Bonus Content: Rob Burton

In a video recording posted as part of the Bonus Content of the September Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum in Seoul, South Korea, Robert Burton, group scientific and regulatory director of the Plxsur Group, made the case for the vaping industry to comply with the highest standards of integrity—even going beyond the requirements of regulations where necessary.

“As the world’s largest group of independent vaping companies, we at Plxsur take our responsibilities very seriously and to that end we have developed a set of standards that we feel are appropriate, not just for ourselves, but for the industry as a whole,” Burton said.

“Our first standard is in relation to compliance. We believe that all products should be manufactured to the highest possible standards. This includes the ingredients that go into them, the packaging, and the final product in terms of how it is merchandised, distributed and consumed.

“Our second standard is youth access prevention. Nobody under the age of 18 should get access to these products. We should only be targeting adult smokers and adult vapers. To that end, online age verification systems should be standard. In-store education of shopkeepers, people selling these products, should also be standard, and systems in place in those stores to prevent access … [by] youth, such as age verification, facial recognition systems, which are now standard in many of our stores.

“Our third standard is recycling, and obviously this is a very hot topic at the moment, particularly relating to disposables, the single use of plastics and the battery-use regulations that are coming into many countries. We believe it is the responsibility of not just the manufacturers but of the retailers of these products to encourage consumers to recycle and to proactively encourage facilitation of that recycling with collection sites and partnerships with recycling companies.

“Our fourth standard is responsible marketing. We believe, as with our child-protection standards, that these products should not be marketed to youth. They should be marketed to adult smokers and vapers, and that includes the way that these are packaged—so no cartoon characters, no descriptors that imply these are sweets, confectionery. And also, that should be encouraged through the retailers as well to make sure these products are not in obvious areas where youth can have access to … [them] visually; or even access to them from a purchasing point of view.

“The final standard, standard five, relates to child protection. And this relates to protecting children from access to these products; so accidental vaping or swallowing ingredients that could potentially cause harm. Specifically, we believe that all manufacturers should look at methods to protect their devices from access … [by] children. That includes pod activation systems, child locks on the devices themselves, and also various types of packaging that prevent access .. [by] children. There is no justifiable reason why any vape system should find its way into a child’s hands.

“One thing that we need to remember is that this industry is still new, it’s still emerging, it’s still disruptive. Regulation is still playing catch-up. And just because that regulation either doesn’t exist or is being abused doesn’t mean that we as an industry should not set the highest possible standards. We at Plxsur are doing that not just for ourselves, we believe that this is a benchmark for the whole of the industry to follow.”