Category: Regulation

Restrictions forcing Japanese smokers outside

Outdoor smoking is on the rise in Japan as a law is set to take effect April 1 to ban indoor smoking.
Japanese smokers are finding it increasingly harder to secure indoor smoking areas, causing them to revert to smoking outdoors, often in parks and other public places where smoking is banned. This is also creating an issue with cigarette butt litter, which has led to some companies reinstating smoking facilities to combat the issue.
Smoking indoors in places such as government agencies, schools and hospitals was banned under the revised Health Promotion Law, which partially took effect July 2019. In April 2020, more establishments, such as bars and restaurants, will be affected by the ban. Smokers caught breaking the law could face fines up to ¥300,000 ($2,694), and facility managers caught breaking the law could face fines up to ¥500,000.
There will be exemptions to the ban, however. Restaurants and bars with initial capital up to ¥50 million and customer seating up to 100 square meters will be exempt if they display “smoking allowed” signs at the entrance.
March 25, 2020
Physicians Urge Smoking Ban in Fight Against Virus

The New York State Academy of Family Physicians is urging Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban the sale of all tobacco products to help fight the spread of coronavirus.
The group cites a study connecting smoking to a higher risk of contracting the illness. “As our state and country struggle to respond to the rapidly evolving and escalating Covid-19 pandemic affecting our residents and straining our healthcare system, mounting evidence demonstrates the link between tobacco use and increased risk for progressive Covid-19,” said Barbara Keber, president of the New York State Academy of Family Physicians.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, Cuomo had banned flavored tobacco-based vapor products to fight against the rise in youth usage.
March 25, 2020
Coming to America
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule to require new health warnings on cigarette packages and in cigarette advertisements. The warnings feature textual statements with photo-realistic color images depicting some of the lesser-known, but serious health risks of cigarette smoking, including impact to fetal growth, cardiac disease, diabetes and more.
“The 11 finalized cigarette health warnings represent the most significant change to cigarette labels in more than 35 years and will considerably increase public awareness of lesser-known, but serious negative health consequences of cigarette smoking,” said Mitch Zeller, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
“Research shows that the current warnings on cigarettes, which have not changed since 1984, have become virtually invisible to both smokers and nonsmokers, in part because of their small size, location and lack of an image.
“Additionally, research shows substantial gaps remain in the public’s knowledge of the harms of cigarette smoking, and smokers have misinformation about cigarettes and their negative health effects.”
Beginning June 18, 2021, these new cigarette health warnings will be required to appear prominently on cigarette packages and in advertisements, occupying the top 50 percent of the area of the front and rear panels of cigarette packages and at least 20 percent of the area at the top of cigarette advertisements.”

