENDS products “in such mail are nonmailable, without exception.”
In addition to the non-mailing provisions, the PACT Act requires anyone who sells cigarettes or smokeless tobacco to register with the ATF and the tobacco tax administrators of the states into which a shipment is made or in which an advertisement or offer is disseminated, according to Chowdhury. Retailers who ship cigarettes or smokeless tobacco to consumers are further required to label packages as containing tobacco, verify the age and identity of the customer at purchase, use a delivery method (other than USPS) that checks ID and obtains an adult customer signature at delivery, and maintain records of delivery sales for a period of four years after the date of sale, among other things.
Excluded from the statutory definition are products approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for sale as “tobacco cessation products or for other therapeutic purposes and marketed and sold solely for such purposes.” The USPO also proposes to treat ENDS as a standalone category, “albeit one generally subject to the same restrictions and exceptions as cigarettes, consistent with the statute.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it received thousands of premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) submissions covering millions of tobacco products, the majority of which came in very close to the Sept. 9, 2020 deadline. The submissions varied substantially in number of tobacco products contained in each submission, size, format and organization, including paper submissions and even hard drives and CDs, according to a press release.
FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) director Mitch Zeller stated as of mid-January 2021, the agency has completed the Processing step of applications for more than 4.8 million products from over 230 companies. “We have accepted applications for about 84,000 products and refused to accept applications for about 3,100 products submitted through the PMTA pathway,” wrote Zeller. “As of mid-January 2021, of the applications submitted by Sept. 9, we have filed applications for about 29,000 products and refused to file applications for about 1,650 products submitted through the PMTA pathway.”
He also stated that several factors have slowed the agency’s progress in getting application’s into the system. Companies submitted PMTAs differently, for example some applicants provided information on one product per submission while other applicants provided information for all of the company’s products within one submission.
“One firm submitted information on more than 4 million tobacco products within a single submission,” Zeller wrote. “The amount of content in each submission also greatly varied, with some applications including up to 2,000,000 files where each file contains multiple pages of content for FDA to review.” The letter is part of a pledge Zeller made that the agency would keep interested stakeholders updated on the agency’s progress.
FDA is prioritizing enforcement against any ENDS product that continues to be sold and for which the agency did not receive a product application. To date, the FDA has sent warning letters to 30 firms who manufacture and operate websites selling electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products, specifically e-liquids, which lack premarket authorization, according to the letter.
The agency also stated that the likelihood of FDA reviewing all the applications by Sept. 9, 2021 is low. Because of the sheer number of applications, the agency has set aside the products with the greatest market share and will push those products through the process more quickly. “[We will] focus resources on products where scientific review will have the greatest public health impact, based on their market share, while also committing to providing an opportunity for review to all companies,” Zeller wrote. This could prove positive or negative as a quick denial would force the product off the market.
The agency can still not confirm when it would release a list of products that are approved to be on the market. Zeller wrote that the agency continues to work on processing submissions and verifying the dates of initial marketing and current marketing status of products that submitted a timely PMTA.
“We have already verified this information for around 86,000 products received through the PMTA pathway,” he wrote. “Due to the size and volume of the PMTA submissions and the variable quality, format and presentation of these submissions, processing these submissions and verifying this information will take more time.”
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.
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.
The IECIE Shanghai Vape Culture Week (IECIE Shanghai) will be held from 18-20 of May, 2021. Hosted by Shenzhen Informa Markets Creativity Exhibition Co., IECIE Shanghai will take place at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. The show will occupy an exhibition area of 12,000 square meters and is expected to attract more than 20,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors from around the world.
The IECIE Shenzhen Expo is scheduled for September 3-5 2021. This makes the IECIE Shanghai the first large-scale professional e-cigarette exhibition of 2021 in China. “As a professional e-cigarette exhibition in the domestic vertical field that opens throughout the year, IECIE Shanghai casts irreplaceable influence on the industry,” a press release states. “It will not only provide a trade platform for exhibitors and professional visitors to communicate and reach a deal, but also a booster to promote product technology innovation and industry development.”
