FDA: Smoking Choices Need Strict Regulation

Global regulators of cigarette substitutes, primarily vaping or e-cigarette, have call on all firms to police themselves against inappropriate promotion of flavored formulas or juices via social media.

Posts on social media about vaping don’t include mandatory warning that the vaping liquids might contain nicotine, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Vaping, e-cigarette and the latest — IQOS from Japan — are just some of the alternative to cigarette smoking that are deemed safe than conventional smoking.

Studies show that on-combustible tobacco products, such as heat-not-burn devices, offer the best way to end the smoking epidemic that kills 20,000 people a day, according to health experts.

Japan saw cigarette sales fall 27 percent in two years with the introduction of heat-not-burn products, said Prof. Gerry Stimson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the program director of the 6th Global Forum on Nicotine.

Around 17 percent of the Japan cigarette market have switched to IQOS, the heated tobacco system of Philip Morris Internal.

David Sweanor, a lawyer and chair of the advisory board of the Center for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, said this was because electronic nicotine delivery systems such as heat-not-burn products, electronic cigarettes and Swedish snus are much safer alternatives to cigarette smoking.

“In Japan, with the introduction of heated tobacco products, one-third of the cigarette market was gone,” Sweanor said in a news conference at the sidelines of the 6th Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw, Poland in June 2019.

“We know enough science to know that we can have enough products that have a tiny fraction of the risks of cigarettes. We have seen examples around the world that many smokers will move to these products,” Sweanor said.

Japan, UK, the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, South Korea and New Zealand saw a more rapid decline in smoking because of the use of safer nicotine products like heat-not-burn devices, vapes and oral nicotine products such as Swedish snus, the offcial said.

About 62 countries currently regulate electronic nicotine delivery systems under tobacco regulation, while 39 countries inappropriately ban safer nicotine products, according to the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction Report.