Tag: Featured

Stories featured at the top of tobaccoreporter.com

FDA Urged to Mandate Minimal Nicotine

Photo: Martinmark – Dreamstime.com
John Pritchard, 22nd Century’s vice president of regulatory science, has called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate implementation of its comprehensive plan on tobacco and nicotine regulation, in particular to impose the mandate requiring all cigarettes sold in the United States to contain minimally or non-addictive levels of nicotine.
The proposed rule was removed from the agency’s agenda late last year without significant explanation.
“Despite the obvious harm of smoking, the staggering public health costs, and the millions of lives lost, we have never mustered the fortitude to enact policies that would make cigarettes less addictive and end this public health disaster, Pritchard wrote in a newsletter published by the global data intelligence company Morning Consult.
“This is the perfect time to take that step.”
22nd Century has invested heavily in nicotine-reduction technology, and the company stands to benefit greatly if the FDA mandates minimally addictive levels of nicotine.
“Companies like the one where I work have developed technology to decrease the chances that future generations become addicted to cigarettes and to provide alternatives for smokers of highly addictive cigarettes,” Pritchard wrote.
“Yet we continue to wait almost a year for a further authorization to allow us to communicate this breakthrough to adult smokers. The faster this can be achieved, the sooner and greater the public health benefit in the United States
November 25, 2020
Signatures Submitted for California Ballot

Photo: pjedrzejczyk from Pixabay
The California Coalition for Fairness has turned in more than 1 million signatures seeking to qualify a referendum for the November 2022 ballot aimed at overturning a law banning the retail sale of flavored tobacco products in California, reports The Los Angeles Times.
If the Secretary of State’s office determines there is a sufficient number of signatures to qualify the referendum, the new law, which was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, would be suspended until the voters act on the ballot measure in November 2022.
Opponents needed to collect the signatures of 623,312 registered voters to quality the referendum.
The coalition has received more than $21 million from Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., among others.
Health advocates criticized the initiative.
“We know Big Tobacco has hidden behind smoke and lies for years to hook generations of young people on deadly tobacco products, and this referendum is just one more tactic to continue the status quo,” said Lindsey Freitas, advocacy director for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in a statement. “If this referendum qualifies for the ballot, we’re confident that California voters will reject Big Tobacco’s desperate attempt to keep hooking our kids for a profit. But the delay will be costly and deadly.”
Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the new law in August, denounced the referendum effort when it launched.
“This is Big Tobacco’s latest attempt to profit at the expense of our kids’ health,” Newsom said at the time. “California will continue to fight back and protect children from Big Tobacco.”
The law that Newsom signed would ban the retail sale of flavored tobacco products including menthol and fruit flavors, as well as those used in electronic cigarettes.
In addition to supporting the referendum, the tobacco industry has filed a federal lawsuit against the state, seeking an injunction to block the new law, arguing it is “an overbroad reaction to legitimate public-health concerns about youth use of tobacco products.”
A court hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 10.
November 25, 2020
Firms Ask for Further Delay of Warnings

Image: HHS
Tobacco companies have asked a Texas federal court to further postpone the effective date of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) new requirement for graphic warning labels on cigarette packs, citing unanswered questions about the validity of the rule, according to a report by Law360.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Liggett Group and ITG Brands, along with cigarette retailers, told U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker that he should delay the rule’s effective date, currently Oct. 16, 2021, for 90 days to Jan. 14, 2022.
The companies argued they would suffer irreparable harm if they were forced to spend millions of dollars to comply with a rule that will soon be invalidated.
Judge Barker had already pushed the rule’s effective date back once in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, following a request from the FDA. In a May 8 order, the judge delayed the date from June 18, 2021, to Oct. 16, 2021.
In March, the FDA released a final rule requiring new graphic warnings for cigarettes that feature some of the lesser-known but still serious health risks of smoking, such as diabetes, on the top half of the front and back of cigarette packages and at least 20 percent of the area on the top of cigarette advertisements.
In April, the cigarette manufacturers and retailers sued the FDA, arguing that the graphic warning requirements cross the line into governmental anti-smoking advocacy. The FDA has a motion pending to either toss this case or transfer it to Washington, D.C., where a similar case has been filed.
Judge Barker has given the FDA, which opposes the additional deadline extension, until Wednesday to file a response to the motion.

