Dr. Marina Murphy, Scientific Adviser to the UKVIA, in response to research on the hazardous health risks from flavoured vapes. May 2024   Chemicals in vapes could be highly toxic when heated, research finds | Vaping | The Guardian This is a computer-based modelling exercise using Artificial Intelligence. Only this month, an article in the highly prestigious journal Nature (Artificial Intelligence and Illusions of Understanding in Scientific Research, Nature 627, 49-58 (2024), warned against the ‘illusions of understanding’ created when researchers depend on AI to do more, while understa ..read more

The UK Vaping Industry Association has issued a series of letters to MPs to raise concerns over ‘misleading, incomplete, unsubstantiated, or incorrect’ information which was presented to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee. The letter reads:   “On behalf of the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), the UK’s largest vaping industry association, we are writing to express our grave concerns at the quality and accuracy of some of the oral evidence presented to what turned out to be a mainly one-sided Committee stage of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. “In order for the Committee to effec ..read more

UKVIA Director General John Dunne was given a rare opportunity to interview Mr. Everest, the CEO of ICCPP Group (VOOPOO), for a wide-ranging discussion about the vape industry during his recent visit to China. The country has enjoyed more than a decade of growth in the sector, having obtained more than 70% of the world’s atomization-related patents and more than 90% of the world’s production capacity. According to customs statistics, China’s total exports of e-cigarette products reached US$11 billion in 2023, with exports increasing by 12.5% year-on-year. However, data disclosed in the annual ..read more

April 2024 The UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) has today expressed its shock and dismay at the Tobacco and Vape Bill Committee’s decision not to invite the vaping industry or vapers to give evidence, calling it “fundamentally undemocratic.” Last week, the political website Guido Fawkes reported its surprise at seeing that the 16-member committee contained no MPs who voted against it. The make-up of the Bill’s committee has also drawn criticism from industry commentators, who have labelled it “ludicrously one-sided”. John Dunne, Director General of the UKVIA, said: “Over the last few mon ..read more

April 2024 The government must urgently get a grip on its vape policy after it emerged that it has failed to carry out yet another vital risk assessment into the very real potential dangers posed by new regulations. It is now abundantly clear that the government is walking blindly into an environmental catastrophe that will be a lot worse post disposables ban because of its lack of due diligence on this matter. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is leading on implementing the ban on disposable vapes which will come into force in April next year and cites environment ..read more

April 2024 Firstly it should go without saying that children should not be vaping. It is illegal to sell vapes to children, but as we know, lack of government funding for Trading Standards has made policing the law difficult. The statistics reported in the media from this Freedom of Information request, refer to 11 under-four-year-olds being admitted to hospital. While there is no reference to what harm, if any, was caused and how such young children came to be in possession of a vape, such occurrences should not be happening. We would urge vapers to ensure they keep their devices away from ch ..read more

April 2024 The UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) has welcomed a vaping report by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). It has applauded the medical body’s evidence-based balanced view on the need to deal with key challenges such as youth vaping and the environmental impact of the category, without undermining the role that e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit their habits and ensuring former smokers turned vapers don’t relapse. On the back of the report, E-cigarettes and Harm Reduction: An Evidence Review, the trade body urged government to take note of the RCP’s recommendatio ..read more

April 2024 The Government, by its own admission, have not quantified the health impacts of fewer people using vapes to quit smoking, making their approach to vape restrictions highly irresponsible.  For every adult vaper who returns to smoking because of Government restrictions, there is a chance of another death from smoking, reversing the trend away from smoking for which significant credit goes to vaping. It is currently illegal to sell vapes to children. Rather than introducing restrictions that will undermine the public health benefits of vaping, we need to focus on (and properly enf ..read more

April 4, 2024 Yesterday Government Minister, Andrea Leadsom was asked by Adam Afriyie MP whether she had done a risk assessment of vapers returning to smoking in the event of a disposable vape ban. Given that smoking represents a death sentence to around half who are unable to quit, it is clearly imperative that restricting access to the most effective quitting tool is not taken lightly. However, despite the fact that nearly a third of adult vapers use disposables (ASH, 2023), the Government’s impact assessment concluded that the number who might return to vaping was ‘difficult to quantify’ an ..read more

April 2024 Evapo, a leading smoking cessation and specialist vaping company, has conducted a survey involving 1,134 participants and found that nearly two thirds of ex-smokers will return to tobacco if the Government restrict vape flavours. The restrictions, proposed earlier this year, are designed to deter children from vaping, but as the research shows, any restrictions on vape flavours could have major unintended consequences and would likely add to the 250 deaths from smoking recorded every day in the UK. The Government’s view is that fruit and dessert flavours may inadvertently attract ch ..read more