March 17, 2020
FDA suspends inspections

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended domestic compliance checks and vape shop inspections amid the spread of coronavirus.
The FDA has temporarily deferred all domestic routine surveillance facility inspections and postponed most foreign inspections through April. Administrative work can continue for two weeks, though, according to the Center for Tobacco Products.
March 13, 2020
Drastic Measures
Saudi Arabia has banned shisha and tobacco in cafes and restaurants to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.
“Shisha and tobacco were banned in cafes and restaurants in all the municipalities as a precautionary measure to preserve the health of citizens and residents from coronavirus (COVID-19),” the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs said.
The ban has been implemented in several cities, including the capital. Municipality teams will conduct inspections to ensure that the ban is being upheld.
March 11, 2020
The FDA May Lose Its Tobacco Remit
The Trump administration wants to remove the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority.
In his 2021 budget proposal, released on Feb. 10, President Donald Trump envisions the CTP as a stand-alone agency with a Senate-approved director.
The budget proposal states that making the CTP its own agency would allow the FDA to “focus on its traditional mission of ensuring the safety of the nation’s food and medical products supply” while “a new agency with the singular mission on tobacco and its impact on public health would have greater capacity to respond strategically to the growing complexity of new tobacco products.”
Public health advocates reacted strongly against the proposal, saying it would roll back any forward motion the FDA has had in terms of regulating tobacco products. Creating “a new stand-alone agency to handle tobacco regulation is the wrong idea at the wrong time,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Public health advocates already feel that Trump’s recently enacted flavor ban is too weak because it allows for single-use disposable flavored products to remain on the market, which they believe youth will gravitate toward in the absence of other flavored products. The ban removes flavored pod products with the exception of tobacco and menthol flavors from the market.
Some fear that having a Senate-approved director of this new agency would politicize the regulation of the industry—it could “greatly politicize its management and activities,” said Eric N. Lindblom, senior scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law and a former director of the FDA CTP’s Office of Policy.
The FDA was granted oversight of tobacco in 2009 under the Obama administration. The CTP was then created within the FDA to regulate the industry. The CTP would remain under the Department of Health and Human Services under the new budget proposal.
March 9, 2020
Flavor ban passed
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a ban on flavored vapor and tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, on Friday, reports The Hill.
Sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. and Representative Donna Shalala, the legislation aims to curb the rise of youth vaping rates by banning nontobacco flavors such as mint and mango that public health experts say lure children into smoking.
Democrats hope to pass the bill to present a contrast to the Trump administration’s approach to youth vaping rates. The Food and Drug Administration began enforcing a limited ban earlier this month on flavored pod-products with exemptions for menthol and tobacco flavors. It also exempted open-tank and disposable e-cigarettes.
Leading public health groups, including the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, argue the bans represent the best way to tamp down rising youth vaping rates.
“This legislation is exactly what’s needed to reverse the youth e-cigarette epidemic and end the tobacco industry’s long and lethal history of targeting kids and other vulnerable groups with flavored products,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
The Senate is unlikely to consider the bill, however, and President Donald Trump’s advisers said Thursday they would recommend he veto it in its current form.
While most Democrats supported the measure, some voted against the bill, worrying it could give police a way to target African Americans. Menthol cigarettes are disproportionately used by African Americans.
“Law enforcement would have an additional reason to stop and frisk menthol tobacco users because menthol would be considered illegal under this ban,” said Representative Yvette Clarke, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
She also took issue with the fact that the bill exempts premium cigars favored by white people but took aim at products used by black people.
March 2, 2020
After the Split

What does Brexit mean for tobacco and vaping?
By Clive Bates
The U.K. government has banned the word Brexit—or at least insisted the word is used only to describe a joyful event that happened in the past. Having promised in the U.K.’s December general election “to get Brexit done,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared that Brexit was officially “done” when the United Kingdom left the European Union on Jan. 31, 2020.
But Brexit is not, in reality, done at all. Far from it. Almost every aspect of the future relationship between the U.K. and the EU remains to be negotiated: terms of trade in goods and services, food, farming, fishing, pharmaceuticals, financial services, aviation, aerospace, automotive, energy, immigration, data protection and sharing, security and justice cooperation—the list is endless and will consume British politics for years.
Buried deep in that list is the question of the U.K.’s approach to those aspects of tobacco regulation that are under EU jurisdiction but now revert to control by the U.K. government.
Given the U.K.’s stated intent not to extend the transition period beyond the end of 2020, it will all need to be done in a breathtakingly short timetable.
Where does this leave tobacco and vaping? Unfortunately, the only truthful answer at this point is “we just don’t know.” The statements of politicians are unreliable—more like populist banter or strutting negotiating postures than declarations of genuine intent. However, we can take a look at the options.

