Category: News This Week

JT to Raise Prices of Heating Products

Photo: JT
Japan Tobacco has received approval from the Ministry of Finance for its application dated Aug. 23, 2021, to amend retail prices of its heated-tobacco products in Japan in conjunction with the revised tax structure.
The new retail prices will be effective on Oct. 1, 2021, for a total of 50 heated-tobacco products. As a result of the changes, the price of Mevius for Ploom Tech will increase to ¥570 ($5.18) from ¥540, and the price of Mevius for Ploom Tech+ will increase to ¥580 from ¥550. Mevius for Ploom X and Ploom S will increase by ¥30 to ¥570.
In a statement, JT said it will strive to continue to improve the quality of its products and services, and to exceed the expectations of its consumers.
The retail price amendments are already included in the 2021 consolidated forecast announced on July 30, 2021.
August 27, 2021
Ample Tobacco Seed in Zimbabwe
Dahlia Garwe
Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Research Board (TRB) has enough tobacco seed for the next five seasons and can supply some varieties for up to 10 years, reports The Herald. This requirement will assist the government’s program of raising tobacco production to 300 million kg annually by 2025 through the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Strategy.
“We have enough seed to cater for a minimum of five years after ripening,” said TRB Chief Executive Dahlia Garwe. “The seed that is aged is better than the fresh one. Our seed is stored under very specific conditions and can last up to 10 years or more. We have enough varieties in stock, such as the most popular KRK26, KRK66 and the new variety KRK76, which is already overtaking the popular ones. Even if we don’t produce seed for two years, we will not experience shortages. Farmers should not worry over deterioration. After ripening, testing facilities are in place.”
August 27, 2021
FDA Denies Marketing Orders for 55,000 ENDS

Photo: Surendra
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) for about 55,000 flavored electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) products from JD Nova Group, Great American Vapes and Vapor Salon. In a news release published on its website, the agency explained that the applications from the three applicants lacked sufficient evidence that they have a benefit to adult smokers sufficient to overcome the public health threat posed by the levels of youth use of such products.
The products subject to this action include flavors with names such as Apple Crumble, Dr. Cola and Cinnamon Toast Cereal.
“Congress gave the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products to protect the public from the harmful effects of tobacco use through science-based regulation,” said acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock. “Ensuring new tobacco products undergo an evaluation by the FDA is a critical part of our aim to reduce tobacco-related disease and death. We know that flavored tobacco products are very appealing to young people, therefore assessing the impact of potential or actual youth use is a critical factor in our decision-making about which products may be marketed.”

We know that flavored tobacco products are very appealing to young people, therefore assessing the impact of potential or actual youth use is a critical factor in our decision-making about which products may be marketed.
Janet Woodcock, acting FDA Commissioner
The FDA has received applications from more than 500 companies covering more than 6.5 million tobacco products. Although the agency has issued other negative actions for some applications, this is the first set of MDOs the FDA has issued for applications that have reached the substantive scientific review portion of premarket review.
The products subject to an MDO for a premarket application may not be introduced or delivered for introduction into interstate commerce. If the product is already on the market, the product must be removed from the market or risk enforcement. The MDOs announced today do not include all ENDS products for which the companies submitted applications. Applications for the rest of the products remain under consideration.
Recently, the agency refused to file more than 4.5 million applications from JD Nova Group on the basis that they did not meet the filing requirements for a new tobacco product seeking a marketing authorization.

Companies who want to continue to market their flavored ENDS products must have robust and reliable evidence showing that their products’ potential benefit for adult smokers outweighs the significant known risk to youth.
Mitch Zeller, director, Center for Tobacco Products
“Flavored ENDS products are extremely popular among youth, with over 80 percent of e-cigarette users between ages 12 through 17 using one of these products. Companies who want to continue to market their flavored ENDS products must have robust and reliable evidence showing that their products’ potential benefit for adult smokers outweighs the significant known risk to youth,” said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
“The burden is on the applicant to provide evidence to demonstrate that the marketing of their product meets the statutory standard of ‘appropriate for the protection of the public health.’ If this evidence is lacking or not sufficient, the FDA intends to issue a marketing denial order, which requires the product to be taken off or not introduced to market.”
The FDA has until Sept. 9, 2021, to decide on the remaining estimated 2.5 million PMTAs.
August 26, 2021
Nordson Corp. Acquires NDC Technologies