November 24, 2020
Juul Labs to Leave Ireland

Juul Labs will exit the Irish market at the end of the year after entering the country less than two years ago.
Facing growing regulatory pressure and scrutiny, Juul Labs in September told its workers that it planned to exit some European and Asia-Pacific markets and sack more of its remaining 2,200 employees.
“Although much has been achieved in a short space of time, at a global level the company has had to make some difficult decisions about how best to serve its mission,” the company told suppliers in Ireland in recent weeks.
“As part of this process the company has made the decision to focus its investment on core markets in order to best position itself for the long term, therefore, unfortunately [it has] informed us of [its] intention to exit the Irish market,” it added in a memo seen by the Irish Independent.
In February, 39 U.S. states launched an investigation into Juul Labs marketing practices, which allegedly targeted minors and misrepresented the levels of nicotine in its products.
Last month, Altria cut the value if its holding in Juul Labs to less than $5 billion.
In April, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an action seeking to undo Altria’s original investment in Juul. The FTC has alleged that Altria and Juul “entered a series of agreements… that eliminated competition in violation of federal antitrust laws.”
November 24, 2020
Discounters Contest Minimum Price

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
Liggett Group, Vector Tobacco and Xcaliber International, together with a Colorado citizen and cigarette smoker, have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the State of Colorado in a United States Federal Court. The motion seeks to enjoin Colorado from enforcing the recently enacted Colorado minimum cigarette price requirement, which would raise retail cigarette prices for Colorado consumers to premium brand levels.
The motion alleges that the requirement was inserted into a cigarette tax increase bill solely to secure support for the bill from Philip Morris, the largest U.S. seller of premium cigarettes. The motion also alleges that the minimum price requirement violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by favoring Colorado retailers’ in-state economic interests over the interests of out-of-state discount manufacturers.
Further, the complaint alleges that the minimum price requirement was not properly disclosed to Colorado voters who approved the bill on Election Day. “Voters believed that the tax increases would benefit education and other public purposes, when in fact all of the benefit of the minimum price provision will go to retailers, Philip Morris and other premium cigarette manufacturers, and none to the State of Colorado,” the plaintiffs wrote in a statement.
November 23, 2020
Dutch Supermarkets to Ban Cigarette Sales

Photo: Pexels from Pixabay
The Netherlands will ban the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products in supermarkets from 2024, reports Reuters.
Together with a ban on cigarette vending machines from 2022, the supermarket ban will remove around 11,000 of the current 16,000 tobacco vending points in the country, the government said on Friday.
Supermarkets currently make up 55 percent of all tobacco sales in the Netherlands.
Since 2008, smoking has been prohibited in bars and restaurants. Earlier this year, all smoking areas at train stations were removed, while office buildings need to follow suit by 2022.
Around 22 percent of all Dutch aged 18 and above smoked on a regular basis last year, according to health research institute Trimbos, down from 26 percent in 2014.
Last month, the Netherlands introduced plain packaging for tobacco products. Supermarkets were already required to place tobacco products in closed cabinets, out of sight of potential customers.
November 23, 2020
Ghana Suspends Track-and-Trace Contract

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
A contract between the government of Ghana and U.K. security printer De La Rue to combat growing illicit trade in cigarettes has been suspended, according to Devdiscourse.
Ghana’s Revenue Authority signed a five-year contract with U.K. security printer De La Rue in September to create a track-and-trace excise tax stamp system as illicit tobacco products reportedly account for about 20 percent to 30 percent of total sales.
The deal, however, went under suspicion when De La Rue outsourced the track-and-trace system to Atos, which partners with the tobacco industry.
Another aspect was that the tender was awarded in breach of public procurement regulations regarding transparency. Due to these issues, the contract has now been suspended by Ghana’s Public Procurement Agency.
November 20, 2020
Healthcare Cost Recovery Suit Rejected

