Author: Taco Tuinstra

‘Boris Johnson’ to Keep Vaping Legislation on Westminster Agenda

Photo: Riot Labs
E-liquid manufacturer Riot Labs delivered a life-sized replica of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Westminster in an attempt to get vaping legislation back on the agenda for the new Labour government.
Ex Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tried to bring in some of the world’s strictest anti-smoking rules and wanted to ban disposable vapes, ban flavors and ban branding, which Riot Labs said would be “a disaster for the vape sector and the millions of adult smokers trying to quit cigarettes.”
Rishi’s plan failed to become law before he called an election, but Labour recently expressing its commitment to the generational tobacco ban.
A recent study conducted by One Poll and commissioned by the U.K. Vaping Industry Association found 83 percent of surveyed vapers say flavored vapes helped them ‘pack in their smoking habit’. It also found one in three respondents (an estimated 1.5 million vapers) believes a ban on flavors would lead them back to conventional cigarettes.
The Royal College of Physicians too has warned against a wholesale limiting of flavors accessible to adults, arguing that “The use of flavors by adults trying to quit smoking is an integral part of the effectiveness of vaping as a quit aid.”
“This year has been a tumultuous one for the vape sector, with the government trying—and ultimately failing—to rush through unjustified new vaping laws which would have been dangerous for millions of adult smokers trying to quit” said Riot Labs CEO Ben Johnson.
“The reality of Sunak’s vaping legislation is giving people less choice, less value and ultimately less reasons to quit smoking at all. Now Labour’s in power, smoking and vaping policy will be back on the lengthy to-do list and we’ll be taking the fight to policymakers to stand-up for the vape sector.”
The Boris stunt comes a month after Riot Labs and Right Vape, Northampton vape shop, took aim at the vaping legislation with the opening of the “The Flavourless Vape shop.” Opened by Rishi Sunak lookalike Sanju, the launch of the shop took an unexpected turn when “Rishi Sunak” was egged by an angry member of the public who mistook him for the real prime minister.
“We are massively in favor of laws to tackle youth vaping, such as a fully funded license scheme for retailers, but we strongly disagree on the government’s approach to a flavor ban,” said Ben Johnson.
July 12, 2024
BAT Expanding in Serbia

Photo: www.akolosov.art
BAT is expanding in Serbia, reports SeeNews.
“We are very pleased and very happy with the business environment in Serbia,” said Jorge Araya, head of BAT’s South-Eastern Europe division.
According to Araya, the company plans to expand its Serbian manufacturing capacity by 20 percent and export approximately half of its domestic production.
In 2003, BAT bought Duvanska Industrija Vranje. By late 2020, it had invested €270 million ($290 million) in the factory.
BAT’s competitors in Serbia include the local units of Philip Morris International and Japan Tobacco International.
Araya said BAT is the only tobacco company competing locally in all new category products. Its portfolio covers not only heated-tobacco but also herbal products, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, he said.
July 12, 2024
Machine Sale Ban Extends to Vapes

Photo: evannovostro
E-cigarettes may not be sold in vending machines, Malaysia’s health ministry confirmed, according to a New Straits Times report.
According to the ministry, Section 10 of the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations for Public Health Act prohibits selling and displaying all “tobacco” products, including e-cigarettes. “Regulations regarding sales, including through vending machines, are under review and will be enforced alongside the act once approved,” the law states.
Earlier this week, the Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation criticized the sale of vapes through vending machines at a Kuala Lumper mall, describing the practice as “irresponsible.”
The vending machine has been removed from the premises after an inspection by health ministry officials.
The ministry has begun briefing authorities nationwide on the prohibitions under the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations for Public Health Act.
July 12, 2024
Cut Rag Processors to Open Factory in Harare

Photo: Screaghin
Cut Rag Processors is poised to open a USD120 million tobacco factory in Harare, reports The Herald.
According to Managing Director Caillin Mellet, the company is currently training personnel.
“Our aim for this factory is not only for ourselves in terms of value addition to the economy but also for the people who work for us in terms of upscaling and teaching the people we have how to operate the world-class high-technological machinery,” he was quoted as saying.
The construction of the factory dovetails with Zimbabwe’s goal to extract more value from its tobacco industry.
Under the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan, the government aims to create a $5 billion industry by 2025.
In addition to moving beyond exports of processed tobacco into value-added activities such as cigarette manufacturing, the plan seeks to boost production of alternative crops and increase their contribution to farmers’ income by 25 percent.
“This state-of-the-art factory I have just toured represents an important milestone in our efforts […] to grow and modernize Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry,” said Vice President Constantino Chiwenga during a pre-commissioning tour of the facility on July 10.
“Tobacco has long been a crucial export crop and economic driver for our nation. Through strategic investments in infrastructure technology and skills development, government is accelerating the transformation of Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry.”
July 12, 2024
Jochamp Upgrades Shisha Equipment