Advertisement
What is the most important EU legislation that covers tobacco?
In the EU, jurisdiction over tobacco is split between the now 27 member states and the European Union. Some matters are regulated at the EU level and others (for example, age restrictions or smoking or vaping in public places) are regulated at the national or subnational level. There are three main areas in which the EU has jurisdiction: cross-border tobacco advertising, a framework for tobacco excise duties, and tobacco product regulation, which is meant to harmonize product regulation to facilitate trade within the EU’s internal market with a high level of health protection.
Advertising
The EU’s tobacco advertising regime prohibits any form of tobacco advertising, promotion or sponsorship that is capable of crossing a border (TV, radio, internet, newspapers, etc.). It does not apply to fixed advertising such as billboards or advertising in shops. The U.K. legislation goes further than required by the EU directives and bans almost all tobacco advertising, whether transboundary or fixed. Outside the EU, Parliament could potentially change this legislation, for example, to allow the advertising of reduced-risk products such as heated or smokeless tobacco products based on a pro-health harm reduction argument. The EU law on the advertising of vapor products is implemented by the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), and this imposes more or less the same restrictions on vapor advertising as the Tobacco Advertising Directive applies to cigarettes. In the case of vaping, however, the U.K. has used its national discretion to allow fixed advertising, which is governed by a code set up by the U.K. Committee of Advertising Practice.⁴ The U.K. could, at least in theory, apply this code to all advertising for vapor products, including transboundary advertising. Again, the justification would come from the government’s determination to reach its 2030 smoke-free goal.
Excise duties
The tobacco excise directive mainly harmonizes definitions and sets limits for different components of tobacco excise duty. This directive is not especially constraining on U.K. excise policy options for, say, cigarettes or hand-rolling tobacco. However, the U.K. may wish to establish particular categories in its excise framework for vaping, heated tobacco, smokeless or oral nicotine products. Even while still a member state of the EU, the U.K. has been free to do this. I doubt that Brexit will make much difference to U.K. excise duty policy unless the EU moves in a direction that is especially hostile to tobacco harm reduction—for example, by requiring nonzero minimum duties on vaping or duties on heated products that approach those on cigarettes. Tax changes in the EU require unanimity among the EU’s member states, so the U.K., as a member, would have had a veto on tax changes hostile to tobacco harm reduction.
Product regulation
The most fertile ground for U.K. divergence from the EU’s regulatory system would be to revise or remove the many rules in the TPD that are pointless or counterproductive. Firstly, and most obviously, the U.K. should lift the ban on snus. This prohibition, with its origins in a 1980s U.K. moral panic over Skoal Bandits,⁶ has no scientific, ethical or pragmatic basis and is probably the worst piece of EU legislation ever written. The prohibition on claiming that “a particular tobacco product is less harmful than others” should be replaced as it is obviously unrealistic. Other areas for divergence could be those aspects of regulation that needlessly harass vapers or otherwise degrade the vaping experience and, in doing so, function as a de facto protection of the cigarette trade—for example, the limits on tank size and refill containers, insert leaflets, excessive warnings, limitations on nicotine strength, and the restrictions on transboundary advertising and online retailing. The U.K. has the means to shape a truly world-leading, risk-proportionate approach to tobacco and reduced-risk products.
At least as important as rolling back poor regulation in the existing directive, the U.K. may choose to diverge to avoid even worse regulation that may lie ahead. By May 2021, the European Commission has to review the functioning of the 2014 TPD and, in light of that review, make proposals for new measures. Statements from European politicians and officials do not suggest that a pro-tobacco harm reduction epiphany is imminent, and vaping advocates can expect the next TPD to become more restrictive and intrusive, not less. For example, there may be restrictions on flavorings, packaging, ingredients or internet commerce. In pursuit of its “smoke-free 2030” goal, the U.K. could decline to implement counterproductive future measures.

Advertisement
But what will the U.K. actually do?
You may have noticed a lot of use of “could,” “may” and “potentially” in the discussion above. This is because it is not yet clear if or how the U.K. would use its theoretical freedom to regulate unilaterally. This prompts a further series of questions.
Will the U.K. ultimately have the option to diverge from the EU?
Modern trade agreements do more than just eliminate tariffs and quotas; they also try to reduce nontariff barriers such as incompatible regulation. We do not yet know whether the U.K.’s eventual trade agreement with the EU will allow for divergence. The EU’s concern is to establish “a level playing field,” preventing the U.K. from competing with the EU by lowering environmental and labor standards or by allowing state subsidies that would lower the cost of production. That wouldn’t necessarily include the tobacco legislation, but it is still possible that the U.K. will agree to comply with EU tobacco regulation for one particular reason. This is that the TPD will continue to apply in Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) as part of the peacekeeping effort to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (part of the EU). The problem for Prime Minister Johnson is that divergence from EU regulation hardens the inevitable internal border that forms between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. And that, to say the least, is a political minefield.
Even if the U.K. has the option to diverge, will it use it?
There will be many advantages to remaining in step with the EU (for example, reducing trade friction and having a single set of business standards), so U.K. politicians will have to carefully weigh whether the costs of divergence will be worth the benefits. On the other hand, they also need to show that there was a purpose to Brexit and that better regulation is possible. But would they choose the highly controversial issue of tobacco policy to make the case for liberalizing regulation? I doubt it would be the first choice.
Out of the room
Leaving the EU means that U.K. officials and ministers are now excluded from developing legislation and policy at the EU level. It also means that the U.K. public no longer has elected Members of the European Parliament to appeal to if the EU institutions come up with terrible proposals.
Yet because regulatory divergence will have costs, it is possible that the U.K. will continue to comply with these directives. Brexit will have impacts on the EU too. With the exit of the U.K., the pro-harm reduction movement in Europe has lost its strongest ally and the buttress against the “abstinence-only” policy. That will have knock-on effects internationally because the EU is a highly influential player in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. So, as the U.K. assumes its new independent status, it may find itself entangled with European Union regulation but no longer allowed in the room where the real decisions are made.
Clive Bates is the director of Counterfactual Consulting and the former director of Action on Smoking and Health (U.K.).

