Teodoro Locsin Jr. (Photo: Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs)
Tobacco harm reduction (THR) advocates and vapers have praised Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. for his insistence at the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) that the latest scientific information must be considered to solve the global smoking problem.
“We salute his bravery at COP9 for promoting the Philippines’ balanced and evidence-based approach to safer nicotine products,” said Peter Dator, president of consumer group Vapers PH and Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) member. “Opponents and officials have since done their best to discredit Secretary Locsin and disrespect our country’s democracy and sovereignty, but they have failed badly.”
“In a world where smoking causes 8 million deaths every year, Secretary Locsin has done everyone a huge favor,” said Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of CAPHRA. “Telling COP9 about the success of ‘far less harmful novel tobacco products’ and the Philippine government’s political support for them was music to the ears of the millions who’ve successful[ly] quit deadly cigarettes via vaping.”
We salute his bravery at COP9 for promoting the Philippines’ balanced and evidence-based approach to safer nicotine products.
Loucas organized a global livestream called sCOPe during COP9, featuring leading THR experts and consumer advocates. The livestream added to the increasing pressure on the WHO to embrace safer nicotine products.
“How can we trust the WHO and the FCTC when they are afraid of science? In this age of fake news and alternative facts, it is important for governments to take a stand for the facts and know how to sift through the propaganda. This is what Secretary Locsin did at COP9, and I join the Philippine Cabinet and Congress in commending his actions,” said Dator.
The health department said that it was misleading to praise the tobacco industry’s role in raising tax revenues. In 2011, the cost of tobacco-related diseases was estimated at PHP177 billion ($3.54 billion) annually, the agency noted. This was seven times higher than the PHP25.9 billion collected in taxes from tobacco products.
Imperial Brands reported net revenue of £32.79 billion in the full year that ended Sept. 30, 2021, up 0.7 percent over that reported in 2020. On an organic adjusted basis, net revenue was £7.59 billion, down 1.9 percent but up 1.4 percent at constant currency.
The company operating profit increased 15.2 percent to £3.15 billion. On an organic adjusted basis, operating profit was £3.57 billion, up 2.1 percent (4.8 percent at constant currency) over the previous fiscal year.
“This has been a year of important progress and significant change as we begin to deliver on the new, focused strategy we announced in January 2021,” said Imperial Brands CEO Stefan Bomhard in a statement.
“We have substantially refreshed our leadership team, making new hires to strengthen our consumer-facing capabilities, while building on our existing deep tobacco experience. We have changed the way we work, placing the consumer at the center of our decision-making. We have simplified the organization, creating efficiencies for reinvestment. And we have introduced more rigorous performance management, enabling better prioritization of resources.
Through our focused, consumer-led next-generation products strategy, we are committed to making a meaningful contribution to harm reduction over time.
“This approach is already delivering improved operational and financial outcomes. In tobacco, our sharper focus and increased investment in the top-five priority markets have begun to stabilize the aggregate market share performance. This is encouraging early progress in addressing the long-term historical declines. We will build on this foundation in the coming year with further investment in brand building and sales execution.
“Through our focused, consumer-led next-generation products strategy, we are committed to making a meaningful contribution to harm reduction over time by offering adult smokers potentially reduced-risk products. In line with our plans, we launched market trials for our heated-tobacco proposition, Pulze and iD sticks in the Czech Republic and Greece, as well as a trial of an improved consumer marketing proposition for our U.S. vapor product, Blu. We will track the consumer data over the coming months to inform our next steps.
“Our five-year plan to transform Imperial is divided into two distinct periods. The year ahead will complete the two-year strengthening phase with further investment in our five priority markets and NGP pilots, the embedding of new ways of working and cost-saving initiatives. This period builds the foundations for the subsequent three-year phase, which focuses on the acceleration of returns and sustainable growth in shareholder value.”
In related news, Ngozi Edozien and Diane de Saint Victor joined the Imperial board as nonexecutive directors on Nov. 15, 2021.
Edozien will join the audit committee, and de Saint Victor will join the remuneration committee, with effect from Nov. 15. There are no other changes to committee memberships.
Edozien is a nonexecutive director of Guinness Nigeria, Stanbic IBTC Holdings and Barloworld Limited and was a nonexecutive director of PZ Cussons until September 2017.
De Saint Victor is a nonexecutive director of Transocean Limited and Natixis, which delisted in July 2021.
De Saint Victor was a director of ABB India until July 2020 and was a nonexecutive director of Altran Technologies until April 2020 and Barclays until May 2017.
