VAPEAST

What age restrictions are there on vaping?

It’s understandable that many people have questions about vaping, such as how old do you have to be to vape? Luckily, we’re here to take a closer look at vaping and some of the more common questions, including how old you need to be to vape or buy vaping equipment.

Vaping has become extremely popular in the last decade. From relative obscurity to one of the biggest alternatives to smoking in the world. It’s understandable that for many people new to vaping, there are a lot of questions they need answered.

The process of vaping involves heating a liquid known as e-liquid to the point it turns into vapor. The vapor is then inhaled, much the like the act of smoking. E-liquid is available in various flavors, and you can choose your nicotine strength based on your needs.

When it first hit the mainstream community, vaping was largely self-regulated. It was so new that there wasn’t much if any, legislation in place regarding rules or age requirements. However, for the most part, responsible sellers did a pretty good job of self-regulation the vaping industry. As the popularity of vaping exploded, so to did the regulations imposed by governments around the world. Some are good, some not so good. It depends on your personal opinion, but regulations were put in place.

Enough from me! Let’s jump into how old you have to be to vape!

What’s the Legal Age to Vape?

In this section, we’re going to take a look at some of the most popular vaping areas in the world and what their age restrictions are on vaping.

• What Is The Legal Age To Buy Vapes In The Americas?

There are a variety of different countries which make up the Americas, including the United States of America, Canada, and Mexico, just to name a few. For the purpose of this article, we’re going to look at those three countries, starting with the USA.

Recently, the US Congress passed a tobacco law that set the minimum age to buy any tobacco products, including cigarettes and vaping products, at 21. While this new law also targets traditional tobacco products, the law was passed to address concerns about teen vaping and was an attempt to reduce the number of teenagers getting access to vaporizers.

In most of the major provinces in Canada, the legal vaping age has been set at 19, in line with their other legal age requirements for drinking and smoking.

If you’re planning on traveling to Mexico and vaping, the legal age has been set to 18. However, there have been several lawsuits and legal challenges about the age requirements for vaping and also the legality of vaping altogether. Some of those cases are still pending, and vape shops are still in business.

• What Is The Legal Age To Buy Vapes In Europe?

Vaping laws vary wildly across Europe. However, the European Union has set its legal vaping age to 18. However, some countries, such as Belgium, have a legal age lower than 18, allowing anyone over 16 to smoke or vape, so it pays to check the laws in whatever country you’re in or plan on visiting.

• What Is The Legal Age To Buy Vapes In Asia-Pacific?

Despite most vaping products originating in the Asia-Pacific, vaping has been banned in several countries, including Cambodia, Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Vaping is legal in China and Australia, but you need to be 18 in Australia to vape, and any e-liquid which contains nicotine has been banned from sale.

• What Is The Legal Age To Buy Vapes In Africa?

The vaping laws vary wildly from country to country in Africa, but most countries have set the legal age to 18. In South Africa, vaping is permitted, but only if you’re vaping nicotine-free e-liquid. It’s best to check the individual laws of whatever African country you plan on visiting.

What are the Side Effects of E-Cigs and Vapes?

While vaping is widely known as a safer alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes and has been used by many long-term smokers to quit smoking, it doesn’t mean that it’s not without some risks.

Below we’ll take a closer look at some of the side effects of e-cigarettes and vaporizers:

• Nicotine is Addictive – Although nicotine is optional in e-liquid, it’s still a hazardous chemical with addictive traits. By vaping e-liquid, which contains nicotine, you could be getting addicted to the chemical.

• Unknown Long-Term Effects – While vaping has been proclaimed by some organizations as a ‘safer alternative’ to smoking, it’s still relatively new, and more long-term studies and time are required before we’ll know how safe or unsafe vaping is.

• Increase In Teenage Smokers – Anti-vaping groups have claimed that vaping could potentially be a gateway to teenager’s smoking. It’s one of the reasons, so many countries have imposed the same age restrictions on both smoking and vaping.

• Second-Hand Vape Effects – Little is known about the potential risks and dangers associated with second-hand vapor from vaping in enclosed spaces.

What’s the Minimum Age to Buy Zero-nicotine Vapes?

