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US: Altria nears deal to buy e-cigarette maker Njoy for at least $2.75bn
Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes in the US, is nearing a deal to buy e-cigarette company Njoy for at least $2.75bn, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal would give Altria a second bet on the vape market, five years after it spent $12.8bn to buy 35% of Juul, the US market leader in e-cigarettes at the time. Altria has since cut its valuation of that investment to just $250mn after Juul suffered a series of regulatory and legal blows.
Last year, Njoy received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to continue selling its tobacco-flavoured Ace pod-based vape brand and its Njoy Daily disposable vape product, as part of the regulator’s sweeping review of 6.7mn vaping products.
Njoy’s current shareholders could receive a further $500mn payout as part of the deal if further regulatory milestones are achieved, including the approval of its menthol-flavoured products under review by the FDA, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In the three months up to mid-February of this year, e-cigarette manufacturer, Juul, accounted for 26.5% of US e-cigarette sales, down from 34.3% a year earlier, according to a Cowen analysis of NielsenIQ data. Njoy made up just 2.7% of the market.
Source: Financial Times, 27 February 2023
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US: FDA says there’s “a lot more work to come ” to improve the way it regulates tobacco products
Last Friday, 24th February, the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products announced steps it would take to do a better job regulating tobacco products.
In December, an independent panel of experts reported that the FDA’s tobacco program had a number of wide-ranging problems that hindered its ability to regulate the industry and to reduce tobacco-related disease and death.
Although the number of people who smoke is at one of the lowest levels recorded, smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. In 2021, about 11.5% of US adults smoked cigarettes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - a decline from the 20.6% who smoked in 2009 - but there are still more than 24 million people who smoke cigarettes, according to the CDC.
The independent panel – the Reagan-Udall Foundation – generally criticized the FDA for not being proactive enough and said that there was a real lack of clarity from the Center for Tobacco Products, even about its goals. The panel also found that the center had some real communication issues. Critics of the FDA have said that the agency is too slow to act, and it has repeatedly missed even court-ordered deadlines to regulate e-cigarette products.
Source: CNN, 24 February 2023
See also: Reagan-Udall Foundation - Operational Evaluation of FDA's Human Foods & Tobacco Programs
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US: Seven healthy habits “may help cut the risk of dementia”, long-term study suggests
Adopting seven healthy habits in middle age may help cut the risk of dementia, a long-term study suggests.
Researchers found that being active, eating a better diet, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, keeping normal blood pressure, controlling cholesterol and having low blood sugar may all cut the chances of developing conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The study, which followed women for two decades, has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in Boston.
As well as increasing your dementia risk, smoking also increases the risk of other health problems such as diabetes, stroke, and cancer. “If you smoke, you’re putting yourself at much higher risk of dementia,” explains Dr Richard Oakley, associate director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society. “Smoking does a lot of harm to the circulation of blood around the body, including the blood vessels in the brain, as well as the heart and lungs.”
Source: Independent, 28 February 2023
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Parliamentary Questions
PQ1: Electronic Cigarettes: Regulation
Asked by Lord Porter of Spalding, Conservative, Life peer
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of Trading Standards' powers to regulate the sale of vaping products and tackle illicit vaping tobacco products.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Lainston, Minister of State in the Department for Business and Trade
Vapes are regulated through the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 and the Nicotine Inhaling Products (Age of Sale and Proxy Purchasing) Regulations 2015. The Government continues to work with enforcement agencies to ensure these regulations are enforced in England.
Suspected illegal activity should be reported in the first instance to the Citizens Advice consumer service on 0808 223 1133 (www.citizensadvice.org.uk/).
Source: Hansard, 22 February 2023
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