The World Health Organization’s fourth WHO global tobacco trends report, which was released today, shows that there are 1.3 billion tobacco users globally compared to 1.32 billion in 2015. This number is expected to drop to 1.27 billion by 2025.
Sixty countries are now on track to achieving the voluntary global target of a 30 percent reduction in tobacco use between 2010 and 2025; two years ago, only 32 countries were on track.
According to the WHO, millions of lives have been saved by effective and comprehensive tobacco control policies under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and by measures taken under the global health body’s MPOWER initiatives (Monitoring tobacco use, Protecting people from tobacco smoke, Quitting tobacco, Warning about the dangers of tobacco, Enforcing tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship bans and Raising taxes on tobacco).
“It is very encouraging to see fewer people using tobacco each year and more countries on track to meet global targets,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. “We still have a long way to go, and tobacco companies will continue to use every trick in the book to defend the gigantic profits they make from peddling their deadly wares. We encourage all countries to make better use of the many effective tools available for helping people to quit and saving lives.”
To see numbers reduce from 1.32 billion to 1.30 billion tobacco users over five years cannot be argued as evidence of a successful strategy.
Critics, by contrast, said the WHO report showed tobacco control failing. “As the WHO publishes its latest global tobacco trends report, it trumpets falling tobacco use. But the global health institution is celebrating failure,” said Gerry Stimson, emeritus professor at Imperial College London and project director for the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction.
“To see numbers reduce from 1.32 billion to 1.30 billion tobacco users over five years cannot be argued as evidence of a successful strategy. Eight million lives are lost every year due to smoking-related disease. What we are seeing is evidence of a dereliction of public health duty.”
Stimson lambasted the WHO for failing to consider reduced-risk products in its strategy.
“With modern safer nicotine products, these technological disruptors such as vaping devices, nicotine pouches [and] heated-tobacco products, we have the means at our disposal to end smoking and to end it soon,” he said.
“Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction estimates put the number of users of harm reduction products at 100 million worldwide. Many smokers are put off from switching, though, as a direct consequence of the distortion of public health messaging from the WHO and other tobacco control organizations funded by U.S. philanthropic interests that seem to care little for the health of current smokers.
“Harm reduction is the third pillar of the tobacco control strategy named in the FCTC along with supply and demand reduction. We urge the WHO to integrate harm reduction into its approach to tobacco control as it already does for drug use and HIV/AIDS prevention and to address current deficits in the WHO’s MPOWER strategy by enabling it to become EMPOWERED—adding ‘Engage with affected communities,’ ‘Encourage smokers to switch to safer nicotine products’ and ‘Deliver accurate information about safer alternatives.’”
Key findings of the WHO report include:
In 2020, 22.3 percent of the global population used tobacco, 36.7 percent of all men and 7.8 percent of the world’s women. Currently, 60 countries are on track to achieve the tobacco use reduction target by 2025.
The steepest decline in prevalence rates over time is seen in the Americas. The average rate of tobacco use there has gone from 21 percent in 2010 down to 16 percent in 2020.
The WHO’s African Region has the lowest average rate of tobacco use at 10 percent in 2020, down from 15 percent in 2010.
In Europe, 18 percent of women still use tobacco, substantially more than in any other region. Women in Europe are the slowest in the world to cut tobacco use. All other WHO regions are on track to reduce tobacco use rates among women by at least 30 percent by 2025.
Pakistan is the only country in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region that’s on track to reach the tobacco reduction target. Four of the six countries in the world where tobacco use is increasing are in this region.
Southeast Asia currently has the highest rates of tobacco use, with around 432 million users, or 29 percent of its population. But this is also the region where tobacco use is declining fastest. The region is likely to reach tobacco use rates similar to the European region and the Western Pacific region by 2025.
The WHO Western Pacific region is projected to have the highest tobacco use rate among men (more than 45 percent) using tobacco in 2025.
Experts say Congress’ latest attempt to tax nicotine is complicated, confusing and harmful to public health.
By Timothy S. Donahue
To help pay for an infrastructure bill, the U.S. Congress has again introduced an excise tax on next-generation nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and snus. The excise tax would apply to nicotine vapor products using both natural and synthetic nicotine as well as nicotine pouches. Experts say the provision, which would ultimately be paid by tobacco consumers, goes against U.S. President Biden’s campaign promise to not increase taxes on those making less than $400,000, negatively impact tobacco harm reduction efforts, increase sales of combustible tobacco products and boost an already growing black market.
