Flavour spectrum of the Puff family of disposable e-cigarettes

BackgroundIn January 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration prohibited the sale of flavours (except for menthol and tobacco) in prefilled pod devices such as JUUL to decrease youth vaping. Excluded from the prohibition were disposable devices.ObjectivesTo determine the scope and scale of flavours marketed by Puff Bar, a leading disposable brand, and related products.MethodsDisposable e-cigarette flavours were identified via online searches encompassing vendor websites, wholesale distributors, manufacturers (eg, made-in-china.com), and social media channel, Instagram, between June and August 2020.ResultsThe ‘Puff’ brand name and iconic cloud logo appear on a variety of products of differing sizes and nicotine e-liquid volumes. Among Puff Bar and its copycats (Puff-a-Likes), 139 flavours were identified. Fruit flavours predominated comprising 82.2% of the flavour varieties (fruit 50%, fruit and menthol/mint 23.6%, and fruity drinks 8.6%). A prevalent new flavour category which combines fruit with menthol/mint (Ice) was offered in 33 varieties such as Lychee Ice, Lush Ice and Banana Ice. Disposable e-cigarette brands are undertaking measures to escape tobacco regulation (eg, non-tobacco-sourced nicotine) and flavour limitations via post-market flavour additions to unflavoured nicotine e-liquid.ConclusionsThe proliferation of flavoured disposable e-cigarette products, many of which are designed to emulate popular pod devices, illustrates that narrowly limited flavour regulations covering only a single category are destined to fail. To be effective in youth protection, flavour regulations need to apply to all recreational nicotine-containing products and need to include measures to counter post-market flavour addition.

Study on Tobacco Regulation and Building Legal Mechanism of Security Guarantee for SCO Energy Club

Objectives: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) region has complementary advantages in energy and resources and closely related interests in geopolitical energy security. Common interests and close cooperation led to the creation of energy cooperation arrangements among the SCO countries. Particularly, owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, the states progressively incline to focus more on issues concerning tobacco control to promote sustainable environmental development. The establishment and improvement of the SCO energy club mechanism is an important way of SCO energy cooperation. This paper adopts the method of combining history with normative analysis, by analyzing the current of the SCO Energy Club running mechanism, proposes that the position and development target of the SCO Energy Club should be clear, the coordination of multilateral and bilateral and unilateral measures of energy function remains to be further play, contribution to the energy trade and investment disputes should be timely strengthen, then the SCO Energy Club could play a positive role in promoting the implementation of cross-border energy cooperation measures within the region. The paper proposes to use legal mechanism to construct SCO Energy Club so as to make it play the role of security guarantee mechanism more fully.

The Reasons for the Withdrawal of China’s Tobacco Regulatory Papers by the International Journals and Its Regulation by the Law and Administration

Objectives: The analysis of reasons for the China’s tobacco regulatory withdrawal by the international journals and promotion of the tobacco regulation in China is the first aim. Methods: questionnaires investigations method and individual method by the famous case of journal of Nature and recent withdrawal of China’s tobacco regulatory paper are utilized in this paper. eg., Han Chunyu publishes paper in journal of Nature, and it provides the method of editing genome to cure some disease by the tobacco, eg., lung cancer and so on. Results: To analyze the reasons for the withdrawal of the China’s tobacco regulatory paper, the reasons for this matter are multivariate by the different aspects. In general, the reasons are as follows by law aspects: eg., the writer’s absence of legal opinion of law, including the absence of the obligation and rights of publishing contract, the university and researching body to take the index of paper to publish high level papers in the international society as the import task and in some degree to create paper’s the withdrawal, China’s traditional culture and absence of the modern accurate science training and the accurate modern administration system in China’s society. The questionnaires investigations conclusion is to certify that the above reasons for the paper withdrawal are main, and to resolve it by the law and administration. Conclusion: The government and university shall take measures to separate the academic dispute from the paper’s withdrawal and to establish the academic dispute resolution system, to cancel the index mask for the university and to punish the writer of the withdrawal paper, to establish the modern university system to promote the social and economic development and to establish modern accurate administration to avoid the paper’s withdrawal by the international journals.