From what we can determine, the same age restrictions apply to all e-liquid, regardless of whether or not they contain nicotine. When you look at most of the vaping laws, regardless of the country, they don’t specify that vaping products have to contain nicotine to be considered a vape products. Most simply state that all vaping products, vaping accessories, or e-liquids are considered to be vaping paraphernalia, and the legal age limits still apply regardless of how much nicotine is in the e-liquid or whether or not it’s nicotine free.

What are the Dangers of Adolescent Vaping?

The biggest unknown about vaping is just how safe or unsafe it truly is. Think about how long smoking was promoted as a safe and fun activity before the long-term health risks started to be exposed. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to gather all the data and make a safe evaluation of the long-term risks associated with vaping.

Another danger with adolescent vaping is that some experts feel that young vapers could quickly become young smokers. We are all well aware of how dangerous smoking traditional cigarettes is and the risks associated with them.

How Old Do You Have to Be to Vape – Conclusion

There you go! Everything you wanted to know about how old you have to be to vape in some of the biggest countries in the world. If you plan on traveling with your vaping equipment or vaping in a foreign country, you must pay close attention to their laws and regulations, as vaping laws can vary wildly from country to country and even within different regions in the same country.

The information in this article in no way or form should be considered legal advice, and we strongly recommend doing your own research into vaping laws.

If you have any questions about vaping or what age you need to be to vape, please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us directly. Our friendly and professional sales team is standing by to assist you!

It’s long been an orthodoxy of government policymaking everywhere that taxation has two primary purposes – raising money, and changing people’s behaviour, generally by making them stop doing something, or making them do it less. The “sin tax” – pricing the common folk out of some habit or other – is often thought to be a kinder, more adaptable way of modifying patterns of consumption than simply banning things.

In practice, though (quite aside from the fact that it lets the well-off off the hook while disproportionately affecting those of lesser means), punitive or would-be persuasive taxation has many of the same drawbacks as prohibition.

Put simply, both send habituated users to the black market, with all the dangers that entails. And there are people who argue, with some evidence, that high taxes or prohibition can actually increase rather than decrease use of the very thing they aim to reduce.

Those are staple arguments for proponents of almost anything enthusiastic regulators want to clamp down on, such as tobacco alternatives or e-cigarettes. Or for liberal or rightward-leaning commentators, those who are habitually or doctrinally opposed to Big Government (and big tax).

People, for example, like Bienvenido Oplas, founder and president of Minimal Government Thinkers, a free market think tank based in the Philippines.

Good money from bad things

His latest column in the Filipino newspaper BusinessWorld, written under the heading “My Cup of Liberty” (funny how liberty, like democracy, is flown as a flag of honour by those on the right, left and centre), addresses the question: “Have the Philippines’ Sin Tax laws delivered the expected revenues?” To which, he says: “The quick answer is ‘Yes’.”

The money’s coming in. But that in itself demonstrates that the second objective – stopping people doing or buying bad things – may not be being achieved.

The list of “bad things” subject to sin taxes is interesting in itself. In order of tax revenue, they are: tobacco, alcohol, sugar-sweetened drinks, petrol and mining. That was up to 2020. At that point two more categories were added: heated tobacco products and vapour products.

Estimates from the Philippines departments of health and finance put this year’s expected tax income from vaping at PHP3.8bn ($74m) and from heated tobacco at PHP200m ($3.9m).

To put those figures into perspective, overall tobacco taxation brought PHP172.3bn ($3.36bn) into the national coffers last year. And that was up PHP24.7bn ($481m) on 2019, despite the pandemic, which the ministries blamed for vaping and heat-not-burn (HnB) incomes falling short of expectations.

Biking down a slippery slope

Oplas has another interpretation of that shortfall. It’s that old staple argument again. He reckons the number of vapers is still growing, and their habit just as strong, but that the tax – rather than making them quit – has simply driven them to the black market, to less safe unregulated products. Or, as he puts it, referring to traditional tobacco: “Higher tax rates lead to higher smuggling, cheaper illegal tobacco, and to more smoking, not less.”

Turning to the Vaporised Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Act, approved three weeks ago by Congress, he says its primary goal was “to encourage smokers to shift from using unhealthier cigarettes to alternative less harmful products like VNP [vaporised nicotine products], if they cannot stop smoking”. He quotes Senate president Ralph Recto: “VNPs are not safe and not risk-free. [But] for many who have been trying, VNPs have been a good alternative to kick the (smoking) habit.”