The nicotine tax has been removed and reintroduced to Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) legislation at least three times. The proposed vapor tax provision is now part of the latest version of the administration’s social spending and climate bill. According to Ulrik Boesen, a senior policy analyst with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation, taxes on tobacco and nicotine products tend to serve at least two purposes: to improve public health and raise revenue. He claims that a nicotine tax could do that if it is properly designed.
Ulrik Boesen / Credit: Tax Foundation
“A good design means internalizing externalities related to consumption of a product,” Boesen stated. “With tobacco and nicotine product consumption, these externalities are the health risks connected to frequent use and [the] quantity consumed. Nicotine is the addictive substance in the products but not the harmful ingredient. In other words, the proposal does not target the harmful behavior directly.”
Taxing based on nicotine content would favor low-nicotine liquids and could encourage increased consumption in the quantity of liquid, according to Boesen. “For example, a vapor pod that has a nicotine content of 3 percent and contains 1 mL of liquid would be taxed at $0.83 whereas a vapor pod that has a nicotine content of 5 percent and also contains 1 mL of liquid would be taxed at $1.39 even if there is no difference, or even a negative differential, in broader health effects of the two pods,” he states, adding that the effects of the tax are most substantial for nicotine pouches, such that the category is unlikely to survive.
Other estimates show that a 60 mL bottle of e-liquid with 12 mg of nicotine e-liquid would be taxed at $20.02. A four-pack of 8 mL pods with 5 percent nicotine salt pods would be taxed at $4.45 and a 15-pouch can of 8 mg nicotine pouches would be taxed at $3.34 (alongside state and local taxes, the cost of a single can could grow to $20 in some states).
Bryan Haynes, a partner with the law firm Troutman Pepper who specializes in tobacco and vapor regulations, said that, at a minimum, the proposed nicotine tax is “a hastily written addition” that will “have a negative impact on tobacco harm reduction efforts and public health.” He said that it’s the first time the tobacco industry has seen an excise tax placed on an ingredient instead of a finished good. “This is an unprecedented type of tax that will ultimately drive former smokers back to combustible products,” said Haynes, adding that taxing an ingredient could also cause unforeseen issues for manufacturers, such as moving material between factories.
Bryan Haynes / Credit: Troutman Pepper
“If a company is producing nicotine or even synthetic nicotine, moving product from one factory to another could trigger the need for an Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) license, and when product is removed, so to speak, from their factory, they would be responsible for remitting the taxes,” explained Haynes. “There may be a way, for example, if the company removed the nicotine from their factory and transported it in-bond to another TTB factory that you could make that work. But it’s just not clear. There is the potential for a lot of unforeseen issues to arise the way the tax is currently being proposed.”
States often tax nicotine products by its cost. Boesen says the tax on the product will pyramid since the federal tax would be levied at the manufacturer level and the state tax is levied at the distribution level. “In effect, the state tax base includes the federal tax and becomes a tax on a tax. This means that even if the taxes on tobacco and other nicotine products are approximately equal at the federal level, by the time it reaches the consumer, the nicotine product will carry a higher tax (and often a higher price),” he states. “This is highly problematic when considering that cigarettes are much more harmful than nicotine products. That makes the federal tax proposal look like a harm-maximizing strategy.”
Credit: Tax Foundation
The bill also subjects synthetic nicotine products to the nicotine tax. Many in the industry have expressed concern that this provision could allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to assert authority over the substance. Synthetic nicotine is covered not only in the proposed tax bill but also in the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act, which bans the U.S. Postal Service from mailing any vaping products.
Azim Chowdhury, a partner at the law firm Keller and Heckman who specializes in vapor, nicotine and tobacco product regulation, said that’s just not possible and Haynes agrees. “The definition of a tobacco product in the Tobacco Control Act (TCA) is clear. It’s just not ambiguous; a product must be made or derived from tobacco, or a component or part of a tobacco product, to be a tobacco product,” said Chowdhury.
Azim Chowdhury
“Congress would have to change the Tobacco Control Act’s definition of a tobacco product in order to give FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products the authority to regulate synthetic nicotine products as tobacco products. That won’t happen overnight. I also see a scenario where synthetic nicotine could be regulated as a drug and that would be a whole different and more onerous regulatory regime.”