IECIE Shanghai will not only meet the needs of e-cigarette companies for new product launches and overseas promotion, but also meet the purpose of vape store purchases and mass consumers to try new products, according to the release. Typically, the IECIE Shenzhen is held in April and is the first trade show for vapor products to provide a platform to new product launches and displays for global e-cigarette brands. April-May has also become the agreed-upon peak season for new product launches in the industry
IECIE Shanghai aims to focus on functional e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices. The Shanghai show will include the “World Vape Championship”, “Infinite E-liquid Station”, and “Vape Map Member Day.” For more information, visit https://en.iecie.com/
In the film “You Don’t Know Nicotine,” director Aaron Biebert sets out to expose the manipulation, confusion and misinformation in the nicotine industry.
By Timothy S. Donahue
The nicotine industry is a complicated one. Nicotine may be considered the vilest of industries on Earth. However, the global tobacco market size was estimated at $849.09 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $878.35 billion in 2020. Around the world, combustible cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death. Tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year worldwide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If the pattern of smoking combustible cigarettes for nicotine doesn’t change, more than 8 million people a year will die from preventable diseases by 2030.
It doesn’t need to be that way, according to director Aaron Biebert, who is probably best known for his 2016 documentary A Billion Lives. The film earned several awards for its in-depth investigation into the history and corruption in the tobacco industry and how the vapor industry, a safer alternative to combustible cigarettes, was being attacked through a concerted effort of bad science, misinformation and outright lies. Picking up on where his first film left off, Biebert and the team behind Third Line Films’ latest documentary, You Don’t Know Nicotine, answered many questions that the team felt it had originally left untouched.
Several scientific studies support e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes and a benefit to public health. Biebert, who also narrates both films, said that after finishing A Billion Lives, he began to be haunted by certain questions surrounding the nicotine industry. He had met with thousands of smokers and wanted to better understand why so many people used combustible cigarettes despite decades of anti-smoking shame campaigns.
“Is it a case of simple addiction? Why does nicotine primarily affect the oppressed or those with brain differences? I started reading more studies about the effects of nicotine outside of cigarettes and found some surprising information,” Biebert explained to Vapor Voice during an exclusive interview in early December. “I gathered the filmmakers I work with, and we began a new journey to know nicotine and share our findings with the world.”
To get funding for the new mission, Biebert and his wife, Jennifer, and the rest of the Third Line Films team launched a crowdfunding campaign, and 1,112 people pledged $108,598 to support the cause through Kickstarter. Third Line Films covered the equipment, staff and post-production costs. The group did not seek or take funding from any tobacco, pharmaceutical or anti-nicotine organizations. Biebert said that this allowed for the film to follow the science and remain neutral.
“We interviewed people on a variety of sides, and I think that really made a difference with the way the general public is responding to the film,” said Biebert. “While our production crew at Third Line Films did not regularly use nicotine, we do have countless friends, family members and neighbors that did. For millions of people who use nicotine around the world, the method by which they choose to use nicotine—largely impacted by their perception of what nicotine is and does to the body—may truly be a matter of life or death. With so much on the line, our society can’t afford any confusion, interference or misinformation when it comes to understanding nicotine.”
You Don’t Know Nicotine takes a more centralized focus on the overall nicotine industry. The movie takes an inside look at tobacco control/harm reduction advocates on both sides of the safer nicotine ingestion argument as well as the anti-tobacco/anti-vaping groups that have recently become more generalized as anti-nicotine groups.
Vapor industry experts say vapor products are a safer way for adults to consume nicotine and are an effective tool in helping cigarette smokers quit smoking. However, anti-tobacco activists view vapor products as just another tool for the large tobacco companies to keep people addicted to nicotine or to hook kids on nicotine. Along with the CDC, they also blame last year’s EVALI crisis wrongly on nicotine vapor products (it was THC). Biebert says his research found something even more sinister at play.
In the film, Biebert talks about how many anti-vaping groups are the same organizations as the anti-smoking groups, such as the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids’ Tobacco Action Fund. These are 501 c4 groups that can take in unlimited funds and are not required to report donors or amounts. These are often referred to as “dark money” organizations. The funding of these groups comes from a mix of tobacco money (from the Master Settlement Agreement) and private funds from large donors, such as Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg donated over $1 billion to anti-nicotine efforts and funds activities at the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Bloomberg also funds the CDC Foundation [an independent nonprofit and the sole entity created by the U.S. Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the CDC]. When people started getting sick and dying in 2019 [from EVALI], the CDC [placed the blame] on nicotine vapor products instead of identifying illegal [marijuana vapor] products as the real culprit,” says Biebert in the movie. “The mainstream media, which runs Bloomberg-funded ads against nicotine, parroted the CDC’s warning. Elected officials lobbied by Bloomberg-funded organizations used this confusion to push bans on safer nicotine products while leaving cigarettes on the market. People started to smoke cigarettes again.”