Photo: Jochamp
Jochamp has upgraded its JCZ-100 and JCZ-250 shisha tobacco packaging machines, enabling them to package 50-gram and 250-gram boxes.
“By incorporating the 50-gram shisha tobacco packaging capability, Jochamp aims to align itself with the dynamic market needs while ensuring our clients remain competitive,” said Jochamp Sales Manager Senary Lin in a statement. “With our new packaging technology, we want shisha manufacturers to achieve flexible packaging solutions that are scalable, robust and sustainable.”
Jochamp has adopted a new dosing system for weight accuracy within the ±1.5 percent range. The shisha tobacco packaging line is fully automatic with production capacity varying from 60 packs per minute to 100 packs per minute.
Jochamp JCS-100 and JCZ-250 can dose shisha into packages, handle carton/box packaging and overwrapping, among other functions. All these processes are integrated for an efficient, accurate and contamination-free shisha packaging process, according to Jochamp.
July 12, 2024
Secondhand Exposure Lower for Vaping: Study

Photo: pavelkant
Children exposed to vaping indoors absorb less than one-seventh the amount of nicotine as children who are exposed to indoor smoking but more than those exposed to neither, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open and funded by Cancer Research U.K., looked at blood tests and survey data for 1,777 children aged three to 11 in the United States.
The researchers said that secondhand exposure to harmful substances in e-cigarettes would likely be much lower still, as e-cigarettes deliver similar levels of nicotine to tobacco but contain only a fraction of the toxicants and carcinogens.
The researchers looked at nicotine absorption in children, but they said the findings were likely to be similar for adults.
“Our study shows, using data from the real world rather than an artificial lab setting, that nicotine absorption is much lower from secondhand vapor than from secondhand smoking,” said lead author Harry Tattan-Birch of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care in a statement.
“Nicotine itself is of limited risk, but it shows what the highest possible exposure might be from secondhand vaping. Exposure to harmful non-nicotine substances present in vapor will likely be substantially lower still.”
“This paper suggests that concerns about secondhand vaping may be somewhat overstated, with secondhand exposure to toxic substances likely to be very low,” said senior author Lion Shahab of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
“The findings confirm the risks of smoking indoors around children, which should be avoided at all costs. However, as secondhand vaping still exposes children to more harmful substances than no vaping or smoking exposure at all, it is best to avoid indoor vaping around children too.”
The study used data from a nationally representative sample of children in the U.S. collected between 2017 and 2020 as part of the annual U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Blood tests that detected the concentration of cotinine were used to assess how much nicotine the children had absorbed. Cotinine is a chemical the body produces after exposure to nicotine. Survey responses indicated if the children had been exposed to smoking or vaping indoors in the past week.
The researchers focused on data from children as, unlike adults, children were unlikely to have vaped or smoked themselves, meaning higher nicotine absorption was a result of secondhand vapor or smoke only. However, two children were excluded from the analysis for having a cotinine concentration that suggested they had vaped or smoked directly. Children exposed to both indoor smoking and vaping were also excluded from the analysis.
The team found that children exposed to indoor vaping absorbed 84 percent less nicotine than children exposed to indoor smoking while children exposed to neither absorbed 97 percent less.
The lower levels of nicotine among those exposed to secondhand vaping were consistent with previous laboratory studies finding that people retained 99 percent of the nicotine they produced during vaping. With tobacco cigarettes, smoke is generated both by smokers breathing out as well as by the lighted end of the cigarette. E-cigarettes, however, do not generate aerosol aside from when vapers exhale.
The researchers said their findings had implications for whether vaping should be allowed indoors, providing further evidence that the impact of vaping on bystanders’ health will be much less than smoking.
However, the researchers said there were other factors to consider when assessing whether indoor spaces should be made vape-free. In particular, if vaping commonly occurs indoors, this may normalize the behavior, encouraging people to start vaping and making it harder for them to stop.
Previous research from the same team showed that adults in England were much more likely to vape than smoke indoors, with nine in 10 vapers found to vape inside while only half of smokers smoked inside.
July 12, 2024
Belgian Retailers Required to Hide Tobacco Next Year

