Vape News Headlines
E-Cigarettes Are Healthier For the Heart | Quit Lying Campaign Backfires | Philippines Bans and Criminalizes Vaping | California Sues JUUL | Apple Removes Vape Apps | The Kiwi’s Are Coming | Netflix To Investigate THC Deaths and Super Model Caught JUULing!
Vaping FAR Less Harmful Than Smoking For Your Heart
An in depth long term UK study into the health effects of vaping on the heart says e-cigarettes are definitely MUCH safer.
Scientists from University of Dundee spent two years studying the effects and say heart health improved significantly within one month of switching from smoking to vaping, with healthier effects particularly pronounced in female smokers making the switch.
The study – code named VESUVIUS – was commissioned by the British Heart Foundation and is believed to be the most detailed research into this area ever.
Lead scientist, Professor Jacob George, from the university’s Cardiovascular Medicine and Therapeutics department said whilst e-cigarettes were not completely harmless, the findings show:
…for chronic tobacco smokers there were significant improvements in vascular function within a month of switching from a tobacco cigarette to an e-cigarette.
To put into context, each percentage point improvement in vascular function results in a 13% reduction in cardiovascular event rates such as heart attack.
By switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes we found an average percentage point improvement of 1.5 within just one month. This represents a significant improvement in vascular health.
We also found that, in the short term at least, regardless of whether the e-cigarette does or does not contain nicotine, a person will see vascular health improvements compared to smoking a traditional cigarette.
The news came just a day after we published my article: Vaping and Heart Health – Scientists Slam Latest Scare Study and Stories – adding further weight to the pro-vaping argument.
This latest study looked at 114 smokers who were split into 3 groups.
One group continued smoking – another used e-cigs with nicotine whilst the last used e-cigarettes with zero nic.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation said:
Our hearts and blood vessels are the hidden victims of smoking.
Every year in the UK, 20,000 people die from heart and circulatory disease caused by smoking cigarettes – that’s more than 50 people a day, or two deaths every hour.
Stopping smoking is the single best thing you can do for your heart health.
This study suggests that vaping may be less harmful to your blood vessels than smoking cigarettes.
Within just one month of ditching tobacco for electronic cigarettes, people’s blood vessel health had started to recover.
Great news indeed.
American Heart Association Fights Vaping!
There’s a HUGE divide between the UK and US when it comes to vaping and contrast the story above with this one!
The American Heart Association is pumping $20million into a research campaign to effectively ban flavours in the States, whilst lit tobacco products remain on sale.
Yes…really….file this under shit you couldn’t make up.
They’ve titled it: End the Lies Youth Vaping and Nicotine Research Initiative – snappy and not at all biased lol.
AMA says it is of course to protect the kids, and whilst any new research into e-cigarettes and health has to be welcomed, the premise here looks a little skewed or one might say definitely biased.
The priority areas for the research are:
- Nicotine’s impact on adolescent brain development, intelligence and learning;
- The impact of nicotine and other e-cigarette compounds on the cardiovascular system;
- How device types, flavors and other e-cigarette chemicals and byproducts influence addiction;
- How to treat nicotine addiction in youth using behavioral, pharmacological and mobile health technology solutions;
- How effective e-cigarettes and other nicotine delivery devices are for smoking cessation; and
- The impact of regulatory policies on youth e-cigarette use.
Other cash from the campaign will be spent on the Preventing Youth Nicotine Addiction Policy Fund – which I guess is an anti-vape advocacy crusade with key elements listed as:
- Restrict tobacco sales to adults 21 and older;
- Prohibit marketing to kids;
- Include e-cigarettes in comprehensive smoke-free laws; and
- Tax e-cigarettes at the same rates as traditional tobacco.
AHA President Robert A. Harrington, MD, FAHA said:
This research project, one of the largest ever funded by the association, will help us answer critical questions about the health consequences of e-cigarette use and nicotine addiction, particularly in youth.
Dr. Bechara Choucair is the senior vice president and chief community health officer for Kaiser Permanente – a HUGE USA care and health care insurance company – Big Pharma *coughs* – that has joined AMA in the campaign.
