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  • Webinar on EU Vape and Pouch Regs Announced

    Webinar on EU Vape and Pouch Regs Announced

    Keller and Heckman LLP announced a webinar titled “Update on EU Regulations of E-Vapor and Nicotine Pouches,” that will be hosted by tobacco and e-vapor practice partner Ales Bartl and moderated by partner Azim Chowdhury. This 60-minute, complimentary webinar will be held May 8, beginning at 10:30 EDT.

    Bartl will discuss the rapidly changing landscape of e-vapor and nicotine pouches in the EU. This session will provide insight into:

    • Horizontal EU regulations (chemicals, electronic products, batteries, etc.)
    • EU tobacco products directive: Applicability, latest developments
    • National requirements, existing, and upcoming restrictions
    • General product safety, enforcement, liability, online sales

    Click here to register.

  • Five Suspects Indicted in California for Illegally Selling Tobacco

    Five Suspects Indicted in California for Illegally Selling Tobacco

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta today (April 10) announced the grand jury indictment of five suspects for selling tobacco without a license and committing tax fraud that cost the state more than $24 million in lost tax revenue. The suspects were indicted on 118 counts of conspiracy, selling tobacco as an unlicensed distributor, filing false tax returns, money laundering, and a white-collar enhancement. 

    “From the investigation to prosecution, my office is dedicated to seeing these five defendants pay for their crimes against the people of California,” Bonta said.“Schemes that defraud the government of millions in taxpayer money will not be tolerated. Today’s announcement should serve as a reminder: If you break the law and engage in fraud and theft, my office will hold you accountable.”

    From January 2017 to April 2024, the suspects allegedly engaged in the importation of untaxed tobacco products into California using shell entities, subsequently selling these products to customers in the state while evading the tobacco excise tax. This operation involved a series of coordinated actions aimed at misusing personal and regulatory information, hiding the source of funds used for purchasing untaxed tobacco, concealing the arrival of tobacco shipments in California, misleading customers about compliance, and avoiding obligations related to California’s tobacco excise tax. 

    Additionally, the five suspects perpetuated their scheme by submitting false monthly excise tax returns to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration or, in some cases, neglecting to file these returns altogether.

  • FDA Whistleblower Dishes on Agency’s Shortfalls

    FDA Whistleblower Dishes on Agency’s Shortfalls

    David Oliveira, who recently left the FDA after six years as a senior staffer, is speaking out about problems at the agency under the Biden administration, including tobacco control, diversity, equity and inclusion, and failures to combat China flooding the U.S. market with illicit vapes after the FDA’s top tobacco official was removed from his position. 

    “Many of us had been anticipating it for quite some time. We knew that change was drastically needed at FDA when it came to Tobacco Control,” Oliveira said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Because Tobacco Control had really gotten out of control, there were many, many failures in core missions for the center that needed dramatic change and new leadership.

    “Many of us, whether it be from public health, consumers, small business owners, industry, and including even Senator Dick Durbin, who last year at a hearing said to Brian King, ‘It looks to me that you have fallen down on the job.’ So really, it runs the spectrum of people who are unhappy with what’s gone on recently with FDA in terms of tobacco regulation.

    “I frequently would attend shows and visit vape shops, and I was somewhat a canary in a coalmine, and would report back as to what I was seeing, and I would warn them that what I was seeing on the ground was out of control. We had a lot of people in the building who would go online and try to do some surveillance, but when you get out into the real world and you see the number of vape shops that are flooded with these illicit products, and I started to warn them about the amount of nicotine that was in these devices. We went from a Juul device, which had around 200 puffs, which was the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes, then I started seeing 5,000 puffs. I brought that warning back to the center, and then the following year would see 10,000 puffs. Now on the market, you can see 40,000 and 50,000 puffs. This is what the Chinese have done. They have not sought to get products authorized. They will introduce the latest and greatest technology. I saw a Santa one that was red and white. They’ll introduce flavors like Gummy Bear, Blow Pop, and Fruit Rollups, and these things that are absolutely youth-appealing because they do not care.” 

    View the 15-minute interview here.

  • Still 10-20 Years From Knowing Vape’s Long-Term Health Effects

    Still 10-20 Years From Knowing Vape’s Long-Term Health Effects

    New Zealand researchers are working to find out the long-term health effects of vaping on the nation’s youth, who are nearly three times more likely to vape than teenagers in Australia, Canada, and the United States. And while preliminary research is causing concerns, they admit that concrete conclusions are still years away.

    Kelly Burrows, a researcher at Auckland University’s Bio Engineering Institute, began looking into the matter in 2019 when data suggested that cigarette use was declining but vape use was increasing drastically.