However, Oplas sees danger in the bill, with its “many prohibitions” – no sales to under-18s, no online sales, no celebrity endorsements or corporate sponsorships, distribution and usage restrictions. To him it’s a “slippery slope” towards possible stricter legislation.

But what really gets his goat is the “demonizing” of tobacco alternatives, while beer and wine are considered (he says) harm reduction substitutes for spirits, and Diet Coke for the sugar-heavy original variety. “Government concern for public health,” he says, “is inconsistent.”

Which sounds like a fair enough point until he stretches it by suggesting that if reduced-risk tobacco-related products are taxed heavily, the same should apply to “risky sports like rock climbing and downhill cycling”. Now, what’s the reduced-risk version of mountain-biking?

– Aidan Semmens ECigIntelligence staff

Image: Hieronymous Bosch

The news reported on our sister site TobaccoIntelligence that 22nd Century Group is looking to launch its very-low-nicotine cigarettes (VLNCs) in Chicago and South Korea seems on the surface to have little to do with vaping.

VLNCs – combustible cigarettes containing almost no nicotine – are, after all, virtually the opposite of e-cigs.

But how they are received is worth watching for the vape industry, and all the more so if the category takes off. (So far 22nd Century’s VLNC – itself branded VLN, and recently accepted as a modified-risk tobacco product by the US Food and Drug Administration – is the only one being launched commercially.)

From a rational point of view, if VLNCs provide smokers with a pathway to permanent cessation, then great: that makes them at least as good as e-cigarettes, and conceivably even better.

However, if users treat VLNCs as long-term substitutes for higher-nicotine cigarettes, their contribution to harm reduction will be negligible.

In that scenario, VLNCs would be the “lights” of our time, seemingly healthier but in practice hardly less risky than full-strength cigarettes. And this could even be exacerbated if, as many critics assume, users of VLNCs will indulge in risk compensation by smoking far more in order to obtain the same level of nicotine, in the process also consuming much greater quantities of potentially toxic by-products.

To be fair, there is at least tentative evidence that smokers actually don’t compensate in this way even if nicotine yields are dramatically reduced. And of course if one subscribes to the school of thought that smoking habits are more behaviourally than chemically driven, that makes sense.

Anticipating what consumers really want and why

None of this will necessarily come to pass: it is more than possible that smokers simply won’t take up VLNCs in the first place.

For those who don’t care about reducing risk, or not enough or not yet, there’s no strong motivation to switch combustible brand anyway.

And for those who do want to reduce their risk, it’s very difficult objectively to see that VLNCs offer any benefit at all over vaping: you still get combustion by-products, you still get odour, you still get ash, and you don’t get the nicotine, which was at least part of the point of smoking in the first place. (Admittedly, you do get the sensory experience of smoking rather than vaping’s facsimile.)

But – and this is potentially a significant but for the vape sector – this assumes the perfectly rational consumers beloved by economists.

What if real, live consumers believe that reducing their nicotine intake in itself substantially reduces their risk? There is plenty of survey evidence from recent years suggesting that many believe exactly that, implying they might well opt for VLNCs in preference to vapour products that would almost certainly be less risky for long-term use, as opposed to a short-term cessation process.

This gulf between the perception of nicotine and the reality of where smoking risks lie is the threat that VLNCs pose to vapour. For now, it’s early days, and it’s a small issue. But it is one to watch, especially if regulators or medical professionals make the same assumption.

Would you like more information about VLNC products? You can now download for free our full regulatory briefing “A boost for very-low-nicotine cigarettes as US FDA grants modified risk order” using the form at the top of this page.

– Barnaby Page ECigIntelligence staff

Photos: Vaping360, Julie Bocchino

Another year, another National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), and another outpouring of not unreasonable complaints from tobacco harm reduction advocates that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) makes the data deliberately difficult to unpick – in effect, forcing readers to follow the CDC’s narrative rather than allowing us to draw our own conclusions.

There is some truth in this, whether it’s deliberate or not, and the headline conclusions of the CDC are not surprising: tobacco products remain a menace to America’s kids, e-cigarettes particularly, flavoured ones most of all.

