Tobacco Technology Inc. (TTI) and its wholly owned subsidiaries e-LiquiTech and TTI Flavors will start distributing their patented SyNic synthetic (S)- nicotine in November.
SyNic USP/EP, SyNic nicotine bitartrate and SyNic polacrilex resin are manufactured in U.S. Food and Drug Administration-registered current good manufacturing practices facilities. These products have confirmed purity levels of more than 99.9 percent, (S)- levels of more than 99.7 percent and are free of tobacco-specific nitrosamines and carcinogens.
“Coupled with e-LiquiTech’s exclusive distribution, competitive pricing and carrying the eLiquiTech guarantee, these products will be available only to responsible partners operating within the regulatory guidelines of the global tobacco industry,” TTI said in an announcement.
British American Tobacco (BAT) has appointed Hutan Ashrafian as chief medical officer.
Ashrafian will be responsible for overall medical governance and ensuring robust medical processes and oversight are applied to all aspects of BAT’s clinical studies and post-market surveillance.
In a press note, BAT said it is committed to reducing the health impact of its business through offering a range of enjoyable and less risky products. According to the company, Ashrafian will play a key role in the ongoing development and expansion of BAT’s multi-category approach, which offers consumers a wide range of potentially lower risk alternatives to cigarettes including e-cigarettes, tobacco heated products and modern oral nicotine pouches.
Specifically, he will provide medical oversight to both BAT’s human research committee and product stewardship council. Ashrafian will also play an important role in helping to define and generate evidence that supports and substantiates the tobacco harm reduction potential of BAT’s new categories from a disease perspective.
“We are delighted to have Hutan join BAT and become a member of the R&D leadership team,” said David O’Reilly, BAT’s director of scientific research. “The chief medical officer has always been a critical role at BAT as we strive to ensure all of the studies we undertake are of the highest standards from a quality and integrity perspective. His appointment will provide even greater confidence in our products for the science community and ultimately, consumers. It also demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering ‘A Better Tomorrow’ by ensuring the quality and efficacy of our new category products.”
Ashrafian is a senior clinician-scientist and surgeon. He has led large research and clinical teams, working at population and precision medicine levels, to achieve the highest quality real world evidence and translational healthcare. He has extensive experience in strategy and driving national and international health policy with cabinet-level politicians, civil servants, and heads of state.
Ashrafian qualified in medicine at University College London where he was also awarded an honors degree in immunology and cell pathology. His training in surgery also led to the award of the Arris & Gale lectureship at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He holds a PhD in computational physiology and metabolic surgery from Imperial College London and a health economics-focused MBA with distinction from Warwick Business School.
RELX Opens Bioscience Lab to Enhance E-Cigarette Research
RELX Technology has started operations at its newly established e-cigarette bioscience laboratory to conduct systematic research on the effects of e-cigarettes through in vivo and in vitro tests, as well as conduct pre-clinical safety assessments.
Located in Shenzhen, China, the bioscience laboratory is currently conducting research on the impact of RELX products on animal cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems, to better carry out a comprehensive impact evaluation of vapor products.
“Science is the foundation of trust. As the industry leader, we have the responsibility to expand the borders of e-cigarette science and explore the unknown,” said Kate Wang, founder and CEO of RELX, in a statement.
At the company’s recent lab open day, RELX also announced its plan to establish a “1+4” scientific research approach—i.e. anchored by platform development, followed by toxicological assessment, clinical assessment, perception behavior study and long-term assessment.
“E-cigarettes are sometimes viewed with suspicion because we have incomplete knowledge,” said Yilong Wen, RELX Co-founder and head of science, research and development and supply chain, “The RELX bioscience lab’s mission is to explore the unknown. We want to collect evidence through a scientific approach and strive to prove the potential for e-cigarettes to be less harmful, and in doing so, provide users the option to choose an alternative.”
To ensure the reliability and quality of its products, RELX established a chemical and physical laboratory in 2018. The laboratory is certified by the internationally recognized China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment.
RELX is currently conducting research projects on different topics with six universities including the Sun Yat-sen University and Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, two hospitals and nine scientific research institutions.
Next Generation Labs, a producer of synthetic nicotine, is advising the vape industry to be wary of recent claims by numerous Chinese manufacturers regarding the availability of synthetic nicotine for use in recreational adult vaping and other nicotine containing products.
According to Next Generation Labs, many of these brands are potentially violating the company’s nicotine manufacturing process patent or trademarks, or are counterfeit, fake, mislabeled, or are potentially misrepresenting their synthetic base material as being “not made or derived from tobacco leaf, stem, stalk, root, flowers or waste,” when they actually are tobacco-derived.
Over the past six years, Next Generation Labs has invested heavily in strengthening its intellectual property worldwide. In a press note, the company said it will act against any company that may violate its process patents for the manufacture of synthetic nicotine.
22nd Century Group has appointed Michael Koganov to its board of directors. Koganov will serve as chair of the company’s scientific and technical advisory committee and as a member of its finance committee.
Koganov is recognized as a leading expert in the development of natural products using plant biotechnology and has achieved considerable accomplishments in physico-chemistry, biochemistry, bioelectrochemistry and biotechnology.
Among other things, he is credited with developing electro-membrane technology for the comprehensive processing of plants to produce protein concentrates and secondary metabolites. Koganov co-founded IBT, which developed the proprietary and sustainable Zeta Fraction technology.
“We are excited to welcome Michael to our board,” said 22nd Century’s board chair, Nora Sullivan in a statement. “As a recognized expert in plant biotechnology and life science, Michael will further strengthen our leadership team with his highly relevant expertise related to the Company’s strategic, scientific initiatives.”
