BAT’s Post

The FDA has authorised the marketing and sale of Vuse Alto with Golden Tobacco and Rich Tobacco flavours in the United States. This is good news for adult smokers, who do not want to quit, and for public health. We know that sustained and lasting changes to adult consumer behaviour offer the greatest hope for making cigarettes obsolete. We believe that adult smokers should be given freedom over their decision to quit smoking and must be given the option to switch to alternatives that are backed by #science. BAT now has the largest vapour portfolio in the U.S. with Vuse Alto, Vuse Vibe, Vuse Ciro and Vuse Solo – supporting our ambition to Build a Smokeless World and become a predominately smokeless business by 2035. The FDA requires submissions (PMTAs) to include a significant amount of evidence: from data that summarises the health impact of the new products, to the impact on the population as a whole, including users of the new product and non-users of tobacco products. As part of its 500,000 page submission to the FDA, Reynolds American Inc. submitted the interim results of a 24 month study termed the Longitudinal Tobacco Use and Transitions Survey (LTTS) of Vuse products. The interim results, presented at the FDLI conference in March 2023, show that nearly 45% of participants who use Vuse Alto completely switched away from cigarettes (link to the presentation: https://lnkd.in/ec9VK2Hh). Well done to Christopher Junker, the Regulatory Science Team and everyone at Reynolds American Inc. who contributed to the submission. 👏 👏 👏 Link to press release: https://lnkd.in/ejghc_WX

The cigar industry says FDA’s scientific evidence concerning the risks and benefits for the ban’s creation falls short. David Ozgo, President of Cigar Association of America (CAA), pointed to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act’s tobacco product standards, which require that the agency consider whether a tobacco product standard is appropriate for the protection of the public health, taking into consideration scientific evidence concerning the risks and benefits to the population as a whole; the increased or decreased likelihood that existing users of tobacco products will stop using such products; and the increased or decreased likelihood that those who don’t use tobacco products will start using such products. The proposed ban “fails on all three accounts,” Ozgo said. “Youth usage rates of cigars, and of flavored cigars in particular, are at all-time lows and these low rates reflect a stable and sustained trend.” The association cited the recently released 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey that showed past 30‐day youth cigar use declined to 1.6%. The 2022 survey showed youth cigar use at 1.85%. Read more from the Bloomberg Law article: https://lnkd.in/eBzvYtHQ #cigarnews #cigarassociation #FDA

"To prevent nicotine pouches from being legislated out of the market, manufacturers must demonstrate the extent to which they are benefiting adult smokers, and quantify underage usage." Companies in the tobacco industry are being encouraged to provide clear and accurate information about the numbers when submitting to the FDA's CTP. They will need to establish the importance of this product to the adult population while proving that this will discourage use by the underage population. It emphasizes transparency in reporting statistics to facilitate informed decision-making and public understanding. #tobaccoindustry #transparency #dataaccuracy #nicotine

Want even more proof FDA doesn’t care about the health of cigarette smokers? Here you go! Politicians beholden by lobbiests, such as Scott Gottlieb and Raja Krishnamoorthi, have already shown their true colors by targeting Juul Labs, which provides healthier alternatives to cigarettes with the hopes to get folks OFF of them, while leaving all other menthol or flavored nicotine and combustion smoking sticks alone, including #juul’s competition. Allowing menthol #cigarettes to remain but banning menthol nic vapes sends a message to smokers. We want you to keep using the most harmful smoking product on the market because big tobacco needs you to keep killing yourself in order to keep making billions of dollars, and big tobacco tells us what to do becuse we get some of those billions. Full stop. The government is supposed to work for the people. The American government works for the dollar. It’s a sad state of affairs. #vape #vapecommunity #smokingkills #smoking #smokingcessation

USA: Correcting misperceptions about very low nicotine cigarettes for cigarette-only smokers, dual/poly smokers, other tobacco users, and non-tobacco users "Different messages are needed for different types of tobacco users. Both cigarette smokers and other tobacco users could benefit from messages that acknowledge the non-addictiveness but emphasize the health risks of VLNC. Regulators could consider making physical harm statements a requirement for VLNC packaging and marketing. New strategies need to be explored to inform cigarette dual/poly smokers." https://lnkd.in/gfxqE_g7