It doesn’t, in a way, entirely matter if this is true in every detail; the real significance of the NYTS is not what it tells us about the habits of young people but how it shapes the views of policy-makers and regulators.

There the CDC’s conclusions are pretty much continuations of the same ones that the US government public health establishment has been offering for a while (as have many of its counterparts in state and municipal government, in academia and so on).

For that reason, these latest NYTS figures are likely to encourage more of the same rather than any dramatic change in tobacco control priorities – and any egg that the CDC accumulated on its institutional face during the Covid pandemic is unlikely to rub off onto its tobacco research.

What they aren’t saying

Of course, what’s also notable is what is not said explicitly by the CDC: combustible cigarettes are once again confirmed as a relatively small part of the school tobacco scene in the US, relegated to the sidelines mostly by novel products.

Expecting this to make a difference is missing the point, though, because it’s only important if you believe that novel products are safer than combustibles…and the real battle for tobacco harm reduction in the US lies in making precisely that argument, not in debating the fine details of youth usage.

Even the lowest levels of youth use are – realistically – unlikely ever to be seen as a positive beyond the more extreme circles of harm reduction. The growth in vaping at the expense of smoking might logically be a success story, as might the still very low levels of heated tobacco and nicotine pouch use among minors, but it’s an impossible sell.

In realpolitik terms, then, the good news from the NYTS is not the ascendancy of the e-cigarette over the combustible.

For e-cigs, the good news is the fact that overall vaping levels in high schools and middle schools are not continuing to soar; for other products like heated tobacco (HnB) and pouches, the good news is their relative invisibility in the survey results. The good news is that there is no really bad news.

The many opponents of novel nicotine products may not find much to celebrate in the NYTS, but at least (despite an increase in the proportion of regular vapers, which could attract some rhetoric) there is not much to dramatically increase levels of alarm.

– Barnaby Page ECigIntelligence staff

Photo: McKinsey

• Want to know more about the US vaping market? You can download a free sample page of our market report: “US vape store survey 2021 – revenues and confidence on the rise” using the form at the top of this page.

The Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) held its annual get-together in Baltimore, Maryland last week and – as usual – published a huge number of research abstracts to accompany it (notwithstanding some controversy over the exclusion of industry research). In disciplines from medicine to sociology to economics, and taking in themes from Covid to cannabis, many of the papers will be of particular interest to the e-cig sector.

Here are some highlights, with their ID numbers so they can be easily located in the SRNT’s very long list.

First, the war on vaping may not be going entirely to plan.

SYM4-3 finds that “flavor restrictions on cartridge-based e-cigarettes in the US had little or no impact on the usual flavors used by youth vapers. Youth appear to have circumvented the US flavor restrictions by using brands and devices exempt from the restrictions.”

SYM8-3, meanwhile, observes that “among young adult never tobacco users and infrequent experimenters, Puff Bar’s ‘tobacco-free nicotine’ claim may increase positive expectancy and reduce negative expectancy and harm perceptions towards using Puff Bars.”

And PSI-74 concludes that “Pod e-cigs may be more appealing and have a greater effect on cigarette smoking than Mod e-cigs”.

E-cig taxes hinder the war on smoking

Mind you, the war on smoking has its own problems, as POD15-1 reports: “Evaluation of the federal T21 law at the one-year mark shows it has the potential to reduce ease of tobacco access, but intensified efforts are needed with compliance. Over 4 in 5 US middle and high school students who attempted to buy cigarettes in the past 30 days were successful.”

E-cig taxes may not be helping there. According to POD7-2, “ENDS taxes were associated with reductions in ENDS use but increases in cigarette use among emerging adults. As uptake of daily use disproportionately occurs in this age-range, this result calls for care in setting tobacco product taxes, to ensure that regulations do not inadvertently incentivize habituation of more lethal tobacco products.”

There’s much worth reading beyond narrowly vape-oriented topics, too, including some new ideas in smoking cessation and tobacco control.

SYM5-2 suggests “promising results for psilocybin in comparison to transdermal nicotine patch when both are delivered in combination with CBT” (cognitive behavioural therapy).

POD13-7 and PS1-7 both look at NicoBloc, “a novel, non-pharmacological liquid applied to the filter end of a conventional cigarette that blocks 33% of tar and nicotine with one drop; three drops blocks up to 99%”.

