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More RegRant! Deep Book material! Released: October 8, 2019 Produced by: Brent Stafford

***Guest: Jacob Grier author of the just-published book, The Rediscovery of Tobacco: Smoking, Vaping, and the Creative Destruction of the Cigarette*** RegWatch is excited to have Jacob Grier join us for an in-depth conversation about the war on vaping. Grier writes about tobacco, public policy, and other vices; viewers are certain to have read his work in Slate, Reason, The Atlantic, Washington Po...

Hysteria over vaping-related lung illness appeared out of nowhere and in a flash consumed the entire North American vaping industry. It began on August 16 with a short media statement issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and by September 11, it had metastasized into a Presidential vaping ban. Canada was not immune. The following week Dr. Christopher Mackie, medical officer for the Middl...

The war on vaping escalates with each passing day. On Tuesday the war widened when Massachusetts officially became the first U.S. state to ban the sale of all electronic cigarettes, going further than other states, that have up until now, only restricted flavored vaping products. The ban is effective immediately and will run until January 25. Also, this week, the assault on vaping set its sights o...

It was shocking news to learn just one week ago of the first reported case of illness linked to vaping products in Canada. In a gripping news conference, which we covered here on RegWatch, officials from the Middlesex-London Health Unit in Ontario released details, albeit limited of an Ontario teenager who was put on life-support after using a vaping device. Dr. Chris Mackie, the region’s medical...

***Special Guest: Dimitris Agrafiotis @VapinGreek*** It’s been four weeks since news of vaping-related illnesses first made international headlines and during this short time the prospects for the future of nicotine vaping, as a tool for harm reduction, have been shattered. As a mountain of misinformation promulgated by public health agencies and anti-vaping pressure groups stoked a feverish mains...

Without question, the system is failing. The very people and institutions we rely upon to provide accurate information about health-related matters are captured by rhetoric and slavishly denying science. If the system is failing, is it time for the people to crash it? Today RegWatch is doing a series of crash tests on our pesky live stream gear. While doing so we provide a blow-by-blow of Canada’s...

Not too long ago the question on everyone’s mind was: Could Trump save vaping? Today the question is: How to save vaping from Trump? In this upcoming episode of RegWatch Live Schell Hammel, national vaping advocate and Texas retail chain owner, tackles the Trump administration’s misguided plan to ban flavored vaping products. While providing frank Texas advice to the President, and to those in vap...

In an extraordinarily prescient interview with RegWatch mid-summer Martin Dockrell, the head of tobacco issues at Public Health England feared if vaping products are pulled off the U.S. market “a whole bunch of smokers who might otherwise have quit never will. And they'll die and that will be a tragedy.” In this full-length edition of our exclusive interview, hear Dockrell outline his concerns ove...

President Trump said the U.S. plans to pull most vaping products from the market, citing growing concerns about health hazards and rising use by teenagers of the trendy alternative to traditional cigarettes. Michelle Minton, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute joins RegWatch to discuss Trump’s War on Vaping and the progressive underpinnings of the battle to ban the vape. Produced...

*** with Dr. Michael Siegel *** The past few weeks have been horrific for the approximately 400 victims (and families) poisoned by illicit THC-vaping products—some fatally. It’s a real tragedy and certainly a public health emergency. But these are not the only victims; tens of millions of people who rely on traditional nicotine-vaping products as a lifeline to quit smoking (or to stay quit) now fi...

Weeks prior to the first cases of vaping-related lung illness hitting the news, RegWatch conducted an exclusive interview with Martin Dockrell the Tobacco Programme Lead at Public Health England. PHE is the UK’s top health protection agency and employs 5,000 staff who are mostly scientists, researchers, and public health professionals. Public Health England is a beacon of sound science and for the...

It’s a logical conclusion, following a year of incessant misinformation and media hype over the so-called epidemic of teen vaping and the recent crisis over vaping-related lung disease—it seems the epidemic rhetoric has finally metastasized into the desired result: an out-right-ban on vaping products. On Wednesday Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order banning the sale of f...