As the film was wrapping up, Biebert’s team discovered a company tied to Michael Bloomberg that had invested in a new nicotine vapor device called Hale. A product of Hava Health, Hale is an electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) product that aims to promote smoking cessation by gradually lowering nicotine levels.
“As of 2020, they’re working toward [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] FDA approval. It looks like a flash drive, sleek, modern and uses flavors. It contains nicotine. This sounds very familiar. The harsh legislation pushed by the Bloomberg-funded lobbyists and their fear campaigns will put all the small shops out of business that helped more than 50 million people stop smoking worldwide,” said Biebert. “It has created a regulatory environment where only the wealthiest people will be able to play. The wealthy people can own nicotine businesses and fund [501 c4] organizations that change public opinion to match their own world view.”
David Goerlitz, the actor who portrayed the “Winston Man” for eight years in the 1980s for Winston cigarettes, is used as a source in You Don’t Know Nicotine. He says the anti-tobacco groups didn’t always have bad intentions. Initially, they set out to do good work. “I’m just saying their intentions were good, like mine were, but sometimes greed outweighs fear, so therefore you take shortcuts and you start doing things that you shouldn’t do,” he explains. “And I’m saying that’s what they did. Now we know what we know, and we have the facts. We have the data … we have liars.”
Vapor Voice took the opportunity to ask Biebert seven questions concerning his thoughts on You Don’t Know Nicotine and what he learned during the making of the film without giving away too many (more) spoilers. Access to the film can be found by visiting KnowNicotine.com.
Vapor Voice:What are you most proud of, concerning this film?
Aaron Biebert: I’m most proud of the impact it’s had for those harboring great burdens regarding nicotine. So much shame, fear and even hatred has been reduced by a new understanding of what nicotine is, what it does and why people use it.
Why is it important for the nicotine industry to be exposed for what goes on with both major tobacco companies and anti-tobacco advocates?
I wouldn’t say that we put effort into exposing the nicotine industry or anti-tobacco advocates, we simply aimed to expose the truth and established scientific evidence. My passion doesn’t lie in fighting against people but rather for them. Sometimes anti-science groups and leaders are in the way of helping people, but it wasn’t our intention to expose them.
Do you support vaping and why/why not?
I believe it is a human right to have the accurate information needed to make personal health decisions about nicotine use as well as access to the safest nicotine-delivery system a person chooses without facing shame, stigma or “sin taxes.” There is a scientific consensus that nicotine vapor products are safer than cigarettes, so I believe they should be available and encouraged. I also believe nicotine-delivery systems will continue to improve, and innovation should be encouraged.
What has been your biggest “surprise reaction” that you have had from viewers?
One person who works for more than one anti-nicotine organization wrote a long Twitter thread about her difficult life, why she hated nicotine and how our documentary gave her peace. She then declared that she would resign from her work fighting nicotine use. That was a massive surprise and gave us a lot of hope that thoughtful people everywhere will take a look at the issue and reconsider their positions in light of the scientific information we shared.
What was the most interesting thing you learned from making the film?
It was extremely interesting to learn that there are around 13 possible types of nicotine receptor genes, and each of us has a combination of only six or seven. That means that the effects of nicotine vary widely and that one person’s experience with nicotine could be wildly different than their neighbor’s. It’s important that people have the humility to truly understand they don’t know the effect of nicotine for someone else.
What do you hope this film accomplishes?
I hope this film opens up a new era of discourse about nicotine, the effects of nicotine, the people who use nicotine and the anti-science efforts against the use of nicotine. I hope policymakers, mental health professionals, public health leaders and others view our film as a discussion starter as they reset their understandings of nicotine. It’s too serious of a topic to be operating under 70-year-old, outdated information.
What are your thoughts on the media being slow to report positive studies about vaping because of where they get some funding, which someone mentions in the film?
