Vape News In Brief: May 11th, 2018 Edition

Vape News In Brief: May 11th, 2018 Edition *VNIB* is a semi-regular column in which we take a look around the globe, searching for news, science, and the occasional pop culture reference related to vaping and the life of vapers. Today, let's talk about…

 

…a quick refresher on traveling with vape gear. Got a trip coming up and haven't read one of these articles lately? Give it a click, or look for our own update that should be coming soon…

 

Here's an interesting grab bag of notes from this year's global conference on e-cigarettes, held recently in Washington, DC. Notable nuggets include comments from Mitch Zeller, the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products director, acknowledging the government may need to do more to put harm-reduction options in front of current smokers, and a Wake Forest professor of medicine arguing that "In order to drive down smoking levels, you have to come up with a substitute for it."

A new study indicates vapers harbor healthy gut bacteria levels on par with non-smokers. That's compared to smokers, whose bacteria makeup lends itself to higher risk of diseases like colitis and colon cancer. We'll have more on this up shortly.

 

Stoners, realizing that the FDA's deeming regulations threaten their vape pens and dry herb vaporizers just as much as they do for those of us vaping to stay off of cigarettes, may finally be rallying in support of overturning the "predicate date" under which all vapor products currently operate. Given the rate at which marijuana laws are falling across the country, this may turn out an ally with some serious political clout.

 

Here's a friendly reminder from the FDA about how to keep your e-liquids stored safely, especially if you've got kids at home. It's actually not bad advice.

Researchers in Iceland have concluded that vaping is largely responsible for a sharp decline in the prevalence of smoking within the island nation. Just 9% of Icelanders are current smokers, down from 14% just three years ago – meanwhile the number of everyday vapers is up just a single percentage point.

 

Here's a decent op-ed explaining some of the reasons that a complete and total ban on flavored e-liquids would be a bad idea. For your health, stay out of the comments…

In the latest from the FDA, commissioner Scott Gottlieb is considering classifying e-cigs as over-the-counter drugs. No word on what this means for the industry (and that link is paywalled), but we'll be watching this going forward for sure.

 

 

Exploding battery stories have tapered off in recent months, but they're still out there. This one is odd in that it's remarkably specific, naming a Samsung 25R cell (one of the safest batteries on the market) as the culprit, and specifying that the battery was stored not only outside a mod but in a sealed plastic case tucked into a cloth bag. The problem is that the story makes little sense – by keeping the cell in a cloth bag it should have been shielded from excessive sunlight and heat, and storing it in a plastic box should have ensured the positive and negative terminals weren't able to make contact with other metal, which is how most pocketed batteries (contacting keys or loose change) go into thermal runaway and catch fire. This could be a one-in-a-billion fluke, but something's not adding up…

 

Remember that vape summit we touched on last week? It appears support is growing in its wake to shift from demonizing e-cigarettes as just another tobacco product to actively promoting them as a preferred alternative to tobacco. Good, then.

Connecticut is backing off a proposal that would ban online sales of vapor products, instead choosing to focus on targeting sales through vending machines. Fair enough – but are vapor vending machines even really a thing? We can't come up with much of anywhere that still even has cigarette vending machines.

 

We'll leave you with that for now, but there's always more news coming – sometimes faster than we can sift through it. Stay tuned…