British passengers traveling to EU countries will be able to take advantage of duty-free shopping from January 2021, according to HM Treasury.
This means that passengers will be able to buy duty-free alcohol and tobacco products, where available, in British ports, airports, international train stations and aboard ships, trains and planes.
The amount that passengers can bring back with them from non-EU countries will also be significantly increased and extended to EU countries.
The new U.K. inbound personal allowances are 200 cigarettes or 100 cigarillos or 50 cigars or 250 grams of tobacco or 200 tobacco-heating sticks or any proportional combination of the above
Following its departure from the EU, the British government has been reevaluating import duties.
Health advocates criticized the new rules. “Anything that increases the availability of tobacco is a negative step for public health,” a spokesperson for the British Medical Association was quoted as saying by The Independent. “Each year there are nearly half a million hospital admissions in England because of smoking in England and nearly 80,000 deaths annually.”
Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT) plans to reduce production in Niassa during the upcoming growing season due to difficulties of selling leaf during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Club of Mozambique.
Claudio Ferreira, MLT manager for the Niassa and Zambezia provinces, told Noticias that some countries that are potential markets for Mozambican tobacco have reduced their imports significantly to protect the health of their citizens during the pandemic. Health experts believe the inherent risks of smoking are exacerbated by Covid-19.
“The World Health Organization has also been advising smokers to abandon tobacco, and these appeals are being listened to”, said Ferreira.
Ferreira said MLT will work with 36,500 smallholder growers this season, about 4,000 less than in the 2019-2020 year. The area under tobacco cultivation will shrink, he added, but did not say by how much.
Niassa Governor Judite Massenguele said the provincial agricultural directorate has already begun to persuade tobacco farmers to switch to crops such as cotton, soya and sesame.
The Niassa government is also eager to set up a tobacco processing plant in the province, believing that this will create jobs. But so far, no private sector partner seems interested in such a plant.
MLT, a subsidiary of Universal Corp., operates a tobacco processing plant in Tete Province.
Russia wants to increase the excise tax on cigarettes by 20 percent next year to help plug holes in its budget, reports Reuters. The government is also eying the oil and mining industries for additional revenues.
The move, estimated to bring in around RUR340 billion ($4.54 billion) a year, comes as Russia faces a prolonged budget deficit amid weak oil prices and after Moscow offered Belarus a $1.5 billion loan.
“When it is difficult, everyone should be involved in solving the problems which the country and its people are facing,” Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting on Wednesday.
He described the proposal, yet to be finalized, as “slightly increasing taxes on a number of profitable sectors.”
A New York federal judge recently granted Shenzhen Smoore Technology a $5.4 million default judgment and permanent injunction against more than 100 defendants accused of selling Vaporesso and Smoore’s self-branded counterfeit goods.
The default judgment is for $50,000 dollars per defendant and transfers to Smoore the frozen assets of the defaulting defendants. Smoore filed the complaint in October alleging trademark counterfeiting and infringement against defendants located in China but conducting business in the U.S. and other countries by means of their merchant storefronts on some online marketplace platforms. In the same lawsuits, Smoore settled with a significant number of defendant sellers who paid compensation for infringement and cooperated to identify their sources of supply of counterfeit products.
According to Smoore the ruling demonstrates the company’s determination to protect its intellectual property rights in the United States. “It is meaningful for protecting the development of the whole industry toward a healthy direction and providing safe and reliable vaping products for individual customers,” Smoore wrote in a statement.
Smoore has undertaken the lawsuits as part of an overall anti-counterfeiting program in the United States and elsewhere that includes cooperation with customs to seize counterfeit products and local police to arrest owners of and shut down counterfeit operations.
In the United States, Smoore is represented by the law firm Epstein Drangel, which has considerable experience in implementing and overseeing such anti-counterfeiting programs. Smoore says it plans to enforce the default judgment to collect compensation.
Electronic cigarettes are significantly less harmful than smoking but are not risk-free, a report from the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) has concluded.
COT, which is made up of independent experts, was commissioned to produce a report by the Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England to review electronic nicotine delivery systems and devices that use an e-liquid that does not contain any nicotine, collectively abbreviated as E(N)NDS.
The review finds that E(N)NDS products, when produced and used appropriately, are “likely to be associated with a reduction in overall risk of adverse health effects, although the magnitude of the decrease will depend on the effect in question” when replacing cigarettes.
COT also examined the role of potential toxicity in vaping aerosols. The review again found that the “use of E(N)NDS products may be associated with a reduced risk compared with (conventional cigarettes), but this should not be taken as meaning that these products are risk-free.”
The review highlighted best practices in manufacturing and production as the way to minimize risks. COT states that “fidelity of construction, materials used, and operating capabilities” are vital considerations for devices, while for e-liquids “formulants should be derived from a reputable source, and non-standard constituents should not be included.”
The COT review also touched upon incidents of lung injury seen in the United States, confirming vitamin E acetate as “strongly linked” to the cases. COT further notes that “this substance is banned from U.K.-regulated nicotine vaping products.”
John Dunne
“Our assessment on e-cigarettes largely reinforces the scientific consensus to date on their relative safety, that while not without risk they are significantly less harmful than smoking,” said COT chair, Alan Boobis.
The vapor industry welcomed the COT’s recent publication.
“We welcome this review, as we do all contributions to the growing vaping literature, as it helps us better understand the harm reduction and public health potential of vaping,” said UKVIA director John Dunne in a statement. ““The UKVIA is heartened to see that COT confirms a likely overall risk reduction for those moving from cigarettes to vaping, as this is a cornerstone of our mission.”
Tobacco Technology Inc. (TTI) and its wholly owned subsidiaries e-LiquiTech and TTI Flavors will start distributing their patented SyNic synthetic (S)- nicotine in November.
