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: Sustainability
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.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”.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”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.Preparing for growing cuts
In an opinion piece published at thehill.com, an executive with the Center for Strategic and International Studies has called for action to ensure an orderly exit for farmers from tobacco production.
Dan Runde, a senior vice president and William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center, a think tank based in Washington, US, said millions of smallholder farmers and their families in Africa and other parts of the developing world were going to lose their livelihoods due to the coming – welcome – fall in global demand for tobacco.
This decrease would come as a result of changing technologies, such as that driving the movement from tobacco to vaping.
Runde said that a number of economically-poor countries were surprisingly dependent on tobacco for jobs and hard currency; so the ‘coming end of tobacco products’ would cause a major social and economic disruption within those societies.
‘One potential solution would be a multi-stakeholder partnership among companies including tobacco companies, NGOs, governments, universities and aid agencies to design something like a “tobacco buyout” for the developing world,’ Runde said.
‘In 2004, the US released the Tobacco Transition Payment Program, also known as the “tobacco buyout” …
‘A similar program for Africa would aid farmers’ transition to different types of agricultural products, decreasing nations’ dependence on tobacco exports and increasing the world’s food supply with incentives for smallholder farmers.’
Runde added that the disruption had already begun.Still counting the cost
Hurricane Florence is testing the resolve of farmers in the US states of North and South Carolina, who could face billions of dollars in agricultural damage while still feeling the sting from Hurricane Matthew almost two years ago, according to a story by Gary D. Robertson and Emery P. Dalesio for Associated Press.
Writing on Friday, the AP reporters said that after ‘last weekend’s’ high winds and rain that was followed by ‘this week’s’ rising rivers and standing water in fields, early farm reports were confirming pre-storm worries about losses to tobacco, cotton and corn crops.
Matthew hurt eastern North Carolina farmers in 2016, but that storm arrived in October, after most field crops had been harvested.
With Florence, most major crop harvests were still underway or just getting started. “This hurricane couldn’t have come at a worse time,” North Carolina Farm Bureau president, Larry Wooten, was quoted as saying.
North Carolina is unlikely to have preliminary crop damage estimates until the end of the next week, said state agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler. Floodwaters and blocked country roads were making it difficult for agency agronomists to check out farms.
Five of North Carolina’s top six farming counties are within the hardest-hit areas in the eastern part of the state.
“I think it’s easily going to be in the billions of dollars,” Troxler said in an interview, calling the damage “catastrophic” and “unbelievable”.Pests determine prices
Tobacco growers in Zimbabwe have started transplanting tobacco seedlings to fields under irrigation, according to a story in The Herald.
Midlands Provincial crop and livestock officer Madeliner Magwenzi said growers with irrigation facilities, mainly in the Gweru and Kwekwe districts, had undergone thorough training by Agritex and various tobacco training institutions, including the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board and the Tobacco Research Board to improve their agronomic practices.
“Irrigation tobacco is now being transplanted and we are urging tobacco growers to apply systemic aphicides and nematicides during the transplanting stage of tobacco to avoid the spread of insect transmitted diseases,’ she was reported as saying.
Magwenzi added that growers were being trained in integrated pest management because the anticipated El Nino weather conditions could be associated with more and early pests and diseases.
Tobacco farmers needed to be wary of pests while they were transplanting because the application of the wrong pesticides could lead to pest resistance, pest resurgence and environmental pollution.
Magwenzi said that the training bodies would continue to educate growers on pest management because such management affected yields and quality, and ultimately profit margins.
The Midlands Province is aiming to plant 500 ha under irrigated tobacco this season.A question of poisoning
An Italian member of the EU Parliament has asked the Commission what steps it is taking to reduce the risk of tobacco poisoning among tobacco farmers and their families.
In a preamble to her questions, Barbara Matera said that when the proper safety procedures were not adhered to, the risk of tobacco poisoning among farmers was high.
‘Zimbabwe, in particular, has experienced a large number of tobacco poisoning cases, which can be attributed to a lack of education about the condition and a lack of funding for the proper preventive equipment,’ she said.
‘This sickness also greatly affects children who help out with the harvest in rural areas.’
Matera said tobacco was Zimbabwe’s largest export product, and its largest agri-food export to the EU, before asking:
‘What is the Commission doing to promote education among tobacco exporters?’
‘What can the Commission do to provide adequate equipment and protection for farmers, especially those with children?’
The Commission is due to answer in writing.University learns a lesson
The University of Newcastle (UON), Australia, has announced that it is reversing its whole-campus ban on smoking and vaping, according to a story at planetofthevapes.co.uk.
‘UON is dedicated to providing a safe and healthy environment for staff, students and visitors to our campuses,’ the university was reported to have said in a written statement. ‘We are proud to support a smoke-free experience.
‘From September 2018, designated smoking areas have been introduced at three locations on our Ourimbah campus and at eight locations across the Callaghan campus…’
Instead of a total ban on smoking and vaping, albeit that vaping suffers a de facto ban across the whole of Australia, nicotine users can now use the shelters provided.
Nat McGregor, UON’s CEO said the decision made by the university’s executive committee had not been taken lightly. “The health and safety of our campus environments is a priority that can only be achieved through the responsible behaviour of all,” he said
“Unfortunately, we have clear evidence that our smoking restrictions were being ignored in enough volume to cause real concern. Our smoke-free initiative resulted in people smoking in areas that are not appropriately cleared, increasing the risk of fire, as well as causing pollution to our wetlands from discarded cigarette butts. After an extremely dry winter, the risk of bushfire is heightened this year, and appropriate action was needed to safeguard our community.”
The planetofthevapes report said it was to be hoped that the decision would feed into a more enlightened stance on alternative cessation products.
Currently, the UON’s website advice to vapers is that there is no convincing scientific evidence to indicate that any alternative quit smoking method increased the chances of quitting smoking. Moreover, it warns that vaping won’t work, will be expensive, and carries ‘significant health risks’.
The advice for smokers is that they should use their willpower or make use of counselling and nicotine replacement therapy.
