US sales of the electronic cigarette Juul rose from 2.2 million in 2016 to 16.2 million in 2017, according to a HealthDay story quoting the results of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP).
The CDCP study took in e-cigarette purchases from regular retail stores, but did not include sales through the internet or from vape shops; so the sales figures comprise an underestimate.
Juul had captured the biggest share of the US e-cigarette market as of December 2017, accounting for nearly one in three of the e-cigarettes sold nationwide.
Juul is said to have among the highest nicotine content of any e-cigarette sold in the US, a concern for the CDCP, which, according to the HealthDay story, says that nicotine is ‘highly addictive’ and can harm brain development in teens and young adults.
The Food and Drug Administration on September 12 demanded that, within 60 days, five electronic-cigarette manufacturers, including Juul Labs, accounting for 97 percent of the market for these products, come up with robust ways of addressing what the agency described as an ‘epidemic’ of teenage vaping or face market restrictions on their products.
‘There are no redeeming benefits of e-cigarettes for young people,’ Corinne Graffunder, director of the CDCP’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in an agency news release. ‘The use of certain USB-shaped e-cigarettes is especially dangerous among youth because these products contain extremely high levels of nicotine, which can harm the developing adolescent brain.’
The CDC findings were published on October 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
HealthDay reported that Juul had issued a statement on the same day defending its product.
‘Juul Labs is focused on its mission to improve the lives of the world’s one billion adult smokers,’ the company said in its statement. ‘When adult smokers find a satisfying alternative to cigarettes, they tell other adult smokers. Juul Labs has helped more than one million Americans switch from cigarettes.’
Category: People
Juul sales rocket-powered
Understanding sought
The US Food and Drug Administration said yesterday it had seized from Juul Labs more than a thousand pages of documents related to the company’s sales and marketing practices, according to a story by Ankur Banerjee and Tamara Mathias for Reuters.
The seizures were said to have come during a surprise inspection.
The inspection, completed on Friday, followed a request in April for documents that the FDA believed would help it better understand the high levels of Juul’s appeal and use among young people.
The FDA said it had conducted also inspections of several of Juul’s contract manufacturing units earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns was quoted as saying in a statement that the company had handed over to the FDA since April more than 50,000 pages of documents that supported its public statements, before adding that the meeting with the regulator had been constructive and transparent.
“We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access,” said Burns.THR map shows the way
A new report, No Fire, No Smoke: the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction Report 2018, maps for the first time the global, regional and national availability and use of safer nicotine products (SNP), the regulatory responses to these products, the public health potential of tobacco harm reduction, and the right to access SNP.
The report, written by Harry Shapiro and published by Knowledge Action Change, which describes itself as a private-sector agency for public health, was launched today in Geneva where the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is being held this week.
In a press note announcing the report’s launch, the team behind it said that every six seconds someone died from a smoking-related disease and that this problem was likely to worsen.
The steep smoking declines in richer countries were slowing while in financially-poorer countries smoking was set to rise.
‘Existing forms of tobacco control are proving insufficient,’ the note said.
‘There is substantial international, independent evidence that safer nicotine products could lead to a global revolution in public health.
‘Time is way overdue that countries and international organizations support tobacco harm reduction and safer nicotine products…’
Summaries of the report in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese are available to download at https://gsthr.org/report/summary, and more languages are due to be added.Looking again at that map
Ireland risks missing its ‘tobacco-free’ target date by 27 years, according to a story by John Downing at independent.ie citing a warning by the country’s Health Service Executive (HSE).
The predicted delay is said to be putting new pressure on Health Minister Simon Harris to soften his stance on electronic cigarettes to help more smokers quit.
The Government is committed to being ‘tobacco-free’ – with less than five percent of the population still smoking – by 2025.
But an HSE report says that, based on current trends, this target will not be met until 2052.
At present, 18 percent of Irish people smoke daily.
Smoking – directly and passively – is said to be responsible for 100 deaths and more than 1,000 hospital episodes every week across the country.
‘More of the same may not be enough to affect the step change required to move to the end game,’ the HSE report says.
Fine Gael’s Senator Catherine Noone said the report concluded that Ireland should “continue to scan the horizon to understand and determine policy on the role of e-cigarettes and other new technologies and opportunities for the tobacco end game in Ireland”.
She added that using e-cigarettes was “very far from ideal” but may be a “least-worst option”.Dedicated HNB stores
South Korea’s KT&G said yesterday that it would open on Wednesday Lil Minimalium, a flagship store dedicated to its heat-not-burn cigarette Lil, according to a story in The Korea Herald.
Located in the Gangnam district of Seoul, the store would provide somewhere for customers to experience and buy the device and accessories, such as cases and pouches.
In addition, special edition products, such as the Lil mini and crystal edition, offered in collaboration with Swarovski, would be on sale.
And a repair service for Lil devices would be available also.
