Editor’s Note: A tax or regulation that puts a business out of business is a ban.
From: Washington City Paper
Posted by Morgan Baskin and Sarah Anne Hughes
But Robinson and other vape shop owners in D.C. say an all-but-approved tax increase on their products will force them out of business. Members of the D.C. Council, on the other hand, say the matter is a public health issue, plain and simple.
“They’re going to put us out of business,” Robinson says, “and they don’t care.”
From: News Medical
Source: University of Southern California
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“We weren’t surprised that the web is being used to circumvent tobacco regulations,” said Jon-Patrick Allem, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow with the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) and corresponding author on the study. “Most surprising was the constant rate of interest in the illegal products (the cigarettes) versus the legal products (cigars).”
The study is among the first to examine the reactions of consumers and the tobacco industry to flavored cigarette bans, which are also in force in the European Union and other countries.
From: The Hill
By Lydia Wheeler
The House Appropriations Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Subcommittee approved a $20.65 billion agriculture appropriations bill Thursday that would make it harder for the Food and Drug Administration to remove electronic cigarettes on the market now from store shelves.
If enacted, the bill would keep the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products from forcing e-cigarettes already on the market to go through a lengthy and potentially costly Premarket Tobacco Review application process under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The FDA would still be allowed to regulate how the products are made, packaged and sold.
From: FDA Voice
By: Cathy L. Backinger, Ph.D., M.P.H. and Cindy Miner, Ph.D.
How dramatic is the increase in e-cigarette use? Why are flavored little cigars and cigarillos increasingly popular among ethnic minorities? What would happen if we reduced the amount of nicotine in cigarettes so that they were no longer addictive?
These are just some of the questions that FDA-funded scientists are answering. Often research is focused on innovation and discovery to expand the body of scientific knowledge. Regulatory science is different—and exciting in its own way. How often do scientists get to see their research findings used to improve people’s lives? Tobacco regulatory scientists are doing just that.
Editor’s Note: The complete GAO report GAO-15-491R is available here. Below is an excerpt.
From: GAO
Results in Brief
E-cigarette import volume and tariff revenue are unknown, because the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTS)—which is used to classify U.S. imports and exports for tariff and other purposes—does not contain statistical reporting numbers specific to e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes, e-cigarette parts, and e-cigarette liquid are imported under HTS statistical reporting numbers for residual or basket categories that cover a range of goods, such as special effects strobe lights, seaweed extracts, and hand sanitizer. As a result, although CBP collects data on import volume and tariff revenue for the basket categories that include e-cigarettes, parts, and liquid, CBP officials said that they are unable to identify the volume of and tariff revenue from e-cigarette imports within these categories.
From: American Enterprise Institute
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The critics’ anxieties are not without merit, but they need to be placed in the context of the good that e-cigarettes do by sparing nicotine-dependent individuals from carcinogenic smoke. Precautionists are unmoved by the harm that comes to smokers who have failed to quit but who cannot take advantage of less dangerous ways of using nicotine. Accordingly, this camp seeks heavy regulatory oversight by the FDA and bans on television advertising and on vaping in public.