Photo: NDC Technologies
Nordson Corp. has signed an agreement for the acquisition of NDC Technologies from Spectris. The acquisition expands Nordson’s test and inspection platform into new end markets and adjacent technologies. The all-cash transaction, subject to customary post-closing adjustments, is valued at $180 million.
“We are excited to welcome NDC Technologies’ nearly 300 employees into the Nordson family. They will bring exciting new capabilities and expertise to our test and inspection platform,” said Jeffrey Pembroke, executive vice president of Nordson Advanced Technology Solutions, in a statement. “NDC’s customer-centric business model, differentiated technology and end markets make it a very Nordson-like business. This acquisition is further progress on our Nordson Ascend Strategy to achieve top-tier growth with leading margins and returns. We look forward to applying the NBS Next growth framework and investing in NDC’s greatest opportunities for profitable growth.”
“We are very excited to join the Nordson family. It’s a great fit,” said Marti Nyman, president of NDC Technologies. “The combination will afford us the opportunity to continue to build on our 50-plus years’ foundation of delivering innovative measurement and process control solutions to the industries we serve. NDC has a rich history of working closely with industry to solve some of the most challenging gauging applications. The NDC Technologies’ team is eager to enter this new chapter with Nordson, furthering our mission of transforming process operations around the world, delivering value and making a difference in people’s lives every day.”
NDC Technologies is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, USA, and its technology portfolio includes in-line and off-line measurement systems using near-infrared, laser, X-ray, optical and nucleonic technologies as well as proprietary process control and analytics software. These precision applications enable manufacturers to enhance production processes, increase productivity and boost process efficiencies.
NDC also expands Nordson’s test and inspection platform beyond electronics into new end markets, including consumer nondurable, film extrusion and converting, cable and tubing and energy storage.
August 26, 2021
KT&G Helps Alleviate Farm Labor Shortage

Photo: KT&G
KT&G deployed employee volunteers to help leaf tobacco farmers who are struggling due to a shortage of workers in Asan City, South Chungcheong Province.
South Korea’s leaf tobacco is harvested in midsummer, from July to August. It is difficult to mechanize, and most of the harvest is performed manually, requiring a lot of labor. Korean farms have been experiencing difficulties in securing a sufficient workforce due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the decline of the rural population.
In response, KT&G has been deploying employee volunteers to leaf tobacco farms every year since 2007. This year, employees of the Raw Materials HQ and Gimcheon Plant visited a leaf tobacco farm in Dunpo-myeon, Asan City, and helped harvest about 5,700 kg of leaf tobacco from 16,000 square meters of cultivated land.
KT&G provides help not only in leaf tobacco harvesting in the summer but also in transplantation in the spring.
The company has also continued to provide economic support for the promotion of the welfare of leaf tobacco farmers. In May, the company donated KRW400 million to support health checks for farmers and to provide scholarships for the children of farmers. From 2013 to the present, the accumulated amount of support amounted to KRW2.85 billion, benefiting 7,957 farmers to date.
“I hope that this employee harvesting service has been of some help to farmers who are struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic and heat waves,” a KT&G official said in a statement. “We will continue to provide practical support to improve the quality of life of farmers, and we will strive to continue to grow together with them.”
August 26, 2021
More Young Smokers During Lockdown
Photo: marjan4782
The number of young adults who smoke in England rose by about a quarter in the first lockdown, reports The Guardian, citing new research from University College London (UCL) and the University of Sheffield. At the same time, the number of people who quit smoking nearly doubled across all groups.
“The first lockdown was unprecedented in the way it changed people’s day-to-day lives. We found that many smokers took this opportunity to stop smoking, which is fantastic,” said Sarah Jackson, the lead author and a principal research fellow at UCL.
“However, the first lockdown was also a period of great stress for many people, and we saw rates of smoking and risky drinking increase among groups hardest hit by the pandemic.”
While the widespread belief that smoking and drinking relieved stress could be a factor in the apparent increased prevalence among people aged 18 to 34, the researchers pointed out that their data did not indicate what the causes may be.
Doug Mutter
Doug Mutter, director at U.K. vaping specialist VPZ, warned that the country is now in danger of missing its 2030 smoke-free targets.
“Smoking statistics are continuing to rise as the pandemic has triggered an increase in smoking rates and the public health problem has been compounded by funding cuts for NHS stop-smoking services and local support groups,” he said.
“There has been a lack of funding and joined up strategy to tackle smoking, and we are now sleepwalking into another public health crisis with a new generation of smokers being consigned to an early death or serious disease.”
Mutter pointed to a new report from Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group, which backs vaping as an effective treatment for tobacco dependency and recommends that it should be included and encouraged in all treatment pathways.
A VPZ consumer survey from September 2020 found that among the 14,000 smokers served:
25 percent of people said they were unable to buy their vaping products because of store closures;
26 percent of smokers said they had increased the number of cigarettes they smoked during lockdown;
65 percent of people claimed they received no advice during lockdown of the best ways to quit smoking, through either NHS or online resources;
58 percent of people said they did not feel healthier coming out of the initial lockdown; and
45 percent of people said their mental health was affected during the lockdown.
August 26, 2021
Study Debunks Vaping-Heart Attack Link