The company says that it intends to open more flagship stores around the country, including in Songdo, Incheon, and Dongdaemun, Seoul.
Since its launch in November last year, more than 850,000 Lil devices have been sold, according to KT&G.Air quality little affected
Japan Tobacco Inc. says that non-combustible T-Vapor products should be treated differently to combustible cigarettes when looking at issues surrounding indoor air quality. JT sees the reduced-risk product market as comprising several categories, one of which is the T-Vapor, or Heated Tobacco and Tobacco Infused-Vapor category.
In a note posted on its website, JT said it had conducted a study to observe the effects of T-Vapor products on indoor air quality in the designated smoking room and the non-smoking area of a restaurant in Tokyo, Japan, and that it had found:- No significant increases in the concentration of suspended particulate matter, nicotine or other constituents monitored in the non-smoking area of the restaurant.
- That the use of T-Vapor products in the designated smoking room with door and common ventilation facilities had no effects on the indoor air quality in the non-smoking area.
The study, which was said to have used combustible cigarettes and two types of T-Vapor products, was supervised by Professor Emeritus Keiichi Arashidani, of the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan, and carried out last month in the designated smoking room and the non-smoking area of a typical restaurant in Tokyo.
The study measured 15 air constituents, including items defined in the act on Maintenance of Sanitation in Buildings: suspended particulate matter, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde; indicators of indoor air quality: TVOC(total volatile organic compounds); VOC (volatile organic compounds): 1,3-butadiene, isoprene, benzene and toluene; carbonyls: acetaldehyde, acrolein and crotonaldehyde; marker compounds of environmental tobacco smoke: 3-ethenylpyridine and nicotine; and major ingredients of T-Vapor products: propylene glycol, glycerin.
JT said that the study results showed that the use of T-vapor products in designated smoking rooms did not affect indoor air quality in the non-smoking areas under the study conditions.
‘We believe that designated smoking rooms for T-Vapor products with door and common ventilation facility have no effects on indoor air quality in non-smoking area,’ it said.COP8 – a 'great opportunity'
An international meeting of tobacco control representatives this week presents a great opportunity for UK delegates to promote the UK’s dramatic success with electronic cigarettes, according to the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA).
The eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP8) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, on October 1-6.
In a press note issued on Friday, the NNA said the FCTC’s COP8 summit in Geneva presented a great opportunity for UK delegates to promote the UK’s dramatic success with e-cigarettes. The NNA said it was calling on UK delegates to communicate to global public health representatives the clear and unequivocal message that e-cigarettes and other alternative nicotine products were far safer than combustible tobacco and should be treated as such.
“E-cigarettes are a proven safer alternative to smoking and the UK boasts over 1.7 million former smokers who have converted from combustible tobacco to exclusively vaping instead,” NNA chair, Sarah Jakes, was quoted as saying.
“In the UK, the government has wisely recognised the significant benefits that tobacco harm reduction strategies can achieve and, as a result of positive messaging towards vaping with campaigns such as Stoptober, has seen smoking prevalence dramatically plummet in recent years.
“COP8 is a perfect opportunity for the UK to showcase this success and share our positive experience with the world.
“How can it be right that developed nations are enjoying great results in reducing the use of combustible tobacco by making safer alternatives available to smokers but sit by as less affluent nations are being railroaded into banning them by the WHO?”
The NNA pointed out that the UK government’s Tobacco Control Plan had committed to back innovative products in its drive to encourage smokers to quit. The government’s recommendations were evidence-based and designed to maximise the benefits of safer nicotine delivery.
Meanwhile, it added, the WHO recognised tobacco harm reduction as a guiding principle of its FCTC, so it was quite wrong that it currently invited nations to prohibit the use of these products.
“The WHO likes to talk about the right to health, but why is a smoker in India or Africa less entitled to access products which could help them quit smoking than a smoker in the UK or Canada?”, asked Jakes. “Furthermore, we have heard worrying reports that the EU is planning to petition the FCTC to call for a global ban on e-cigarette advertising. It would be scandalous if the UK delegation is complicit in such an unwise move and goes against the government’s commitment to improve availability of innovative products. What is the point of talking positively of safer alternatives while simultaneously stopping smokers from seeing any publicity about them?
“In Geneva, the UK’s representatives have a golden opportunity to promote the UK’s success with safer nicotine products.
“We provide the FCTC with generous funding to reduce smoking rates in underdeveloped nations. We would therefore urge the government to use the influence our financial contribution brings and do the right thing. That is to reject prohibition of harm reduction which less affluent nations feel obliged to implement due to WHO misinformation, urge the FCTC to adhere to its own articles on the subject, and resist restrictions on promotion of less harmful alternatives to smoking”EU has fakes problem
Cigarettes made up nine percent of the products ‘detained’ by EU customs authorities on their external borders last year, according to figures contained in a report published by the EU Commission on Thursday.