March 1, 2020
Unfit for Purpose

HPHC testing is an unreliable, misleading comparative measure for premium cigars.
By Gerald Long
An understanding of what scientific content is reliable, meaningful and necessary for the substantial equivalence (SE) reports that tobacco manufacturers are required to submit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for certain products is much needed and long overdue. The industry will not have an answer until FDA issues the final SE rule currently under review, but the proposed SE rule released last April indicates that data on harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs) will be required as a comparison point in all SE reports ¹ The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) requires the industry to report levels of HPHCs in individual products ². Importantly, however, the TCA does not require HPHC test results to be included in SE reports. Unfortunately, FDA decided to include such results in SE reports as part of the proposed SE rule. This is both unnecessary and misleading when applied to premium cigars, as the industry has explained in extensive comments filed with the agency.
Further, while there is no statutory requirement that SE reports include HPHC data, doing so will not further any legitimate agency objective. FDA plans to use HPHC data as a metric to determine if the subject of an SE report (the “new” product) is substantially equivalent to a predicate product. For premium cigars, however, such test results will be meaningless as a comparative measure, will be crushingly expensive for the industry and will not provide FDA useful information furthering public health. FDA would be making a serious mistake by requiring such test results for premium cigar SE reports.
The problem
The TCA requires new tobacco products to undergo premarket review by FDA before introduction into interstate commerce. Section 910(a)(1) of the Food Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act defines a “new tobacco product” as any tobacco product not commercially marketed in the United States as of Feb. 15, 2007, or any modification of a tobacco product where the modified product was commercially marketed in the United States after Feb. 15, 2007. The SE pathway, one of three premarket review pathways for a new tobacco product, is designed to demonstrate that the new tobacco product is “substantially equivalent” to a predicate tobacco product (i.e., one on the U.S. market as of Feb. 15, 2007)
FDA’s attempt to rely on HPHC data in SE reports for premium cigars is misguided. For one, it ignores difficulties in determining what “comparison criteria” to use for such testing and whether such criteria are reliable. Further, it is unclear what testing methodology to use. There is no internationally recognized, validated method for testing hand-rolled large cigars. Simple t-test data comparisons—a type of inferential statistic used to determine if a difference exists between the means of two groups—when applied to highly variable data collected with unvalidated methods, could lead to the incorrect conclusion that two identical products are different or that two different products are the same. Testing methods and comparison procedures that might solve this problem do not exist.
In addition, the paired designed testing comparisons favored by FDA are not available for premium cigars. Instead, the industry must rely on historical method capability data, such as repeatability and reproducibility, in order to establish what acceptable HPHC differences are between products for SE purposes; however, little, if any, such data exist for premium cigar HPHC methods. In any data comparison approach, allowable differences are critical factors in establishing product equivalence. Further complicating matters, differences in analytes other than nicotine (where the new product has a significantly lower yield than the predicate product) are considered by FDA to “not raise additional questions of public health.”
The absence of utility and reliability of HPHC data is even more glaring for premium cigars. HPHC data for premium cigars as a comparative measure is not reliable or meaningful, given the unique nature and variability of cigar tobacco and the handmade process used to make premium cigars. Also troubling is that, unlike for cigarettes, there are no reference products for premium cigars. This poses an issue with respect to scientific validation of testing methods and data resulting from any premium cigar testing.
To evaluate the usefulness of HPHC testing on premium cigars as a comparative measure, Tabacalera USA (TUSA) performed extensive HPHC testing of premium cigars from its portfolio. Results demonstrate that HPHC testing “data” is more likely to mislead FDA than help it make informed and scientifically sound comparative decisions⁴.