And PS1-30 considers “dissuasive cigarettes”, sticks supplied in unattractive colours or carrying warning messages. The results for them weren’t so promising: “Although dissuasive cigarettes may be less favourable than cigarettes without off-putting health warnings and colours, in the current study they do not appear to markedly reduce appeal or increase perceptions of harm compared to a regular cigarette.”

News, fake news, and social media

Another paper, SYM18-5, contemplates a different way of encouraging quitting, by demonstrating a “proof of concept for translating key basic science findings into a genomically-informed risk tool that can be implemented to promote progress toward smoking cessation. Implementing genomic risk in the healthcare setting with patients and providers has the potential of accelerating smoking cessation.”

Indeed, the importance of the information that reaches consumers is a theme running through much of the research presented at SRNT.

Some of this relates directly to e-cigarette products: for instance, POD2-6 proposes that “on-pack reduced-risk messages could make transition more attractive to smokers than the current addiction warning featured on e-liquids. Increased-risk messages could deter ENDS use among susceptible non-smokers, occasional and former smokers.” (You decide whether that’s a good thing.)

But it also relates, of course, to the bigger issue of nicotine awareness. PS1-104 “provides evidence of the role of social media in both disseminating as well as dispelling misleading and potentially harmful misinformation about nicotine and suggests a role for counter messaging…addressing misinformation about nicotine is important, as it appears to be associated with more favorable views of the tobacco industry which may erode public support for effective regulation.”

That may depend on what you consider “misinformation”, of course, but either way – as POD12-7 puts it – “the repetition effect increases the believability of claims about tobacco, and the effect is generally stronger for false claims compared to true claims. This underscores the importance of strategies to inoculate people against misinformation and calls for interventions that can stop the repetition of newly generated false claims.”

False claims over smoking, tobacco and nicotine…who’d a thunk it?

– Barnaby Page ECigIntelligence staff

Photo: Horst Winkler

• Do you want more information about the US flavour restrictions? You can now download for free our full regulatory briefing “Letters to lawmakers urge action on PMTAs, flavours and synthetic nicotine” using the form at the top of this page.

There’s some dissension in the state of Hawaii, with some fairly heavy accusations flying around in the public debate over a proposed bill to ban e-cigarette flavours.

House Bill 1570, titled with neither obvious irony nor precision “Relating to the Youth Vaping Epidemic”, would prohibit the sale or distribution of “all flavored tobacco and synthetic nicotine products” in the Aloha State.

More than 230 pages of “testimony” – or opinion – have been officially received and supposedly considered by the state Department of Education, which put the bill forward. A majority express opposition to the proposal, with comments along the lines of: “Flavored nicotine has helped myself and others in my family stop using tobacco products which are way more harmful to our bodies. If flavored ecigs are banned, all my family would go back to smoking tobacco products. Cigarettes are far more worse than ecigs.”

That’s picked more or less at random, but it’s pretty representative. Others put other equally familiar arguments, in more or less sophisticated language. (The black market, the dangers of unregulated products, the right of adults to choose etc.)

On the other side the arguments are just as well worn, though often expounded at greater length by various health and education bodies and busybodies.

A heavyweight fight replayed

Here, in a nutshell, is the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) and Americans for Tax Reform (pro-vape) versus the (anti-vape) Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids et al, a heavyweight contest being played out for some years now – and no doubt some years to come – in state and other legislatures throughout the US. You’ve heard it all before and you’ll hear it all again.

But there is something a little different in this case. It will be interesting to see if other cases elsewhere take a similar turn.

Because this time a number of organisations such as the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and Cancer Action Network – all names that crop up routinely in support of legal action anywhere to restrict e-cigarettes, and particularly flavours – have spoken out against the bill.

The comment by the Hawaii COPD Coalition is representative: “Please amend the bill HB1570, HD1 to return to the original form of the bill, which will ban the sale of flavored nicotine products and mislabeled e-liquid products without adding a lot of confusing changes to the original, well-drafted bill.”

Which is where the accusations come in.

‘Poison pills’

Amanda Fernandes, policy director of the Hawaii Public Health Institute, told local media: “It’s disheartening to us that something that is so serious would be compromised by these amendments. It is a very common tactic for the tobacco industry to lobby for these types of poison pills to be inserted into otherwise good tobacco policy.”

