VB-31 Jan 2024

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8 26 january 2024

News

T e US Supreme Court de-

clined to hear R.J. Reynolds

Tobacco Company’s challenge

to a voter-approved measure

in California banning f avored

tobacco and vape products.

T e justices rejected an appeal

by R.J. Reynolds, a unit of British

American Tobacco, and other

plaintif s of a lower court’s ruling

holding that California’s law did not

conf ict with a federal statute regu-

lating tobacco products.

California attorney general Rob

Bonta, a Democrat who defended

the law in court, in a post on X, called

the Supreme Court’s decision “excel-

lent news.”

“We look forward to continuing

to fight to prevent addiction and

protect the health of our people,”

Bonta said.

R.J. Reynolds declined to com-

ment.

Democratic governor Gavin

Newsom in 2020 signed into

law a ban on all f avored to-

bacco products – including menthol

cigarettes and cotton candy-f avored

vaping products – in response to

concerns about a rise in e-cigarette

and tobacco use by teenagers.

T e ban’s implementation was

delayed after a tobacco industry

coalition gathered enough signatures

to put to voters a ballot measure that

would block California from becom-

ing the largest state to ban f avored

tobacco product sales. But nearly

two-thirds of voters casting ballots

on the measure known as Proposi-

tion 31 approved the sales ban in

November 2022.

The law made California the

second state to ban all f avored to-

bacco product sales after Massa-

chusetts in 2019. Several other states

have restricted flavored vaping

products and several municipalities

have adopted their own bans.

T e US Food and Drug Admin-

istration in 2020 banned all f avors

except tobacco and menthol in Juul

and other cartridge-based e-cigarettes.

In 2022, the FDA sought to ban sales

of all Juul e-cigarettes, though it

later put the order on hold.

Beyond vaping, the FDA in April

2022 proposed banning menthol

cigarettes and f avored cigars. T ose

rules have yet to be f nalised and

have been the subject of lobbying

by tobacco groups.

A day after the California vote,

R.J. Reynolds along with a group

representing tobacco retailers, the

Neighborhood Market Association,

and a vape shop, f led a lawsuit argu-

ing the federal Tobacco Control Act

preempts state and local laws ban-

ning f avored tobacco products.

“I am delighted ... It is a f gure that

will increase over the coming weeks

and months as more companies

of the IBVTA.

Vape industry launches self-

regulatory Code of Conduct

New plan backed by major players across UK vape sector

Illicit sales in four of ﬁ ve

Bradford test purchases

Trading Standards has revealed that

illicit vapes are increasingly common,

with over 5,000 seized from Bradford

shops over the past 12 months.

The report reveals Trading Standards

had visited 68 shops in Bradford in 2023

and received 151 complaints about

products such as tobacco or alcohol

being shown to children.

38 of these visits were test pur-

chases – where volunteers go under-

cover to see if a shop is selling illegal

products.

Of these, 80% resulted in the test

purchaser being sold an illegal product.

Green light for industry’s

ﬁ rst expert environmental

panel

A new independent panel has been

launched by SMOORE, the world’s

largest atomisation technology com-

pany, to provide expert advice to help

the company and wider industry address

the environmental impact of the vape

sector and establish “best sustainable

practices”.

The move comes amid calls to ban

single-use vapes on environmental

grounds.

Heading up the panel is Joshua

Fischer, an ID Creative Director of in-

ternational vape brand VAPORESSO

– a subsidiary of SMOORE – who leads

on material choices and, critically, en-

vironmental philosophy, when develop-

ing products.

Welsh vape retailer grooms

teen girl with vapes

The use of vapes by criminals to at-

tract, groom and exploit children

across Wales is the focus of a new

awareness campaign by Crimestop-

pers Wales.

The charity has launched the

campaign to gain information anon-

ymously about vaping-related ex-

ploitation. The aim is to protect vulner-

able people and to tackle the criminal

networks involved.

it has highlighted a case study

where a 14-year-old girl was the victim

of vape-related sexual grooming by

a c-store owner who supplied her with

free vapes in exchange for sexual

favours for himself and his friends.

Although the lithium-ion bat-

teries in disposable vapes are

discarded after a single use,

they can continue to perform

at high capacity for hundreds

of cycles, according to new

research.

T e study, supported by

T e Faraday Institution and

published in Joule, highlights

a growing environmental

threat from these increasingly

popular vape pens, which are

not designed to be recharged.

Disposable vapes have

skyrocketed in popularity in

the UK, showing an 18-fold

increase recorded between

January 2021 and April 2022.

T is has led to new waste

problems, with about f ve

million of the devices thrown

away in the nation each week.

T e research team had a

hunch that the batteries used

in disposable e-cigarettes

were rechargeable but were

not aware of any

previous studies that

had assessed how

long the lithium-

ion batteries in these

products are capable

of lasting.

“Popularity

single-use

vapes

has

exploded

recent years. Despite being

sold as disposable, our re-

search has shown that the

lithium-ion batteries stored

within them are capable of

being charged and discharged

over 450 times. T is work

highlights the huge waste of

limited resources caused by

disposable vapes,” said Ham-

ish Reid, from UCL Chemi-

cal Engineering and the f rst

author of the study.

T ey

examined

the batteries under

microscopes

and

used X-ray tomogra-

phy to map their in-

ternal structure and

understand the con-

stituent materials. By

repeatedly charging

and discharging the batteries,

determining how well the bat-

teries maintained their elec-

trochemical performance over

time, f nding that they could

be recharged many hundreds

of times in some cases.

Disposable vape batteries can be

recharged hundreds of times: study

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