Advertisement
TUSA’s HPHC testing efforts
TUSA tested 91 products from its commercial inventory. The 91 cigars comprised 43 different sizes and 18 different blends, all of which, like nearly all premium cigars, were comprised entirely of dark air-cured tobaccos. TUSA tested for certain physical measurements (i.e., conditioned weight, length, circumference and pressure drop) using 40 replicates; six individual HPHCs in cigar tobacco using seven replicates; 18 individual HPHCs in cigar smoke using seven replicates; and for TNCO in cigar smoke using 20 replicates (total particulate matter, tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide and water). “Replicates” refers to a “repeat measurement” and gives statistical power to conclusions based on the data. These tests measured HPHCs on FDA’s “abbreviated” list for cigarettes since FDA has not published a list for premium cigars.
TUSA utilized Coresta testing methodology, though it is not validated for large hand-rolled cigars. In fact, there is no internationally recognized, validated smoking methodology for testing large hand-rolled cigars. One problem, for example, is that cigars, especially large cigars, smoked under the Coresta methodology tend to extinguish and need to be relit, altering HPHC results.
One threshold issue in testing HPHCs in cigar tobacco is how to process samples for testing. One option is to combine all cigar tobacco from a sample, grind the tobacco and test samples from the combined composite tobacco, a method typically used with cigarettes. Another option is to grind each cigar separately and test the tobacco from each individually ground cigar. The former option produces consistently low variability within composite samples that can be considered a measure of analytical method variability while the second option provides a measure of the variability between the cigars themselves.
In the testing, TUSA collected more than 36,000 points of data. Such a large pool of data points might superficially lead one to believe the data are reliable and usable as a means to compare cigars. As set forth below, however, these data points confirm that HPHC testing on premium cigars—and the corresponding data—should not be a benchmark for comparative analysis by FDA⁵
The HPHC test data
Data from TUSA’s HPHC testing confirmed that it does not provide a useful metric of premium cigar comparison for equivalence purposes.
Most critically, 18 out of the 91 tested cigars had the same blend of dark air-cured tobaccos (“Blend A”). Any differences in tobacco HPHCs for the Blend A cigars revealed by testing is attributable only to the natural variability of tobacco. A naive statistical comparison might lead to the conclusion that the cigars are different, but they are not.
As an example, TUSA tested for the HPHC N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) in cigar tobacco. Test data revealed that the variability of NNN among Blend A cigars was even larger than the variability between completely different cigar blends. In other words, test results identified cigars of the same blend as potentially “more different” from one another than cigars with completely different tobacco blends. Figure 1 shows this in a graphic form, making the huge variability apparent.
Figure 1
Box plot of tobacco NNN (µg/g cigar) for 91 samples tested segregated into 18 samples with Blend A and the other 73 samples
The data was also concerning with respect to the testing of cigar smoke. Notably, at present, smoke testing methodologies that yield reliable, reproducible and scientifically valid results for HPHCs in large hand-rolled cigars do not exist. The data from TUSA’s smoke testing makes it clear that such testing is meaningless as a comparative measure. With the exception of certain “extreme” cigar sizes, the range of HPHCs in the smoke from Blend A cigars (comprising only 18 different cigar sizes) was just as large as the range of smoke HPHCs in the entire study set of 91 cigars, covering 18 different blends and 43 different cigar sizes. There was also no real consistency or discrimination for smoke yield between cigars of different diameters. Figure 2 shows an example using only data for carbon monoxide (CO). The variability, between both sizes and blends, is clear.
Figure 2
Box plot of smoke carbon monoxide (mg/cigar) for 91 samples segregated into the Blend A samples with 18 different sizes and the other 73 samples in 34 sizes
Statistical comparisons of this data would conclude that, excluding extremely large or small sizes, all smoke CO results for the entire study set fall within the range of 200 mg/cigar to 1,100 mg/cigar defined by the 18 sizes from the Blend A group. The variabilities in fundamental design characteristics like cigar weight and size, inherent to handmade cigars and the uncharacterized variabilities in premium cigar smoking methods directly influence the observed variabilities in smoke HPHC deliveries.
The takeaway
HPHCs, in tobacco or smoke, are simply not viable metrics for comparing premium handmade cigars. Unlike cigarettes, produced by a high-speed, mechanized manufacturing process, premium cigars are handmade, artisan products with significant natural variability in the tobacco. Further, natural variability in tobacco means that the same cigar may vary in ways HPHC testing cannot account for, making the HPHC data of no utility as a comparative measure. Other variabilities in fundamental design characteristics, such as cigar weight and size, also directly influence observed variabilities in smoke HPHC deliveries.
A comparison of cigars based upon HPHC results could lead to the erroneous conclusion that the cigars have different characteristics when they do not or that they do not have different characteristics when they do. For premium cigars, different HPHC levels in the tobacco or in the smoke do not allow for conclusions on whether or not the cigars are “substantially equivalent.”
FDA cannot and should not look to differences in HPHC results for premium cigars because of a high likelihood of erroneous conclusions in equivalence comparisons. HPHC results for premium cigars are confounded by inherent variability of cigar tobacco, variability resulting from handmade construction and uncharacterized variabilities in cigar smoking methods.
The industry has raised this issue with FDA, including in comments on the proposed SE rule. The bottom line is that HPHCs are simply and clearly not a viable metric for distinguishing between premium cigars. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Advertisement
References