Those “poison pills” consist of six insertions to the bill by the House Health, Human Services and Homelessness Committee, more than doubling its length. They include:

• Requiring the state Department of Health to develop a “scientific testing process” to detect the presence of flavours in tobacco products and to post test results online
• Requiring the attorney general to track all online sales of all tobacco products and e-cigarettes and post monthly updates on the estimated number of tobacco products entering the state and the tonnage confiscated
• Requiring the health and education departments together to set up a “take back” programme in schools and to arrange quarterly meetings with students in every school “to seek input on addressing the youth vaping epidemic”.

Needless to say, neither the health nor education departments have exactly welcomed those suggestions, especially with no cash forthcoming to implement them.

Whether or not you agree with the principle of a flavour ban, it’s hard not to feel sympathy with the suspicions of those who accuse the Health, Human Services and Homelessness Committe and its chairman Ryan Yamane of trying to kill the bill by overloading it.

As Fernandes said: “Nobody is asking for these amendments…These enforcement mechanisms are untested, unvetted. We had never seen them before; nobody sent them to us or any other advocacy organisation.”

Thousands of dollars received

Yamane, a Democrat with 17 years service in the House, is of course having none of that. “The intent was to try to make the bill transparent and open,” he said. “I know they’re trying to characterise it as demon amendments, but I’m kind of saddened because part of our job is to try to fix holes in bills that are not being addressed and unintended consequences.”

This of course raises the question of whether all those other flavour-ban bills in legislatures up and down the US – predominantly drawn up by his fellow Democrats – all have the holes that Yamane wants to fix.

And whether there is any truth whatever in the insinuation implied by those who mention the “thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from tobacco and vaping companies” that Yamane admits having received over the years.

To non-American ears, that implication sounds like a very strong accusation indeed. But in the land of pork barrel politics and billions spent on lobbying, maybe it’s just business as usual.

Whatever the truth or otherwise of those accusations, it will be interesting to see what becomes of the bill, and whether it proves to be a one-off controversy or a harbinger of others elsewhere.

– Aidan Semmens ECigIntelligence staff

Photo: Jakob Owens

Around 80% of the world’s tobacco users are in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where combustible (and oral) products can contribute to poverty as well as having direct health impacts. But while many of these countries do have nascent e-cigarette markets, and of course China is a dominant manufacturer, broadening the appeal of tobacco harm reduction (THR) products in them can seem to be an uphill struggle, with cultural and economic considerations significant alongside regulatory ones (sometimes very stringent, sometimes very loose).

Now, a new report from Cambridge Design Partnership – the company which developed the Voke nicotine inhaler with Kind Consumer some years back – looks at some of these obstacles.

Based on quantitative and qualitative research in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, with the UK as a control representing higher-income countries, it focuses on electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) such as e-cigarettes.

The report identifies six steps that need to be taken – or, more accurately, challenges that need to be overcome – before a tobacco user in an LMIC can be expected even to try switching, let alone to stay switched.

1. Recognise/acknowledge smoking risk

Here, “the element of denial is strong”. Around three quarters of people in China, India and Indonesia see no health benefits in giving up, while in India and Indonesia a majority actually believe cessation can be harmful. Myths and anecdotes prevail.

2 Understand smoking risk

“Critical to smokers’ adoption of ENDS as a replacement for cigarettes, on the basis of reduced risk, is the understanding that nicotine is not the greatest harm risk factor,” the researchers say – something that is of course a currently significant issue in more developed nations too.

And here the survey results show there is a long way to go. For example, “the majority of smokers surveyed in China and Indonesia (57% and 64%, respectively) selected nicotine as being most harmful. This compared to approximately 15% (China) and 3% (Indonesia) selecting tar.”

3 Have a desire to change smoking habits

As elsewhere, a majority of smokers want to quit. But “countering allegiance to current products and behaviors is challenging”, with cultural conventions (such as the Chinese habit of presenting cigarettes as gifts) and advertising both working against change.

“Advertising campaigns in Indonesia at the time of fieldwork ran with straplines such as ‘NEVER QUIT’ set against a backdrop of high-octane sporting and action endeavor,” the report notes.