Photo: Blue Planet Studio
Vaping products are not associated with increased heart attack incidence among people without a history of smoking combustible cigarettes, according to a new study. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the paper also concludes that three previous studies claiming a link between e-cigarettes and heart disease wrongly included those who previously smoked cigarettes or were using both vaping products and combustible products. One paper even included participants who had heart attacks before they started vaping.
“Previous researchers confused their own models’ assumptions that these risks were independent with the idea that their analyses validated the presence of independent risks,” the researchers wrote. “There is no reliable evidence that e-cigarette use is associated with ever having had a myocardial infarction among never-smokers.”
Authored by Michael Siegel, a community health sciences professor at Boston University, and University of California, Berkeley, business professor Clayton Critcher, the study analyzed data from 175,546 respondents to the annual National Health Interview Survey from 2014 to 2019.
The researchers found that daily e-cigarette use was associated only with higher heart attack incidence among people who were also currently smoking combustible cigarettes and that there was no evidence for increased risk among vapers who had never smoked combustible cigarettes.
The authors say that the initial study had drawn its conclusions about a perceived cause (vaping) and effect (heart attack) without considering a key variable (smoking).
A 2018 study, also published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, claimed that daily vapers increased their odds of heart attack. However, the study only included participants who used both e-cigarettes and combustible cigarettes—none who used e-cigarettes alone.
When challenged by other researchers about their failure to study vapers who had never smoked combustible cigarettes, the authors argued that such a distinction was unnecessary.
In the meantime, two other papers were published based on the original paper’s claims, lending further unwarranted legitimacy to the idea of a link between e-cigarettes and heart attacks, according to an article in Filter.
The second of those two papers was retracted in 2020 for basing its claims on evidence that included heart attacks from before the participants started vaping.
August 25, 2021
U.S. Warnings Delayed to Oct. 11, 2022

Images: FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has postponed the deadline by which cigarette manufacturers must print new health warnings on their products to Oct. 11, 2022, the agency announced on its website. The FDA encourages companies to submit their plans for compliance before Dec. 12, 2021.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) of 2009 directed the FDA to issue regulations requiring color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking to accompany new textual warning statements.
In March 2020, the FDA finalized the “Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements” rule, establishing 11 new cigarette health warnings consisting of textual warning statements accompanied by color graphics, in the form of photorealistic images, depicting the negative health consequences of cigarette smoking.
The new graphic warnings, which depict some of the lesser known health risks of smoking, such as diabetes, must cover at least the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of packages as well as at least 20 percent of the top of advertisements.
In April and May 2020, cigarette manufacturers and retailers sued the FDA, arguing that the graphic warning requirements amount to governmental anti-smoking advocacy because the government has never forced makers of a legal product to use their own advertising to spread an emotionally charged message urging adults not to use their products.
In a more recent challenge, tobacco companies argued that the deadline was too onerous due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. They also pointed to the risk that they would lose their investments in new packaging if the graphic health warning requirement were ultimately thrown out in court.
The industry won several postponements of the new health warnings’ effective date in court, most recently, on Aug. 18, 2021, when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an order in the case of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al. v. United States Food and Drug Administration et al.
This is the FDA’s second attempt to enact graphic health warnings under the TCA. The first rule was struck down by the federal court in the District of Columbia as a violation of the First Amendment.
August 25, 2021
Thailand to Reform Excise Structure

Photo: somchai20162516
Thailand is preparing to change its excise structure for cigarettes, reports The Bangkok Post.
At present, the law applies a 20 percent tax to the retail price for packs costing up to THB60 ($1.83). If the retail price exceeds THB60 per pack, a 40 percent tax rate is applied.
A new flat tax rate of 40 percent was scheduled to be applied since October 2019, regardless of the retail price, but there has been opposition from some stakeholders.
This prompted the ministry to put off its enforcement until Sept. 30 this year in order to review the tax.
Excise Department director-general Lavaron Sangsnit said the new structure aims to strike a balance between farmers’ income, public health, government revenue and efforts to prevent smuggling.
He said the new structure is designed to discourage people from smoking and simultaneously thwart the smuggling of foreign cigarettes, which avoid the payment of duties.
Since the adoption of the two-tier cigarette tax structure in 2017, the department’s excise revenue from cigarettes has fallen from THB68.6 billion to THB62.9 billion in 2020, according to a Bangkok Post source who requested anonymity.
The department collected cigarette tax of THB37.8 billion during the first seven months of fiscal 2021.
August 25, 2021
Growers Protest Rejections and Prices

Photo: Taco Tuinstra
Sales at the Kanengo Auction Floors in Lilongwe came to a standstill on Aug. 23 as farmers protested high rejection rates and low offers made by tobacco buyers, according to The Nyasa Times.
The tobacco market was temporarily suspended over what farmers complained to be “continued low prices on offer.”
Some buyers have reportedly been offering as little as $0.50 per kg, which is below the government’s set minimum prices for the crop.
Minister of Agriculture Lobin Low urged the buyers to comply with the country’s laws in dealing with the farmers by offering improved prices for the leaf. “This is sad that currently farmers are getting as low as $0.50 on their tobacco,” he was quoted as saying. “What we are asking is to simply adjust the prices upward.”
His call was echoed by AHL Sales CEO Graham Kunimba, who said the rejection rate has hit an alarming 70 percent.
But the buyers seemed not ready to budge as they insisted that the leaf on offer is of low quality; hence, even the offered $0.50 is just there as a “favor” to the farmers.
Disappointed by their earnings from tobacco, a group of Malawi growers had earlier threatened to stop growing the golden leaf.
August 25, 2021