¹See Content and Format of Substantial Equivalence Reports; Food and Drug Administration Actions on Substantial Equivalence Reports, 84 Fed. Reg. 12,740 (proposed April 2, 2019) (to be codified at 21 C.F.R. pt. 16, 1107).

²Tobacco Control Act, 21 U.S.C.A. § 387 (2009). FDA published a preliminary list of 93 HPHCs in March 2012 and then identified product-specific subsets of HPHCs for which manufacturers and importers are to test and report to FDA. Reporting Harmful and Potentially Harmful Constituents in Tobacco Products and Tobacco Smoke Under Section 904(a)(3) of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, March 2012.

³See Tobacco Control Act, 21 U.S.C.A. §905(j)(1)(A).

⁴TUSA defines a premium cigar as a cigar with the following characteristics: is wrapped in whole leaf tobacco; contains a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder; is made by manually combining the wrapper, filler and binder; has no filter, tip or nontobacco mouthpiece and is capped by hand; and weighs more than 6 pounds per 1,000 units. TUSA has proposed this definition of premium cigar to FDA on multiple occasions.

⁵Recent work published by the Center for Tobacco Products and other researchers confirms the variability in any testing among cigars of like brands and sizes. This work did not attempt smoke testing; rather, it examined only product size, dry nicotine content and tobacco pH, and the study found a “wide variation in product size and nicotine content within the domestic cigar market.” Further, the study found that “cigar size does not necessarily correlate with nicotine or free nicotine content.” Critically, the study found that it was not possible to replicate results, noting, “in the two large cigar and cigarillo brands analyzed a second time, there was considerable within-brand variance in nicotine content and concentration between the first and second analyses.” See Koszowski, et al. Nicotine Content and Physical Content of Large Cigars and Cigarillos in the United States. Nicotine and Tob. Res. 20(3) 393-398 (2018).
Gerald Long is manager, scientific affairs, product integrity and compliance at ITG Brands, on loan to Tabacalera USA (TUSA). TUSA, through its Altadis USA subsidiary, is a leading premium cigar manufacturer, making iconic brands such as Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, and H. Upmann. It is also, through its JR Cigar subsidiary, a leading premium cigar retailer and, through Casa de Montecristo, the operator of premier, modern cigar stores. As such, TUSA is a leading supporter of the premium cigar industry, devoting significant internal and external resources to protecting the rights of those who make and sell premium cigars, and the adult consumers who enjoy them.

March 1, 2020
Belgium bans ads
Belgium’s federal Parliament has approved a total ban on the advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products, reports The Brussels Times.
The bill was passed with two abstentions and removes the last remaining exceptions to an earlier ban on conventional advertising, including advertising on the front of shops and on cigarette displays as well as lighted signs. Advertising in the press, on TV and on the radio was already banned, and a law to force cigarette companies to use neutral packaging has also been passed.
The ban goes into effect Jan. 1, 2021.
Parliament also approved an extension to the existing law that bans smoking in cars where minors under the age of 16 are present. The new law will now cover all minors up to the age of 18 to coincide with the law governing the sale of tobacco products.
February 24, 2020