The Commission reports annually on the detention of ‘articles suspected of infringing intellectual property rights (IPR), such as trademarks, copyrights and patents’.
A press note accompanying the report said that customs authorities in the EU had detained more than 31 million ‘fake and counterfeit’ products.
Foodstuffs, which accounted for 24 percent of the detained articles, headed the list, toys (11 percent) came next, then cigarettes (nine percent), other goods (nine percent) and clothing (seven percent).
China was said to have remained the main source for IPR-infringing goods arriving in the EU. But other countries were the main providers of certain articles. Moldova was the lead country in the supply of alcoholic beverages; the US was the lead country for other beverages; Turkey was the lead country for clothing; and India was the lead country for medicines.
‘Although the total figures have declined since 2016, fake, potentially-dangerous goods for day-to-day use like healthcare products, medicines, toys and electrical goods now make up a much higher proportion of all seizures – 43 percent of all detained goods came from this category,’ the Commission said.
“The EU’s Customs Union is on the front line when it comes to protecting citizens from fake, counterfeit and sometimes highly dangerous goods,” Pierre Moscovici, commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, was quoted as saying.
“Stopping imports of counterfeits into the EU also supports jobs and the wider economy as a whole.
“The European Union stands in support of intellectual property and will continue our campaign to protect consumer health as well as protecting businesses from criminal infringement of their rights.”Growing rewards
More than 124,000 Zimbabwean farmers have so far registered to grow flue-cure tobacco during the 2018-19 season, up by about 47 percent on the more-than 84,000 who had registered by the same time last year, according to a story by Elita Chikwati for The Herald.
At least 30,000 of the farmers who have signed up to grow flue-cured in 2018-19 are first-time registerees.
According to Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) figures, all Zimbabwe’s tobacco growing provinces except Masvingo have registered an increase in registrations.
The figures show that by September 20, 124,220 farmers had registered to grow flue-cured tobacco for the 2018-19 season up from the 84,688 who had registered by September 20, 2017.
Mashonaland Central, with 49,838 registrations (up from 31,991) has so far recorded the highest number of registered growers.
According to Chikwati, the increase in registrations has been brought about largely by the need for each farmer to obtain a grower number, without which he cannot benefit from foreign currency incentives.
The government in 2016 implemented an export incentive scheme, which rewards growers for helping to generate foreign currency.
Before the introduction of the incentive scheme, some farmers used to sell their tobacco using other farmers’ grower numbers.Record crop grown
Zimbabwe’s growers produced a record volume of flue-cured tobacco during the 2017/18 season, but concern has been expressed about the toll being taken on the country’s forests, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
“In the just-ended 2017/18 season, a record 252.5 million kg of tobacco with a value of just over US$737 million went through our contract and auction floor systems,” the permanent secretary at the ministry of agriculture, Ringson Chitsiko, was reported to have said while addressing a workshop on Thursday.
“This amount of tobacco is 34 percent higher than that sold in the previous season and also surpasses the highest amount of tobacco ever sold in the country of 236 million kg in the year 2000.”
Chitsiko said the bulk of the 2017/18 crop had been produced by small-scale, communal and A1 growers who were predominantly the beneficiaries of the government’s land reform program and the recently-introduced command tobacco program, which was being administered through the Tobacco Industry & Marketing Board (TIMB).
Meanwhile, Chitsiko lamented the high levels of deforestation being caused by the use of firewood for curing tobacco.
He said as much as 300,000 ha of indigenous forests were being lost annually and that tobacco curing was responsible for about 15 percent of that loss.
“This is despite Statutory Instrument 116 of 2012 which clearly states that each tobacco grower must establish a woodlot from which they can harvest and fuel their tobacco curing requirements,” he said.
Chitsiko added that the government would work together with growers to protect natural forest resources.
Earlier this year, Zimbabwe’s Federation of Farmers Union chairman Charles Chabikwa said that tobacco farmers were threatening to boycott a reforestation levy ahead of the opening of the 2018 marketing season.
From January 2015, the government introduced a levy on all tobacco sales at a rate of 1.5 percent in the first year and 0.75 percent in subsequent years as part of a sustainability initiative aimed at funding the planting of trees to replace those burned as fuel in curing tobacco.
“The levy has been in effect for three years, with close to US$20 million collected from farmers and not a single tree seedling has been planted or sustainable tobacco curing projects embarked on,” said Zimbabwe Tobacco Association chief executive, Rodney Ambrose.
“It is our view that the levy should be removed effective this 2018 season and the funds accumulated to date first accounted for and utilised by farmer stakeholders.”
The Tobacco Industry Marketing board said of the US$19 million collected since 2015, US$4 million was in the board’s account.
Something needs to be done because, under the Sustainable Tobacco Program, from 2020, global cigarette companies will not buy leaf tobacco produced in an unsustainable manner, which includes tobacco cured using coal.
According to the Sustainable Forest Association, about one third of tobacco produced in Zimbabwe is cured using coal.
