TOB Magazine

TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

“E-cigarettes are

not undermining

efforts to reduce

youth smoking

and/or youth

tobacco use.

They are actually

contributing to

those efforts.”

by Ron Tully, consultant to National To-

bacco and the Vapor Technology Asso-

ciation. FDA said the status of synthetic

nicotine “will be evaluated on a case-by-

case basis.”

…

Cigar Aficionado

reports that cigar

companies in the U.S. will now face an

added cost of doing business as the FDA’s

rule for newly deemed tobacco products,

including cigars, will require

domestic

manufacturers and importers of ci-

gars to pay user fees

to the agency that

could add up to a combined $65 million

per year for the industry, which will be

divided based on each cigar company’s

share of federal excise taxes it paid.

…Commenting on what he calls a

“

letter-writing campaign

orchestrated

by the American Cancer Society” in

which ACS “volunteers” state that the

Cole-Bishop Amendment would “strip

FDA’s authority to review new products,

ones becoming increasingly popular with

youth, like e-cigarettes, cigars and hoo-

kah,” Prof. Michael Siegel writes that the

amendment does not eliminate FDA’s

authority to review new products be-

fore they enter the market, but “retains

authority to require these ridiculous pre-

market approval applications, which sti-

fle innovation and freeze existing defec-

tive products on the market so that they

cannot make safety improvements.”

…Miami, Florida-based

Global Pre-

mium Cigars

, which owns the 1502 Ci-

gars brand, filed a lawsuit June 1 in the

U.S. District Court in Miami arguing,

among other things, that the rules violate

its First and Fifth Amendment rights

and the rights of its owner, Enrique

Sánchez. The company urged the court

to vacate the deeming rule and issue a

preliminary injunction to prevent FDA

from taking any action pending resolu-

tion of the case on the merits.

…FDA updated an online tool to

make it easier for

consumers to report

problems

with e-vapor, cigarettes, ci-

gars, smokeless tobacco and hookah.

The tool enables users to report injuries,

allergic reactions, poisonings, problems

with product quality, and other issues.

ON OTHER TOBACCO-

RELATED NEWS…

…Swedish Match has started legal

proceedings to challenge the

EU’s ban

on snus

except in Sweden by calling on

the UK High Court of Justice to ask the

European Court of Justice to revisit the

legal grounds of the snus ban.

…Timed with Canada Day on July 1,

Rothmans Benson & Hedges

released

a limited edition of its Canadian Clas-

sics brand that features a white maple

leaf containing the names of Canadian

provinces and territories on its packag-

ing. Its barcode is also stylized with a

partial maple leaf.

…Saying the “government is not a

nanny,” Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo on July

1 vetoed legislation to raise the U.S. ter-

ritory’s

minimum age to buy tobacco

products

from 18 to 21.

…The

minimum age to buy tobacco

products in Chicago

rose from 18 to 21

on July 1, joining about 170 jurisdictions,

including New York City and Boston.

…

Science Daily Magazine

reports that

scientists at the Max Planck Institute

of Molecular Plant Physiology in Ger-

many have engineered tobacco plants to

produce artemisinic acid, the chemical

precursor to the

anti-malarial drug ar-

temisinin

, with the research team saying

that artemisinic acid harvested from to-

bacco grown on a 200-square-kilometer

area would provide enough artemisinin

to meet the entire worldwide demand.

…While noting that the CDC report

has

youth smoking prevalence

at a “his-

toric low” as shown by the “41 percent

drop in youth smoking from 2011 to

2015,” Prof. Michael Siegel argues that

“the 24-fold increase in youth” e-vapor

use “from 1 percent in 2011 to 24 per-

cent in 2015” shows that “vaping is be-

coming increasingly cool among youth

and helping to make smoking ever more

unpopular.” He added, “E-cigarettes are

not undermining efforts to reduce youth

smoking and/or youth tobacco use. They

are actually contributing to those efforts”

such that “vaping is helping to further

de-normalize smoking.”

TBI

TMA REPORT

BY FARRELL DELMAN