Tobacco Giant Lobbies Against Global Push to Ban Vapes

Updated October 16, 2023

What’s the story?

• A leaked email from The Guardian revealed Philip Morris International's (PMI) active efforts to lobby against global regulations on vaping and similar products.
• The tobacco company has accused the World Health Organization's tobacco control convention in Panama next month of being a "prohibitionist attack" on smoke-free products. The WHO's tobacco control convention in Panama next month will address potential regulations, including taxation, for smoke-free products.
• In the email sent on 22 September by Grégoire Verdeaux, the senior vice-president of external affairs at PMI, said: 

“The agenda and meeting documents have been made public for the main part. Unfortunately they reconfirmed every concern we had that this conference may remain as the biggest missed opportunity ever in tobacco control’s history … WHO’s agenda is nothing short of a systematic, methodical, prohibitionist attack on smoke-free products.”

• Verdeaux also noted that the WHO is overlooking the public health opportunity that "smoke-free products, appropriately regulated, can accelerate the decline of smoking rates faster than tobacco control combined."
• In 2022, PMI earned about a third of its revenue, around $10.19 billion  (£8.3bn), from heated tobacco and e-cigarettes. 

What’s the story?

• Countries worldwide are introducing legislation to ban or restrict vapes due to concerns over their popularity among youth, lack of regulatory control, and environmental impact.

Where are the bans?

• Australia has announced a ban on single-use, disposable vapes and will limit nicotine vaping products to prescription use. 
• From July 1, 2023, the Netherlands will ban the production of flavored e-cigarettes and refill e-liquids. 
• In 2022, China, the primary producer of vapes, banned non-tobacco flavored vapes. 
• Other countries like Brazil and Argentina have outrightly banned vaping, including the sale, production, import, and advertising of e-cigarettes.
• In the U.S., the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) banned JUUL vaping and e-cigarette products after finding the company specifically targeted young people with their fruit-flavored pods and marketing tactics.

Arguments for a vape ban

• Marketing and availability of affordable single-use vapes have contributed to their surging popularity among younger individuals. Around 2.5 million adolescents in the U.S. vape, and teen vaping has more than doubled from 2017 to 2019.
• The long-term health effects of e-cigarettes remain unknown, but recent reports have associated frequent vaping with hard-metal lung disease and chemical burns in lung tissue.
• Disposable vapes contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, plastic, and toxic metals, contributing to non-recyclable electronic waste. In the UK, an estimated 1.2 million single-use vapes are thrown away every week.

Arguments against a vape ban

• Vaping is a safer alternative to smoking and could be beneficial for adults seeking to quit cigarettes.
• While vaping is not risk-free, research has estimated it’s around 95% safer to vape nicotine than to smoke tobacco. They say limiting access and appeal to less harmful vaping products while allowing cigarettes to remain on the market fails to protect public health.

Should more countries ban vapes? 

-Laura Woods 

(Photo source: Unsplash)