She says:
Strong regulation and oversight can help prevent youth access and avoid a lifetime of nicotine addiction that can begin with vaping.
The FDA has let our country down. It has let our kids down
The advertising that is done now is not legal.
They (the FDA) are not doing their job.
We continue to press our partners to do more.
Things that make you go ummmm.
Bertram Scott, chair of the AHA board of directors coined the phrase Big Vaping – whatever the f**k that is lol, adding:
My 14-year-old son and his friends deserve better than to be targeted and manipulated by Big Vape’s insidious marketing tactics that have caused more than 5 million youth nationwide to begin e-cigarette use,.
E-cigarette companies have simply borrowed from Big Tobacco’s marketing playbook in their effort to addict a new generation of nicotine users.
Quit Lying Campaign Hijacked!
On a lighter note the campaign adopted the hashtag #QuitLying – the same name as the anti-vape website.
Ironically, the site is a litany of lies about vaping and the hashtag has of course been hijacked by pro-vaping advocates and vapers across Twitter – and to great effect I might add lol.
How to fight the new Heart Association propaganda campaign:
1. Check out their website https://t.co/762eZMhzbu
2. Find all the lies you can
3. Screencap or quote them
4. Respond on Twitter with the truth, and use their hashtag #QuitLying
— Jim McDonald (@whycherrywhy) November 15, 2019
You know what to do 😉
Philippines Bans and Criminalizes Vaping
Vaping is now banned in the Philippines and vapers will be sent to jail under tough new laws that came into effect this week.
President Rodrigo Duterte – a former heavy smoker who’s now a vehement anti smoking campaigner – made the announcement following the death of a 16-year-old girl.
She died from what is believed to be the country’s first case of EVALI [e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury].
This is the term given to the spate of respiratory illnesses and deaths associated with users’ vaping on contaminated THC cartridges.
Earlier this month politicians had warned of the growing risk of EVALI unless the government urgently regulated e-cigarettes.
Following the death, Duterte, known for tough and at times brutal stances, said the ban would be immediate and urged law enforcement to arrest vapers on sight:
This vaping, it contains nicotine and other chemicals that we do not know.
It has not passed the FDA … and at this time, I said ‘smoking is dangerous’ so vaping is also dangerous and I am banning it.
Better stop it because I will order your arrest if you do it in a room.
I am now ordering law enforcement agencies to arrest anybody vaping in public.
That is like smoking.
At the moment there’s about 1million vapers in the Philippines and with imports also banned – this is nothing short of a financial and public health disaster.
Vape advocate Dr. Lorenzo Mata from the group Quit For Good urged the president to rethink his ban order:
We would respectfully appeal to the President to reconsider his decision because it can have dire consequences in the health and economy of the nation.
We’re talking here of 16.3 million Filipino smokers statistically unable to quit. Are we just going to say to these people it’s either quit cold turkey or you die?” he said,
This is a free country.
They have a right to choose which one they would like to have as a product to at least take them away from the harmful effect of tobacco cigarette.
It seems no country is ‘free’ when it comes to e-cigarettes…
Crazy times we live in.
JUUL Sued By California
Vape giant JUUL is already facing a barrage of lawsuits and now has one from the State of California.
The main jist of the suit is JUUL ‘markets its products to teens’ and ‘fails to give warnings of potential health risks’.
General Xavier Becerra, California’s Attorney General, said:
We’ve worked too hard, committed our hard-earned money for too long combatting harmful tobacco use to stand idly by as we now lose Californians to vaping and nicotine addiction.
JUUL adopted the tobacco industry’s infamous playbook, employing advertisements that had no regard for public health and searching out vulnerable targets.
Today we take legal action against the deceptive practices that JUUL and the e-cigarette industry employ to lure our kids into their vaping web.
We will hold JUUL and any other company that fuels a public health crisis accountable.
The law suit has 5 key points that JUUL will need to address in court:
- Failing to include required warnings about exposure to chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
- Delivering tobacco products directly to underage persons.
- Delivering tobacco products directly to consumers without properly verifying their age.