The FDA could, however, cite the inclusion of synthetic products in the PACT Act and the latest nicotine tax proposal in its lobbying efforts to change the TCA’s definition of tobacco, said Haynes. “I could see the FDA telling Congress, ‘You just amended the Internal Revenue Code to make these products subject to federal excise taxes just like tobacco-derived nicotine, so it’s not a big stretch to amend the Tobacco Control Act’ in the same way,” he explains. “That’s how I would do it. It’s not really a legal argument, but it could be a decent lobbying argument.”
It isn’t just vapers, business owners and attorneys that find fault with the proposed nicotine tax; researchers suggest the tax could also harm public health. Michael Pesko, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at Georgia State University, used a $1.4 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct e-cigarette policy evaluation research, including the evaluation of e-cigarette taxes (Pesko receives no funding from the tobacco industry or related groups). Pesko found that e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaping products function as what economists call “substitutes” for conventional cigarettes.
“In practical terms, if e-cigarettes and cigarettes are substitutes, then raising the price of one on average leads people to increase use of the other. Given extensive peer-reviewed evidence indicating that these products are substitutes, an unintended but inevitable effect of increasing taxes on e-cigarettes is to increase cigarette use,” Pesko said. “Given that cigarettes are believed to be substantially more harmful than e-cigarettes, this effect on [combustible] cigarette use is concerning …. A wide array of research suggests that this boost in cigarette use as a result of large e-cigarette tax increases would significantly increase overall tobacco-related death and disease.”
Michael Pesko / Credit: GSU
These findings prompted Pesko to send a letter to Congress concerning the proposed vape tax. In the letter, he states that his research team’s economic evaluations of existing state and county e-cigarettes taxes found that increasing e-cigarette taxes to parity with the combustible cigarette tax rate would “sizably increase cigarette use across teens, adults and pregnant women compared to taxing tobacco products differentially in proportion to their health risk.”
Pesko said researchers found several concerning consequences of large e-cigarette tax increases:
Simulating the current bill’s e-cigarette tax on teen tobacco use indicates that this policy would reduce teen e-cigarette use by 2.7 percentage points but that two in three teens who do not use e-cigarettes due to the tax would smoke cigarettes instead. This would result in approximately a half million extra teenage smokers overall. This finding that teens substitute to cigarettes in response to e-cigarette taxes has also been documented using National Youth Tobacco Survey data.
The tax would raise the number of daily adult cigarette smokers by 2.5 million nationally and reduce adult e-cigarette users by a similar number.
For every e-cigarette pod eliminated by an e-cigarette tax, more than 5.5 extra packs of cigarettes are sold instead.
For every three pregnant women that do not use e-cigarettes due to an e-cigarette tax, one smokes cigarettes instead (study).
Pesko told Vapor Voice he was surprised to find that increased e-cigarette tax consistently resulted in substitution across various data sources. “And the magnitudes are fairly sizable,” he noted. “This is an unusual level of accordance for academic research.” Pesko believes that any tax on nicotine products should be based on quantity.
Boesen agreed. He stated that for vapor products, the “obvious choice” is taxing the liquid by volume (per mL), and for nicotine pouches, a tax by weight or per pouch is a straightforward solution. “It is the administratively simplest and most straightforward way for the federal government to tax these goods as it does not require valuation and as such does not require expensive administration,” he stated. “The nicotine tax proposal in the Build Back Better Act neglects sound excise tax policy design and by doing so risks harming public health. Lawmakers should reconsider this approach to nicotine taxation.”
Chowdhury said that the industry must do more and that interested stakeholders and consumers should reach out and push back on the nicotine tax because it will be devastating to the vapor industry. “It seems like the general industry feels like [this nicotine tax] won’t get through somehow, that some people will prevent it from being in the final bill, but I think it’s a huge risk,” said Chowdhury. “Without serious pushback, it could end up there; it could very well end up becoming law.”
Haynes said that if the nicotine tax bill ever makes it to Biden’s desk, “he’s going to sign it.”
The participants in the World Health Organization Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products will convene Nov. 15–18 in the so-called meeting of the parties (MOP2). The virtual meeting follows the ninth Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which concluded last week.
The protocol, which entered into force in 2018, aims to combat illicit trade in tobacco, which according to the parties undermines tobacco control policies and public health. Parties to the protocol have enacted or strengthened national legislation aimed at tackling illicit trade in tobacco products.
Every year, an estimated $47 billion is lost globally to illicit trade in tobacco products. To reduce this loss and improve the effectiveness of tobacco control legislation, the parties this week will consider ways to move forward on implementation of the protocol, including amplifying its effects through improving international cooperation.