Photo: jessica45 | Pixabay
The Seoul Central District Court rejected South Korea’s National Health Insurance Service’s (NHIS) request to seek KRW53.7 billion ($48 million) from KT&G and local units of British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International for compensation to offset the NHIS’ treatment costs resulting from smoking-related diseases.
The NHIS announced that it intends to appeal the District Court’s ruling. The NHIS originally filed the lawsuit in 2014, which sought reimbursement for treatment of long-time smokers who suffered diseases such as lung cancer.
The court’s decision noted that the NHIS is not a direct victim and therefore has no right to seek damages from the cigarette makers. The court added that the NHIS failed to prove a direct connection between the patients’ diseases and their smoking and concluded that there was insufficient proof that the cigarette makers produced “flawed” products.
“The outcome is extremely shocking and deplorable,” said NHIS President Kim Yong-ik. “We want to have a legal confirmation about the clear damages caused by smoking, but it was not as easy as we had expected.”
November 20, 2020
Study: Vaping up as Smoking Stabilizes

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
In 2019, 14 percent of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes, essentially unchanged from 13.7 percent in 2018, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
However, e-cigarette use among adults rose to 4.5 percent, up from 3.2 percent in 2018, and almost one in four e-cigarette users had never been smokers.
E-cigarette use was highest among young adults aged 18-24 (9.3 percent), with more than half (56 percent) of these young adults reporting that they had never smoked cigarettes. E-cigarette use among young adults increased by 79 percent between 2017 and 2019 (5.2 percent to 9.3 percent).
The overall number of U.S. adults who use any tobacco product increased from 47.4 million in 2017 to 50.6 million in 2019.
“It is troubling that declines in adult smoking appear to have stalled at the same time that e-cigarette use has increased—a finding that raises further questions about the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in helping smokers quit, said Matthew L. Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK) in a statement.
November 20, 2020
Covid Pandemic Boosts Cigarette Sales

Photo: Kolozov | Dreamstime
Despite public health advice that smoking increases the risk of severe illness from Covid-19, tobacco sales around the world have received a boost during the pandemic, reports Reuters.
In recent weeks, Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Altria Group all raised their sales or profit targets, saying the industry had done better than expected, mostly in the United States and Europe. Imperial said staying home in the pandemic gave people more chances to smoke and more cash to spend.
Smokers, meanwhile, cite a combination of anxiety, boredom, stress and the unexpected freedoms of social isolation as reasons for lighting up more.
While overall tobacco sales continue to fall, the speed of decline has slowed in many markets.
For example, in the United States tobacco sales by volume fell 2 percent in the eight months to Oct. 24, according to Nielsen data. That’s smaller than an average drop of just over 3 percent in the previous two years.
Slowing U.S. sales of e-cigarettes also have benefitted conventional smokes. E-cigarettes rose only 2 percent over the period versus about 70 percent on average in the previous two years, a development that is commonly attributed to last year’s Evali crisis and a U.S. government ban on most flavors in pre-filled nicotine cartridges. Conventional cigarette sales in the U.S. also benefited from cheaper gasoline.
British American Tobacco told Reuters its U.S. cigarette performance had been helped by government stimulus payments, which have boosted disposable incomes, as well as working from home and consumers stocking up on necessities.
Tobacco firms also cite reduced international travel, which has boosted domestic sales in some countries, and tighter border controls, which reduced cigarette smuggling.
In some markets, tobacco companies also benefited from exceptions to lockdown orders. France, Italy and Spain deemed tobacconists “essential,” allowing them to remain open even as other business had to close shop. In the United States and Britain, tobacco was on sale in stores that sell other necessities such as groceries.
November 20, 2020