    “You know it took sort of 50 years to find out what the link between smoking and health effects really were,” she said. “I would say because vaping has not been around that long, comparatively, it’ll be at least another 10 years or 20 years before we see the long-term health effects.”

    During the past six years, the associate professor led multiple studies on the topic, focusing on the lungs and respiratory system.

    “Every time you vape, some of that will stay inside your lungs, so the e-liquids that are in vapes are sort of quite an oily substance,” Burrows said. “There’ll be a lining of this oil that will stay inside your lungs and actually one of the things that is designed to get rid of that is the process of inflammation. It’s when you have this inflammation occurring many times a day over many years, which is what leads to disease and tissue breakdown.”

    Burrows worked with engineering students to create a vaping robot, which collected vapor and froze it to be tested for chemicals and contaminants. That method found at least 30 different flavoring chemicals in each e-liquid, and Burrows said no one knows what the health and safety of those flavoring chemicals is. They also found some heavy metals in the aerosol—the substance that is inhaled and exhaled from a vaping device.

    “So normally the heating coil is made from a mixture of different metals and when that gets to really high temperatures, some of that comes off into the aerosol.”

    Another study from Burrows grew lung cells in a lab and exposed them to e-cigarette vapor, where some cells died and others broke apart or became more permeable, meaning chemicals could be more easily absorbed into the bloodstream.

  • Opinion: Washington Flavor Laws ‘Kicking the Can Down the Road’

    Opinion: Washington Flavor Laws ‘Kicking the Can Down the Road’

    This week, after previous renditions seemed dead in the water, Washington legislators slipped twin bills into the House and Senate that would impose a statewide flavor ban on tobacco products and add a carbon tax on cigarettes. In an opinion piece for the Tax Foundation, Adam Hoffer and Jacob Macumber-Rosin, both experts in tax policy, compared these schemes to others around the country.

    “A carbon tax on cigarettes is novel, while the idea for a flavor ban is not,” they wrote. “Massachusetts and California have already banned flavored tobacco products in their states, and the experiences have been so negative that the Biden administration backed off its own plan for a nationwide flavor ban.

    “Both Massachusetts and California experienced massive tax revenue declines, incredible growth in illicit market activity, and little to no change in smoking rates. Following its flavor ban in 2020, Massachusetts saw cigarette excise tax revenue decline by more than $100 million and revenue has persisted at the lower level. Unfortunately, fewer legal sales don’t necessarily translate to less consumption. Our previous work identified that about 90% of the reduction in sales in Massachusetts was offset by increases in legal sales in neighboring states. Illicit product seizures and smuggling estimates have skyrocketed.”

    The writers said California fared no better, losing more than $230 million in state cigarette sales and excise taxes since it banned flavors in December 2022. Unlike Massachusetts, however, smokers didn’t turn to neighboring states, they began utilizing illicit and international markets to replace their legal purchases.

    “One study collected details on 15,000 discarded cigarette packs from public trash containers across 10 major California cities in May and June of 2023,” they wrote. “These data showed that 21.1% of the discarded packs were menthol-style cigarettes, a mere 3% drop in menthol market share estimates from before the flavor ban.

    “The same data found foreign and illicit market share spiked. Non-US packs comprised 27.6% of the sample, compared to an estimated foreign market share of only 17% previously.”

    The state’s fiscal analysis predicts a flavor ban would decrease revenues by more than $100 million per year, and the proposed carbon tax would only recoup 1% of that.

    “The justification for applying a carbon tax on top of existing cigarette taxes is weak,” they wrote. “Secondhand smoke certainly harms others nearby who are forced to inhale it, and cigarette smoking releases carbon dioxide, but classifying cigarettes as a broad state-wide pollutant is a stretch.

    “These haphazard policies appear to be part of a ‘try-anything’ effort to close the state’s projected $15 billion budget shortfall. Washington State taxpayers deserve sound fiscal policy reforms that will provide stable, long-run revenue for the government. Narrow-based and patchwork fixes only kick the can down the road to the next set of elected officials.”

  • U.S. Premium Cigar Imports Top 430M

    U.S. Premium Cigar Imports Top 430M

    The Cigar Association of America (CAA) released its annual report today, indicating that U.S. imports of handmade, premium cigars rose 0.9% last year, going from 426.3 million in 2023 to 430 million in 2024. It appears that the pandemic created a second cigar boom, as imports have exceeded 400 million units for four years in a row, a 27% increase from 2019’s 338 million cigars. The market has cooled slightly, however, from its record years of 2021 and 2022, where imports were 453.9 million and 464.5 million, respectively.

    Nicaragua accounts for 58.8% of U.S. cigars, shipping 253.1 million cigars in 2024, a 2.7% increase over the previous year. The Dominican Republic shipped 106 million cigars, a 1.8% decrease from 2023, followed by Honduras’ 67.4 million cigars, a 3.3% increase. Those three countries account for 99% of the U.S. cigar supply.