4 Be aware of ENDS

Once all these issues have been overcome, smokers of course still have to take an active step to switch to e-cigarettes or other alternatives.

Awareness of the products is the first, obvious prerequisite and here the countries examined differed significantly: in Russia and China about 85% of tobacco users were aware of the products, but just 27% in Indonesia and 12% in India.

Advertising may be part of the reason, but it seems unlikely to be the whole one; visibility at retail could also be important, for example, as indeed could visibility of other users.

5 Understand ENDS as reduced risk

This is, in effect, the continuation of points 1 and 2. Even where ENDS are familiar, they’re not necessarily seen as safer.

“There is good evidence to suggest that significant proportions of smokers in LMIC markets believe that ENDS are more harmful than cigarettes”, the researchers say – a misapprehension that has shown occasional signs of cropping up in North America and Europe too.

They suggest that the dogmatically anti-ENDS position of the World Health Organization (WHO) may contribute, and that body does tend to have a particularly strong influence in LMICs.

6 Access ENDS

Even if a consumer has got this far in their journey toward ENDS, availability in stores (or through health services, though that seems unlikely) is clearly a sine qua non of actually taking up a THR product, and ENDS tend to be much less easily available than combustible products.

Price also “currently represents a significant barrier to many potential consumers in LMICs”.

The Cambridge Design Partnership report is well worth reading – and not only for those with a special interest in the LMIC nations. Much of what it has to say about the consumer journey, and the questions arising from it, also applies to other markets.

Funded by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World, the report, entitled “Impediments to Tobacco Harm Reduction in LMICs: The ENDS Adoption Journey” has been released in connection with the ENDS Europe event, running 24th-25th May.

– Barnaby Page ECigIntelligence staff

Photo: Pxhere

There’s always a certain schadenfreude to be enjoyed when lawmakers – even, or perhaps especially, with the best of intentions – fail to look ahead properly and so end up falling foul of the law themselves. The law, that is, of unintended consequences.

Take the curious case currently unfolding in the US state of Colorado, where a no-doubt well-meaning ballot measure enthusiastically taken up by voters just 18 months ago now has Assembly members tied up in a knot of their own making.

No doubt it seemed a really good idea to the Democrat-led legislature when they put forward Proposition EE, “creating a tax on nicotine products such as e-cigarettes, increasing cigarette and tobacco taxes, setting minimum cigarette prices, and dedicating revenues to various health and education programs”. It certainly appealed to the voters, more than two-thirds of whom (2.13m citizens) said “Yes” to it.

Not only was it a measure to cut vaping and smoking (notable that e-cigarettes were put before combustibles in the wording of the proposition), but it also brought in the money for the state to set up a classroom-based pre-school program for under-fives. The campaign groups Save the Children Action Network and A Brighter, Healthier Future for Colorado’s Kids were keen enough to put money behind the plan.

Probably not, Kyle

The use of the new tax to fund the pre-kindergarten (pre-K) project was particularly emphasised by those who drew up and promoted the measure. At least one of whom is also cited as a prime sponsor of a bill currently under discussion in the state House of Representatives. That bill, House Bill 22-1064, would prohibit the distribution of flavoured nicotine products, specifically including those containing that bogeyman-of-the-moment, synthetic nicotine.

Clearly, this proposal – like the publicly popular nicotine tax that preceded it – is motivated by the intention of reducing e-cigarette use. The trouble is that the better it works, the more it cuts off the money supply to that wonderful new pre-K program.

You can almost hear representative Kyle Mullica, whose bill this is, bashing his head on the table when he says: “We always run that risk when we want to fund these important programs off of taxes like this that are vices.” And admits: “I don’t think that’s probably the most appropriate way to fund these programs.”

You know, maybe it isn’t.

There may be no immediately obvious connection between e-cig flavours and the welfare of small children. And you surely wouldn’t assume that banning flavours might damage little kids’ education chances. But there you go – unintended consequences.

– Aidan Semmens ECigIntelligence staff

Photo: Carol Highsmith

• Do you want more information about flavoured vaping products regulation in the US? You can now download for free our full regulatory briefing “FDA authorises some tobacco-flavoured Logic vape products, but denies others” using the form at the top of this page.

Written by Barnaby Page || 8th April 2022 || Blogs || FDA | Regulation and Legislation | Geographies: North America United States