Vapor Digest #3 The Trade Publication For The Vapor Products Industry
Issue link: http://vapordigest.epubxp.com/i/443030
The Grandfather Date And The FDA For those following the FDA and the deeming regulations, one major sticking point has been their current plan to use February 15, 2007 as the grandfather date for newly deemed tobacco products. This severely limited the pool of products that would have been allowed to go forward without FDA approval, basi- cally eliminating nearly seven years of innovation. In a bit of good news, at the end of November, Rep John Boehner (House Speaker), Rep. Kevin McCa- rthy (House Majority Leader), and Rep. Fred Upton (Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee) sent a letter to the Secretary Of The Department Of Health And Human Services, Sylvia Burwell with the intent of urging the FDA to consider changing the "grandfather date" from Feb 2007 to April 25, 2014. This would allow almost seven years of products to be grandfathered into the regulations and greatly help our industry. Vapor Digest urges our readers to reach out to their representatives and support the changing of this date. Mad Mikes Goes 100% Dia- cetyl Free Mad Mike's Premium e-Liquid has taken the bold step of testing all of their flavors for the controversial flavoring component diacetyl and acetyl propionyl. "We are proud to say that our liquid is 100% free of both diacetyl and acetyl propionyl free," says Mad Mike himself. "We had one flavor that needed to be reformulated, and we worked hard to replicate the flavor and remain at zero for both diacetyl and acetyl propionyl." Vapor Digest applauds Mad Mike's for taking this initiative, and as a result has awarded them Vapor Digest's Elite e-Liquid Manufacturer designation. Mad Vapes Expands In addition to launching four new lines in 2014 (Freedom, Big City, Wild West and Discreet) and expanding their lab to a massive 10,000 square feet, Mad Vapes is also expanding their successful licensing program that has seen numerous "Mad Vapes" brick and mortar stores pop up around the East Coast and South. "We have licensed stores in Massa- chusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Texas. We are looking to expand all our brands and licensed stores into the West coast as part of a major initiative in 2014," said Mike Schriefer, Director of Marketing for Mad Vapes. Another New Study Shows The Benefits Of Vaping The Cochrane Collaboration, a medical research group comprised of researchers from the UK and New Zealand, have recently completed a study that showed that e-Cigs can help smokers quit or reduce smok- ing by as much as 50%. Author Jamie Hartmann-Boyce said , " Electronic cigarettes have become popular with smokers who want to reduce the risk of smoking. None of the studies in this review found that smokers who used electronic cigarettes short- term (two years or less) had an increased health risk compared to smo- kers who did not use electronic cigarettes. We did not find any evidence from obse- rvational studies that people who used electronic cigarettes at the same time as using regular cigarettes were less likely to quit smoking. Findings suggest electronic cigarettes with nicotine help people stop or reduce smoking when compared to electronic cigarettes without nicotine, but more studies are needed." Vuse Continues To Lead e-Cig C-Store Sales NJOY Leads In Total Vapor Products When you factor in disposables, rechargeable and refillables, according to IRI Data, NJOY has once again moved into the lead category in vapor product sales in Vape shops. Driven by aggressive couponing that has led to a lower average price, Vuse continues to dominate e-Cig sales at convenience stores. After Reynolds, the category leaders were Blu, Logic, Altria and NJOY. This appears to be positive news for the category that had slowed down considerably in the early summer of this year. Walgreens – The Next e-Cig Battleground At Vapor Digest, we hear things that sometimes we can't report on directly but we can give you a little bit of how we see things shaking out in 2015. One of the big things that we keep hearing is that Walgreens is going to be the battleground for vape products in 2015, especially with CVS sitting this one out. Wal- greens has over 8200 stores in all fifty states and is perfectly poised to make or break the dreams of many e-Cig manufactures looking to get into the mass market next year. Shop Global Vapor Mark Evans Jr., co-founder of the global vapor products industry con - ference World Vapor Expo has announced a unique partnership with Balluun to create a digital mar- 45 VAPOR DIGEST NEWSWIRE