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
Retailers in Belgium will be banned from displaying tobacco products effective April 1, 2025, reports EuroWeekly. The rule also applies to vapes, filters and rolling papers.
Violators risk penalties of up to one year of imprisonment and fines from €2,000 ($2,178) to €800,000.
Originally scheduled for Jan. 1, 2025, the implementation has been delayed by three months.
Earlier this year, the Belgian government raised cigarette prices through taxation and committed to expanding smoke-free public spaces.
VapeBel, representing vape retailers and distributors, expressed disappointment, arguing that specialized stores are crucial for age verification and educating adult smokers about vaping.
To help customers identify the products on offer, authorities suggest retailers display price lists detailing product names and brands without logos.
July 12, 2024
Cigarette Smuggling Complicating Gaza Aid

Image: Robert
Organized gangs have been attacking humanitarian aid convoys in Gaza to retrieve cigarettes smuggled inside the shipments, reports The New York Times.
Following the war between Israel and Hamas, cigarettes have become increasingly scarce in tightly blockaded Gaza, with smokers paying up to $30 for a single stick.
To evade Israeli inspections, smugglers have been hiding cigarettes in sacks of United Nations-donated flour, diapers and even a watermelon, according to aid agencies and an Israeli military official.
Officials said that most of the trucks bearing cigarettes appeared to come from Egypt, which rerouted trucks arriving from Egyptian territory through Kerem Shalom after Israel captured the Rafah border crossing in early May.
Convoys ferrying U.N. aid are often an easier target than private businessmen, who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in protection money to guards or to the organized gangs themselves.
July 12, 2024
Smoking Behavior Linked to Personality

Cigarette smokers, cigar smokers and nonsmokers each have distinct personality profiles, according to a study published July 3 in Plos One by Dritjon Gruda from Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal, and Jim McCleskey from Western Governors University in the United States.
Gruda and McCleskey examined the association between prominent personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism—and cigar or cigarette smoking in a sample of 9,918 older adults across 11 European countries.
The results showed that smoking is associated with lower scores in conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher extraversion scores than not smoking. The authors speculate that relatively low conscientiousness among smokers may reflect a lack of self-discipline and disregard for long-term health risks, characteristic of more impulsive behaviors, while reduced agreeableness could help explain why smokers often persist despite societal disapproval. They also suggest that the higher extraversion observed may suggest that these individuals enjoy the social nature of smoking.
The analysis also determined personality differences between types of smokers, finding that cigar smokers tend to exhibit lower neuroticism and higher openness compared to both cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, underlining that the motivations and contexts of tobacco use are varied.
According to the study’s authors, these findings suggest that personality traits are antecedents of smoking behavior, with implications for targeted public health interventions and social policies aimed at combating tobacco use.
July 11, 2024
Surprisingly Low Adult Pouch Use: Study

Despite a 641 percent increase in sales of nicotine pouches between 2019 and 2022, few U.S. adults use modern oral products, according to a nationally representative study conducted by the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“The low prevalence of nicotine pouch use in adults surprised us, given the rapid increase in sales,” said study co-author Adam Matthew Leventhal, a professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine and executive director of the USC Institute for addiction science, in a statement. “But it’s also possible that the sales are being diverted to adolescents, who were not represented in this survey.”
The researchers surveyed nicotine pouch use in a nationally representative sample of 39,557 U.S. adults. They found that 2.9 percent of adults had ever used nicotine pouches, with 0.4 percent reporting current use. The majority of adults currently using pouches also currently smoke cigarettes. Additionally, 5.2 percent of those who attempted to quit smoking in the past year and had relapsed back to smoking reported using pouches to help with their cessation efforts.
One question raised by the findings is whether adults who use nicotine pouches may be using them to “top off” nicotine in situations where they cannot smoke or use other tobacco products, Leventhal said, rather than as a way to quit smoking.
Based on the study results, Leventhal estimates that of all U.S. adults who currently used nicotine pouches in 2022, about 35 percent had previously smoked cigarettes and 25 percent were currently smoking cigarettes. The remaining 40 percent of adult pouch consumers had never regularly smoked cigarettes and could be at risk for developing nicotine dependence.
“In summary, we didn’t see a large population of adults using nicotine pouches, and fewer appear to be using them in a fashion that would potentially reduce their harm from smoking cigarettes,” Leventhal said.
July 11, 2024