- Violating the privacy rights of minors by sending marketing material to the email addresses of underage individuals who failed age verification on JUUL’s website.
- Creating a public health epidemic, particularly among young people, with an addictive and harmful product. This epidemic has had serious negative effects on public schools across the state.
A spokesman for JUUL tripped out the party line saying the company would be:
…focused on resetting the vapor category in the U.S. and earning the trust of society by working cooperatively with with attorneys general, regulators, public health officials, and other stakeholders to combat underage use and convert adult smokers from combustible cigarettes.
Meanwhile close to half a million Californians die of lit tobacco related diseases in the state – over 480,000 in 2018.
Whatever you think of JUUL, one has to wonder how come Big Tobacco has got away Scot free for decades.
Bad Apple Removes Vape Apps
Apple has removed all vape related apps from its devices.
They will mostly still work for users already using them and can be transferred to new devices.
A total of 181 apps have been removed with the tech company saying it was doing it – you guessed it – to protect the kids.
An Apple spokesman said:
Recently, experts ranging from the CDC to the American Heart Association have attributed a variety of lung injuries and fatalities to e-cigarette and vaping products, going so far as to call the spread of these devices a public health crisis and a youth epidemic.
We agree, and we’ve updated our App Store review guidelines to reflect that apps encouraging or facilitating the use of these products are not permitted.
As of today, these apps are no longer available to download.
It’s no great loss to Apple – according to the latest stats, vape apps accounted for just 0.00010% of all apps on the platform.
Even so, it feels a little punitive and dare I say silly to me…age restriction…*coughs*
The Kiwi’s Are Coming!
One of New Zealand’s largest vape manufacturers has hit the UK vaping shores.
Vapo makes vape kits and e-liquids and reckon the UK market is ripe for their wares, especially the Vapo Haize pod kit currently available here.
Having taken a quick look at the company’s products they seem to focus on pod and starter kits and look very SMOK like.
Michael Mason is Vapo’s Europe sales manager and reckons the UK will love the devices and juice:
We’re set to sign with some of the UK’s best well-known vape retailers.
Already, we’re in the Phoenix Vapers’ network of stores, with Vapo products also available in Ziggicig throughout Northern Ireland in the coming weeks.
Then, of course, we’re online with our own Vapo UK site, the massive UK Ecig Store, and we’re going live with the extensive Vape Club UK soon.
Welcome to the country however you’ll need to be good, we’re a discerning lot here 😉
I think I did well not mentioning the Rugby World Cup semi-final too…
Oops!
Nexflix Documentary Will Investigate THC Deaths
Streaming TV network Netflix says it will be running a documentary looking at the recent out break of illnesses and deaths in America linked to contaminated THC cartridges.
The programme will be part of a new series called Broken, that looks at issues within four of America’s major businesses: vaping, plastic, counterfeit beauty products, and pre-made furniture.
The vaping episode concentrates on yeah you guessed it – JUUL and the apparent teen vape epidemic in the states.
The show launches on November 27th – it’s as yet not clear if that’s worldwide or just the US.
Should be interesting…
and finally…Super Model Slammed For Vaping
Yeah I know – any excuse for me to pop up a photo of a beautiful woman…
However in this case, social media got all in a tizz after 18-year-old French model Thylane Blondeau took a selfie holding a JUUL.
Nope, they weren’t angry at her choice of device [they should have been lol]…
It was the very fact she was a vaper.
Now given the French have always been linked to smoking – those days are gone BTW – I think the young lady is setting a great example.
Hopefully any of her smoking fans – as in smokers not smoking hot – will take heed and make the switch.
Ms Blondeau was originally known as the most beautiful little girl in the world – hence her fame.
Anyway – bit of a none celeb story…
But like I said any excuse to pop up a vape related photo that isn’t a close-up of a mesh coil or drip tip…
BTW and in the interests of political correctness – I’m happy to pop up the odd photo of a celebrity hunk should the ladies – and some men – request it…
Failing that I’m sure the male reviewers here will only be too willing to go bare chested and vapey…
Probably…
More vaping news on Sunday – sorry about missing last week’s – you really don’t want to know why 😉
