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14
TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
MARCH/APRIL 2016
NEWS & TRENDS
MARCH/APRIL 2016
Highlights
Steve Wegert joins
Republic Tobacco
Steve Wegert has joined Republic Tobacco LP in the role
of key account manager. With more than three decades
of tobacco-industry experience, Wegert was previously a
national chain account manager at cigar maker Common-
wealth-Altadis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Glenview, Illinois-based Republic Tobacco is one of the
nation’s largest wholesale distributors of roll-your-own and
pipe tobacco and roll your own accessories, including such
brands as JOB, TOP, Gambler, Drum, Largo and TubeCut.
On January 28, President Obama
signed the Child Nicotine Poisoning
Prevention Act of 2015, legislation
that “requires the packaging of liquid
nicotine containers for use in electron-
ic cigarettes to be subject to existing
child poisoning prevention packaging
standards.” The bill will take affect 180
days after being signed into law.
“Requiring childproof caps on these
bottles is just common sense,” says
Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), who
introduced the bill (SB 142), pointing
to rising concern about nicotine and
poisoning exposure incidents. Such
incidents prompted about 2,300 cases
of poison exposure in young children
in 2014, according to the American
Association of Poison Control Centers.
The new legislation mandates that
all products containing liquid nico-
tine have childproof packaging. Va-
por industry associations, such as the
Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Asso-
ciation (SFATA), also supported the
legislation, noting that a national stan-
dard would be preferable to a variety
of state childproof packaging laws.
“It’s common sense,” says Cynthia
Cabrera, SFATA president. “These are
adult products and should be treated
like adult products.”
The effort will only increase the cost
of a bottle cap for manufacturers by
six to 12 cents, adds Greg Conley,
president of the American Vaping As-
sociation (AVA). He also says that the
cost to producers is “minimal.”
As with prescription drugs and
some over-the-counter (OTC) prod-
ucts, U.S. Consumer Product Safety
Commission (CPSC) standards and
testing procedures for special packag-
ing will apply.
The law’s mandate applies to “liq-
uid nicotine containers,” which are
defined as packaging (1) from which
nicotine in a solution or other form is
accessible through normal and fore-
seeable use by a consumer and that
is used to hold soluble nicotine in any
concentration; and (2) that exclude a
sealed, pre-filled, and disposable con-
tainer of nicotine in a solution or other
form in which such container is insert-
ed directly into an electronic cigarette,
electronic nicotine delivery system, or
other similar product, if the nicotine in
the container is inaccessible through
customary or reasonably foreseeable
handling or use, including reasonably
foreseeable ingestion or other contact
by children.
The requirements would not apply
to “closed-system” e-cigarettes where
the e-liquid is not intended to come
into contact with or be handled by the
consumer, nor to zero-nicotine e-liq-
uid, according to a report by
The Na-
tional Law Review.
The bill does not
preclude FDA from imposing its own
packaging requirements.
Childproof Caps on E-Liquid Now Law
Proposed packaging standards act is now law.