Progressives’ war on vaping escalated to a new and dangerous phase in the past few weeks, going well beyond mere misinformation and hysterical rhetoric. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, nearly 100 people, mostly teens, have been hospitalized with severe lung damaged; apparently the result of vaping. The allegations have made national news, yet medical officials say they do not kn...

If your house is on fire, is it worth it to worry, about the fire-resistance rating of your living room sofa set? It might be, depending on which room the fire is burning and whether your escape route runs past the living room couch. This type of calculation now besets both the U.S. and Canadian vaping industries. In this episode of RegWatch hear how an alliance of vaping associations from north a...

It’s mostly a cliché to say time is a precious commodity: of course, it is. We all live under the specter of imminent demise. But cruel is life when someone or something intervenes and pronounces an abrupt end, thus stealing away time so vital to life and business. In this episode of RegWatch we present a practical guide to FDA’s onerous Premarket Tobacco Application process which—thanks to a rece...

Mountains of paperwork, clinical trials, endless frustration and most of all, heartbreak. This describes the onerous Premarket Tobacco Application process (or PMTA) now thrust upon the vaping industry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: it could destroy vaping as we know it. In this RegWatch preview regulatory lawyer and FDA compliance expert, Deanna Clark-Esposito shares insight into the PM...

Where’s the evidence? It’s a simple question asked by vapers (in rare unanimity,) while suffocating under an endless torrent of inflated and distorted harms promulgated to malign vaping. At times the charges hurled from academia, public health and non-profit pressure groups appear to almost border on malevolence. And for many vapers, the strain is becoming too much the bear. In this special editio...

It took many months before public health researchers, or members of the public, could see the data used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the United States Surgeon General to raise alarm over the so-called epidemic of teen vaping. In this RegWatch preview Dr. Raymond Niaura, Interim Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NYU College of...

U.S. e-liquid manufacturers may have to pull millions of bottles of e-juice off of vape stores shelves following a surprise mandate, issued via tweet, by a recently appointed Republican Commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission earlier this year. The unexpected regulation covers e-liquids containing nicotine that are bottled without special “flow restricted” packaging—both plastic and...

When University of Waterloo professor David Hammond first shared preliminary results of his teen vaping and smoking study with Health Canada and the media in late 2018, he did so with the “hope” that his findings were just a “blip”; a sentiment he expressed at the time, and again in June 2019 when the study was finally published in the British Medical Journal. What Professor Hammond and those he s...

It’s a huge win for the vaping industry. A Superior Court judge invalidates key provisions of Quebec's Tobacco Control Act, which promulgated harsh new regulations and fines, seemingly intended to eviscerate the vaping industry. The ruling comes after a three-year legal challenge spearheaded by the Canadian Vaping Association, which argued the vaping restrictions infringe on the “right to security...

Since November 2018, when University of Waterloo Professor David Hammond first shared results of his new youth vaping study with Health Canada and the mainstream media, only one interpretation of the data has been made available to the public. And that interpretation is one of high alarm. In February and April of 2019, Health Canada launched two separate public consultations seeking input on poten...

It’s quite possibly the worst kept secret within the tight-knit ranks of tobacco-control, the research study conducted by Dr. David Hammond of the University of Waterloo, which purports to show a substantial increase in youth vaping in both Canada and the United States. Numerous stakeholders including regulators, academics, tobacco-control activists and even the media have either seen the report o...

***RegWatch Exclusive Interview (Part 2)*** Regulatory intervention on flavours in vaping products (i.e. a flavour ban) is ‘not’ off the table says James Van Loon, Director General of the Tobacco Control Directorate at Health Canada. The federal regulator is considering every measure to stem the tide of youth vaping and is calling on parents, educators, youth and public stakeholders to weigh in on...