“We have serious work to conduct at this meeting,” said Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the FCTC secretariat, in a statement ahead of the gathering. “Not only does the illicit trade in tobacco products undermine progress being made on taxing tobacco products, but illicit trade is linked to cross-border organized crime and other activities which threaten our security.”
Among other topics, the parties will discuss ways of securing the supply chain of tobacco products; tracking and tracing technologies are key to achieving this objective. They will also propose the creation of a $25 billion fund to help finance the protocol. This potential new source of financial contributions is targeted at investors outside the traditional health sector.
Along with parties, there will be several state nonparty observers attending as well as a number of tobacco control organizations whose request for observer status is expected to be accepted by the MOP2.
The number of parties to the protocol will soon reach 64 as the treaty enters into force in the most recent country to have ratified it.
British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco have been recognized for corporate sustainability.
BAT has been named in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for the 20th consecutive year and is the only tobacco company to be included in the DJSI World Index. The World Index represents the top 10 percent of more than 10,000 companies assessed.
BAT is the highest-scoring tobacco company in 2021, with industry-leading scores in 11 of the 24 categories assessed, while achieving a top score of 100 percent in six categories, according to a company press release.
“It is an honor to have been recognized by the DSJI every year for the last 20 years and once again be ranked within the DJSI World Index,” said Kingsley Wheaton, chief marketing officer at BAT.
“Sustainability has been central to our business and ethos for decades, starting in 2001 when we established our first group-wide environment, health and safety systems, the BAT Biodiversity Partnership and a program of independently facilitated social dialogue. In March 2022, we will publish our 20th ESG Report.”
Meanwhile, Japan Tobacco has been included in the DJSI Asia Pacific for the eighth consecutive year. JT scored 79 out of 100 in the 2021 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, achieving full score in the materiality, risk and crisis management, environmental reporting, operational eco-efficiency, social reporting, and corporate citizenship and philanthropy criteria out of 24 total criteria.
“We are delighted that JT is once again included in the DJSI Asia Pacific this year,” said Kazuhito Yamashita, member of the board and senior vice president, chief sustainability officer, compliance and general affairs, in a statement.
“Participation in international and credible ESG assessments allows us to objectively evaluate our own sustainability measures and disclosure materials. We are committed to promoting transparent and reliable disclosures of nonfinancial information. It is one of the agendas we have been focusing on in recent years and is an important initiative in order to advance dialogue with our stakeholders.”
The DJSI is a recognized worldwide ESG (environmental, social and governance) stock index and a global sustainability benchmark that tracks the stock performance of the world’s leading companies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. The DJSI Asia Pacific is an index of companies in the Asia-Pacific region that is reviewed once a year, and its constituents are selected from about 600 major companies in the region.
The United States will miss its 5 percent smoking prevalence target by 2030, known as Healthy People 2030, without hiking taxes on cigarettes, finds an analysis published online in Tobacco Control.
Only five states and the District of Columbia are on track to meet this goal, according to the research; the other 45 states will need to raise excise taxes of up to $1.37 a pack every year while continuing with other tobacco control measures if they are to do so, says the author.
The Healthy People 2030 initiative aims to reduce the current prevalence of cigarette smoking among adults in the U.S. to 5 percent by 2030. The researcher wanted to find out if this goal is achievable through hikes in state cigarette excise taxes.
She compared trends in smoking prevalence for each state between 2011 and 2019 with the desired trends for achieving 5 percent smoking prevalence.
The current cigarette smoking prevalence varies widely, ranging from around 7 percent in Utah to nearly 23 percent in West Virginia.
The price-adjusted trend in cigarette smoking prevalence between 2011 and 2019 also varied widely, from −1.13 percentage points in Washington, D.C., to 0.00 in Hawaii and Montana. The desired annual trends range from −0.23 in Utah to −1.97 percentage points in West Virginia.
The gaps between price-adjusted and desired trends were used to calculate the systematic annual increases in state cigarette excise tax that would be needed to reach the 5 percent goal alongside other tobacco control measures, such as a ban on smoking indoors, mass media campaigns and smoking cessation support.
The price-adjusted trends in smoking prevalence observed between 2011 and 2019 are on course to exceed the desired trends for achieving 5 percent smoking prevalence by 2030 in only five states, the analysis shows: Washington, Utah, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland plus the District of Columbia.
This suggests that most states and the U.S. overall will miss the target at the current rate of smoking decline, with 45 states needing systematic annual increases in cigarette excise tax ranging from $0.02 to $1.37 a pack between 2022 and 2030, calculates the author.