As a cine-journalist myself, I don’t believe the “media” is slow to report positive studies because of funding conflicts. Rather, it is the nature of media that is the problem. Bad things attract views and clicks. Helpful science is often not sexy enough. Add in 70 years of unscientific reporting on nicotine and you have a general public unwilling to believe what the few excellent journalists do report.
If anything, a lack of funding is the issue. Most high-quality journalism is dead, and this topic is much too complex for most underpaid journalists to cover. With nonstop, biased anti-nicotine press releases from “credible” organizations coming to the desks of overworked reporters, it makes sense that they would publish the clickbait headlines provided to them.
It will take a massive effort to fix this systemic problem.
The Malaysian government wants to reduce the number of smokers in the country by 15 percent by 2025. They are hoping to accomplish the goal through regulation and taxation, however, not by exploring less-risky nicotine products.
According to an article in The Sun Daily, previous measures such as raising taxes and the price of tobacco in a bid to reduce consumption had not only been ineffective, but also catapulted the growth of the illegal cigarette market.
During the third virtual Scientific Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction 2020 in September, public health expert professor Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh, was quoted saying that the tobacco harm reduction strategy could be used as an alternative solution. However, it would face many hurdles as it was still not well-received by Malaysians in general.
She said there were still concerns over the efficacy of non-tobacco nicotine products on top of the notion that e-cigarettes could increase smoking gateways among youths, adding that there was also the issue of no proper monitoring of tobacco alternative products, electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and heat-not-burn (HnB) products, such as IQOS.
At the moment, rules and regulations only cover the selling of nicotine products and are categorised under the Poison Act 1952. This clearly states that the supply and sale of any preparation containing nicotine is only allowed by licensed pharmacists and registered doctors for the purpose of treatment.
Sharifa was speaking as a panellist during the summit’s discussion titled “Tobacco Harm Reduction in low- and middle-income countries”, where she told the panel the government was taking a harder stand with its plan to introduce the standalone Tobacco Control Act to replace the Control of Tobacco Products Regulations 2004, which seeks to tighten control on all types of tobacco products.
Speaking on the sidelines, she told the newspaper the new act will deem nicotine products, including vapes and HNB devices, as tobacco products and will be enforced as such and likely to be totally banned. “This means only vape with non-nicotine e-juices will be allowed in the market,” she said. “This would only lead to less ‘safer choices’ for hard core smokers to transition to safer practices and options.”
She added that combustible cigarettes have been known to be more hazardous not only to the smoker themselves but also to those around them as opposed to the alternatives like vapes and HnB due to the lack of tobacco combustion. This, she said, was compounded with the large availability of contraband and illicit cigarettes that are abundant in the market at a low cost.
Sharifa also acknowledged there has been a visible dip in smoking prevalence in the country following its rigorous anti-smoking strategy nationwide. However, she said it could not be taken wholeheartedly since the authorities were unable to determine whether former users had switched to contraband cigarettes, vapes, HnB or that they had truly quit smoking.
“No proper study has been concisely implemented to look at the nature, but nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is very common in Malaysia. However, implementation wise, it does have its concerns of access, lack of availability, and standardisation across urban and rural areas, and lack of trained health personnel in rural settings,” she said. “Many studies have shown that all types of nicotine products such as vapes, ENDS and NRT rate is curtailing persistent smokers are almost similar.”
The Tennessee Department of Revenue stated in a notice on Wednesday that e-cigarettes, vape devices and hemp and herbal cigarettes without tobacco aren’t subject to the state’s tobacco tax.
When hemp and herbal product cigarettes don’t contain tobacco, they aren’t subject to the state’s tobacco tax, according to Notice 20-21, according to an article on law360.com.
E-cigarettes and vape devices transform liquids into gas and allow inhalation of vapor. While the liquid cartridges can contain nicotine and other compounds, they’re not subject to the tobacco tax because they don’t contain tobacco, the notice said. Smokeless oral nicotine patches also are not subject to the tobacco tax, the notice said.
The notice also said that while many new products are being introduced in the state, some with nicotine and others packaged like tobacco products, the department will not apply the tobacco tax to nontobacco products without statutory clarification on what is considered a tobacco substitute.
Tennessee imposes a tax on the privilege of selling cigarette and tobacco products. Cigarettes are taxed at 62 cents per pack of 20, and other tobacco products like cigars and snuff are taxed at 6.6% of the wholesale cost, the notice said.