Recently, tobacco companies have faced increased scrutiny over youth uptake of nicotine pouches like Zyn, with the brand being labeled as “a pouch packed with problems,” by Senator Chuck Schumer, who went on to say “These nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids—teenagers, and even lower—and then use the social media to hook them,” However, recent data from Wave 3 of our Tobacco Product Prevalence Study (TTPS) show that underage usage of the Zyn brand and the pouch category remains low among youth. Dr. Neil Mckeganey and Dr. Andrea Patton discuss in our most recent article published in Tobacco Reporter: https://lnkd.in/gdBcrrpf Ensuring informed dialogue is crucial for effective harm reduction. #TobaccoControl #HarmReduction

The FDA launched a new webpage titled “The Relative Risks of Tobacco Products,” which is designed to educate adult smokers on the risk continuum of tobacco and nicotine products. It’s an important and necessary step toward combatting the lack of accurate, science-based information about nicotine, alternative tobacco products, and how they can assist smokers in quitting. It’s a positive development in harm reduction opportunities for American smokers. Take a look.

📢 News for the Tobacco and Nicotine Industry - our latest regulatory report on #Romania is available. 🔍In this piece, we delve into Romania's approach to regulating #oraltobacco and #nicotinepouches. Understanding these new regulations is crucial for industry stakeholders, policymakers, and health advocates alike. 📑View the full report here: https://lnkd.in/dy8BNTX3 #tobaccopolicy #tobaccoregulation #cigarettes #smoking #harmreduction

"On their surface, nicotine pouches seem to be a fad like any other, but they are the end result of a century of nicotine marketing and development that began with cigarettes and has now moved beyond. “It’s basically part of the long history of the candification of nicotine,” Robert Proctor, a Stanford historian who has written multiple books on tobacco, told me. Over the years, the tobacco industry has gradually introduced more and more products flavored and packaged like sweet treats. Now, with Zyn, the industry has finally devised a near-perfect one. [..] there actually is a legitimate, good-faith argument to be had about the merits of Zyn and similar flavored products. On the one hand, they do not contain tobacco and are not smoked, which is largely what makes cigarettes so deadly. The tobacco industry has positioned these products as a way for adults to wean themselves off of cigarettes, and they sure seem to be much safer than cigarettes, which kill more than 480,000 Americans each year—more than the combined deaths from COVID and car-crash fatalities in 2021. So the more people popping flavored pouches or gummies rather than smoking cigarettes, the better. On the other hand, they are addictive, and flavored products have been shown to play a major role in hooking kids. The PMI [Philip Morris International] spokesperson told me, “If you’re worried about your health, the best thing is to never start using nicotine or”—if you already do—“stop using it.” Whether the increase in the number of kids using nicotine is worth the decrease in the number of adults using cigarettes is hotly debated. There’s a dark irony to the fact we’re having this debate at all. A hundred years ago, tobacco companies invoked the idea, if not the specific language, of harm reduction when they marketed their cigarettes as a healthy alternative to candy. Now they’re making their own nicotine products more candylike and marketing them as a healthy alternative to cigarettes. The harm reducer has become the harm to be reduced. After all this, flavored nicotine pouches might end up banned, just like flavored cigarettes and vapes before them. But in the cat-and-mouse game that the tobacco industry has been playing with regulators, Zyn may have a better chance of persisting than anything before it."

Déjà vu! Much like with e-vapor, illicit nicotine pouch manufacturers are beginning to compromise the regulated market. Among the youth who currently use e-cigarettes, illicit disposable products are by far the most popular type. We cannot allow similar trends with illicit nicotine pouches. FDA must act — quickly and decisively — to reign in those who flaunt the regulatory process. Nicotine pouches have tremendous harm reduction potential for adults who smoke, and we need to preserve this promising opportunity. #harmreduction #movingbeyondsmoking