“This requirement stands in sharp contrast with only 22 states increasing cigarette excise tax rates occasionally during 2011–2021,” notes the author. “It suggests that cigarette excise tax policy has remained a severely underused measure of tobacco control despite its proven effectiveness in reducing smoking and related health disparities,” she said in a statement.
The analysis also suggests that the desired state average price for a pack of 20 cigarettes in 2030 will range from $6.13 to $18.4.
The Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has closed with an agreement to embark on an innovative multi-million-dollar financial plan to strengthen global tobacco control measures
According to the WHO, a key milestone arising from COP9 is the decision to move forward with the development and launch of an investment fund that will offer a third source of support to help global tobacco control efforts. “This lays a foundation for financial stability for the future implementation of the FCTC,” the global health body wrote in a press note. The fund will complement existing revenue received from Parties through assessed contributions and extra budgetary support.
This new initiative will source financial contributions beyond the traditional health sector, establishing a capital investment fund, the earned revenue of which will be used to support the activities of the convention. Recognizing the unique skills required to manage and sustain the fund, the governing body of the FCTC will be seeking the guidance of the World Bank, and will create an oversight committee, comprised of experts in financial and investment management representing the six WHO Regions and including observers from civil society to help guide the Fund.
The event also saw the highest level of participation since the initiation of the COPs. In this week’s event, 161 Parties were present.
For the first time, the whole of COP9 was open to the media, who observed sessions where tobacco control measures were discussed between the Parties, according to the WHO.
“This demonstrates the enormous power of this COP9 where 161 sovereign states debated for four and a half days, and by consensus decided which topics they wanted to decide upon in this session, and which others they want to defer to COP 10,” said Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the convention secretariat.
COP9 also adopted the “Declaration on WHO FCTC and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic”, proposed by Iran, and co-sponsored by a broad group of parties. It stresses the need to protect public health policy from the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry, and that tobacco control measures, particularly increases in tobacco taxes, should be an integral part in pandemic recovery efforts.
R.J. Reynolds (RJR) has settled Fuma International’s claims that Reynold’s Vuse products infringed on the manufacturer’s e-cigarette patents, reports Reuters. RJR settled the suit just four days before the trial was slated to begin, according to a Thursday filing in North Carolina federal court.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles found in May that RJR’s products infringed parts of two Fuma patents. A jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, was set to consider on Nov. 15 whether RJR infringed additional parts of one of the patents, whether the patents were valid, and what damages RJR owed, among other things.
Fuma sued in 2019 for infringing patents related to an e-cigarette design with a cartridge and power source. The complaint said RJR copied Fuma’s design after meeting with Fuma about its e-cigarette technology in 2010.
Fuma asked for up to $135 million in damages, according to court filings.
Vuse is one of the most popular e-cigarette brands in the U.S. RJR introduced the Vuse Solo in 2013 and the Vuse Ciro in 2017. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave RJR permission to market Solo in October, its first-ever authorization for a vaping product.
The tobacco giant argued the relevant parts of the patents were invalid based on prior art that disclosed the same design, according to Reuters. Details of the settlement weren’t immediately available.
U.S. President Joe Biden today announced that he would nominate Robert M. Califf, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to lead the agency again, reports The New York Times.
A cardiologist and long-time consultant to drug companies, Califf ran the FDA during the last year of the Obama administration
“Dr. Califf is one of the most experienced clinical trialists in the country, and has the experience and expertise to lead the Food and Drug Administration during a critical time in our nation’s fight to put an end to the coronavirus pandemic,” Biden said in a statement.
Califf has been a forceful advocate for tobacco control; before he was the FDA commissioner, he was the agency’s deputy commissioner for medical products and tobacco. In an appearance with other former commissioners this year, he said, “I have never seen more capable or nastier lawyers than what I experienced in trying to deal with the tobacco industry. It was awesome and quite frightening for public health.”
After stepping down as the vice chancellor for clinical and translational health at Duke University, Califf has worked as a senior adviser to Verily Life Sciences, a health technology firm, and its sister company Google Health. Califf, who remains an adjunct professor of medicine at both Duke and Stanford University, is on the corporate board of Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company, according to its website.
Califf said he was honored to be nominated for the position “at a critical time for our country,” adding, “There’s a lot of work to do, and if confirmed I look forward to rejoining the great team at the FDA to help in their inspiring mission to serve the public.”
The FDA has had seven different commissioners, including Califf, since 2012, when Margaret Hamburg left the post.
