Vape News in Brief – July 24th, 2017 Edition

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It's time once more for our weekly check-in on what's making news in the world of vaping. This week, our stories include:

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It may be hard to believe, but next-generation cigalikes like the Juul have been on the market for a whole year now. This guy has spent a year using his Juul attempting to quit, and tells his story, which includes a long-term look at using a cigalike as a primary device. The good: it seems to work pretty well. The bad: extremely high nicotine levels (in excess of 40 mg/ml) make actually quitting cigarettes by scaling down on nicotine consumption difficult.

Smoking may be seriously limiting your dating opportunities. A new survey released by vape supplier Halo finds that nearly two-thirds of non-smokers wouldn't want to date someone who smokes – the ratios are pretty similar for both men and women. Even worse, only about five percent of current smokers say they want to date a fellow smoker.

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Here's an interesting take on the state of vaping regulation in the US, with a unique twist – current smokers tend to prefer tobacco-flavored vapes, while former users mostly move on to fruity or dessert flavors. Since there's a stronger connection with smoking and tobacco flavorings than with smoking and food flavors, maybe it's the tobacco flavors that should be banned. The idea surely has no legs, but it does make a point.

We touch on this in greater detail elsewhere on the blog, but it's worth a reminder that other countries are taking a much more sensible approach to vaping regulation. Britain, for example, suggests as a part of its new tobacco control plan that vaping should be allowed in the workplace in order to differentiate vapor from tobacco smoke.

The battle continues to rage in Australia, where the government is considering lifting a ban on nicotine-containing e-liquids. The latest group to weigh in: the country's psychiatrists, who say their patients with mental health issues are significantly more likely to smoke and could benefit the most from an effective quit aid. Mental health patients in Australia tend to have lifespans 20 years shorter than average citizens, in large part due to tobacco-related disease.

In perhaps the strongest statement from Big Tobacco that cigarettes are on their way out, Philip Morris International is now saying that combustible cigarettes could disappear from the Japanese and South Korean markets in as little as five years. They're banking, of course, on the development of 'heat-not-burn' technology that's not really smoking but not really vaping either. The devices, used to heat PG-soaked cigarettes to the point that actual tobacco leaves are vaporized, still hasn't been approved for use in US markets.

Contradictory to what one might believe at first glance, a team of legal experts suggests that studies showing consumers understand that vaping carries less risk than smoking could be used by anti-vaping advocates to attack e-cig suppliers through legal channels using the oft-debunked 'vaping leads kids to smoke' claim.

Here's a worthwhile piece breaking down the differences between US government studies and others on vaping, and why the Surgeon General's office relies on flawed methodology to reach its conclusions.

We'll call that a wrap for this week, but the world keeps turning, and the news cycle will keep on churning. See you next Sunday!