    Costa Rica saw a 44.9% jump in the number of cigars it sends to the U.S., and at 2.5 million units is the only other producer to top the 1 million mark.

    The CAA generates this data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Customs Services, and from cigar companies themselves. The numbers include estimates that remove large, machine-made cigars from the premium category.

  • Latvian Officials Make Arrests in Cigarette Counterfeiting Ring

    Latvian Officials Make Arrests in Cigarette Counterfeiting Ring

    The Latvian News Agency reported that since December 2024, the State Border Guard has been conducting a criminal investigation against an organized crime syndicate producing counterfeit cigarettes in the towns of Ludza, Riga, Rezekne, and Daugavpils that have led to numerous searches, seizures, and arrests. Police believe this illegal production has been ongoing for 10 years.

    Last week, a total of 32 people were detained, including 25 Ukrainians who were arrested at a factory in Ludza where they were producing counterfeit cigarettes to be passed off as Marlboro, Prince, Winston, and LM cigarettes. That raid seized 300 million cigarettes and 47 tons of shredded tobacco leaves, as well as property worth €13 million and a fleet of refurbished retro-luxury cars.

    Had the illegal cigarettes ended up on the Latvian market, officials said the total loss to the state would have been more than €75 million.

  • Essex Vape Shop Closed for 3 Months for Selling Illicit Vapes

    Essex Vape Shop Closed for 3 Months for Selling Illicit Vapes

    The Mellow Yellow Vape Shack in south Essex, England, was ordered to close for three months after being caught selling counterfeit tobacco and illegal vapes by Thurrock Council’s trading standards team in February. The team, accompanied by sniffer dog Lily, found large quantities of counterfeit cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco hidden in the shop, along with illegal vapes that came in packaging targeting children or that were more than 10 times the legal tank size.

    This is the second time the shop has been caught selling illegal products in less than six months. The Basildon Magistrates Court ordered the shop to remain closed for three months and for Amir Ahmadi to pay £4,665.67 in costs.

    “Let this be a message to any business that thinks it can cheat and endanger its customers by selling counterfeit and illegal goods,” said Victoria Holloway, councilor responsible for place and the environment. “Our trading standards team will find you and the full force of the law will be used to hold you to account.”

  • Indiana Bill Allows Vendors to Sell Cigars at Events

    Indiana Bill Allows Vendors to Sell Cigars at Events

    A bill would allow tobacco vendors in Indiana to obtain a three-year supplemental cigar sales certificate, allowing them to sell cigars at an event on a temporary basis, passed through the Senate today (April 9) by a vote of 41-8. House Bill 1468, authored by State Rep. Kyle Miller, will head to the governor’s desk following a concurrence vote in the House.

     “I am thrilled to see my legislation pass through the Senate,” Miller said. “HB 1468 will help many small businesses that sell cigars across our state by allowing them to vend at public events. This legislation will ensure that our businesses are engaging with their communities and can promote their trade outside of their shops. 

    “Passing this bill is a great step taken by the legislature to foster entrepreneurship in Indiana by promoting our small businesses. As a small business owner myself, I’m proud to fight for legislation that encourages entrepreneurship in our state.”

  • Grizzly Nicotine Pouches Increase NASCAR Sponsorship

    Grizzly Nicotine Pouches Increase NASCAR Sponsorship

    Kaulig Racing announced yesterday (April 7) an expansion of its partnership with Grizzly Nicotine Pouches for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. Grizzly will become the primary sponsor on Kaulig Racing’s No. 16 Chevrolet with driver AJ Allmendinger for four NASCAR Cup Series races, beginning with the April 13 event at Bristol Motor Speedway.  Additional events will be the April 27 Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, the July 27 Brickyard 400 Presented by PPG at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the August 10 Go Bowling at The Glen at Watkins Glen International.

    Grizzly Nicotine Pouches is part of American Snuff Company LLC (ASC), an affiliate of iconic R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Grizzly Nicotine Pouches are a tobacco leaf-free product available nationwide. Allmendinger’s teammate, Kaulig Racing’s Ty Dillon debuted the Grizzly Nicotine Pouches partnership at the 2025 Daytona 500 as part of a nine-race sponsorship. 

    “When we got the chance to further our partnership with Kaulig Racing and now AJ [Allmendinger], we did not hesitate for a second,” said Brent Trader, Senior Director, Brand Marketing American Snuff Company. “We are more than happy with the relationship we have with Kaulig Racing and the entire No. 10 team. We felt like this was a great opportunity for us to get even more exposure for the brand with adult consumers who love NASCAR as much as we do.”