IQOS Marketing in the US: The Need to Study the Impact of FDA Modified Exposure Authorization, Marketing Distribution Channels, and Potential Targeting of Consumers

IQOS, the leading heated tobacco product globally, recently received ‘reduced exposure’ authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. Independent research focusing on IQOS marketing and potential impact on consumers’ perceptions and behavior, and ultimately public health, is critical. The literature to date has underscored several concerns. First, Philip Morris’s (PM’s) marketing distribution requires scrutiny, particularly given its innovative promotional strategies. For example, IQOS is distributed via unique points-of-sale (POS; e.g., specialty and pop-up stores, “corners” in convenience stores) and uses various other opportunities (e.g., social media, sponsored events, direct-to-consumer). Second, although PM claims that IQOS’ target market is current combustible tobacco users and not young people, the literature indicates that in some populations, IQOS use is equally prominent among smokers and nonsmokers, and that specific subgroups (e.g., young adults, women) are targeted. Third, the impact of IQOS’ use of ad content promoting IQOS health benefits must be studied (e.g., how consumers interpret modified exposure messages). In conclusion, surveillance of IQOS marketing, particularly following reduced exposure authorization, is critical for obtaining valuable data to estimate population impact, particularly among population subgroups (e.g., young adults), and inform future tobacco regulation. These considerations have implications beyond IQOS—to other products and companies.

The Role of the Indonesian Tobacco Farmers Association in Mobilizing Resistance to Tobacco Regulation in Temanggung Regency

This research focuses on the mobilization of the role carried out by the Indonesian Tobacco Farmers Association (APTI) in an effort to improve the welfare of tobacco farmers in Temanggung Regency by using social movement theory with qualitative descriptive methods where primary data is obtained in direct interviews with respondents and sources who have valid and relevant information to find out the actual problems experienced by tobacco farmers especially in Regency Temanggung. Then the authors use secondary data to strengthen the validity of the data obtained by the researcher. The results of this study illustrate that tobacco control regulations are not entirely for public health but are used as a pretext in the nicotine market share, so far APTI has carried out various ways and strategies so that national-scale regulations can be changed or removed and the implementation of PP 109 in 2012 will not be applied in Temanggung. In addition to tobacco control regulations there are also classes of tobacco farmers in Temanggung so as to give birth to local capitalization and make the tobacco trade chain longer.

Online popularity of JUUL and Puff Bars in the USA: 2019–2020

BackgroundThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a flavour ban on cartridge-based e-cigarettes in January 2020. It is unclear whether e-cigarette users will switch to disposable vaping products with a variety of kids-appealing flavours available.MethodsWe performed piece-wise regression and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) algorithms to compare the relative search volume (RSV) of JUUL and Puff Bar (a disposable vaping product) using the 1-year Google Trends data from 24 February 2019 to 20 February 2020, separated by three events that may have spurred changes in RSV for each product.ResultsThe RSV for JUUL was relatively stable before Trump Administration announced plans to ban flavoured e-cigarettes. After that, the RSV for JUUL dropped sharply (rate of change=−8.8 per week) from 11 September 2019 to 17 October 2019 when JUUL Labs announced to halt online sales of some flavoured products, and the RSV resumed the decreasing trend after FDA announced enforcement policy of cartridge-based e-cigarettes on 2 January 2020. In comparison, the RSV for Puff Bar started to increase after 11 September 2019 with a low rate of change (0.6) until 17 October 2019. After that, the increase in RSV for Puff Bar accelerated. The RSV of puff bars surpassed that of JUUL during the week of 2 February 2020.ConclusionThe popularity of Puff Bar on Google Search suggests that users may replace cartridge-based vaping products with disposable e-cigarettes in the circumvention of the partial flavour ban. Continuous surveillance and further assessment are needed to prevent potential loopholes in tobacco regulation.