The inaugural US E-Cigarette Summit took place in Washington DC on Monday.

Encouragingly, there does now finally appear to be a consensus amongst the tobacco control community: Smokers should be encouraged to use vaping products if they’ve been unable to quit using FDA approved stuff. To many in the vaping industry, this will appear to be missing the wood for the trees, but that’s just the nature of consensus. It’s a net positive, and could not have occurred even a year ago.

But the vaping industry remains unrepresented in this discourse. Delegates at yesterday's Summit did not come away from the event with anything like an incremental understanding of the true nature and character of vaping. It just wasn’t in the room. The only industry present, either physically, or in the mind of the non-industry delegates, were the few larger players that are going through the PMTA motions.

Don’t misunderstand me – it's great that companies

True to their word, FDA have conducted their first sting operations on both brick and mortar and online stores, sending kids to attempt to purchase newly regulated products and issuing sternly worded letters to any vendor who let them. 

You can find the list of companies that got letters here.

In their letters, FDA warn companies about the provisions that vapour products are now subject to:

“FDA has determined that your e-liquid is misbranded under section 903(a)(7)(B) of the FD&C Act (21 U.S.C. § 387c(a)(7)(B)) because you sold this product to a person younger than 18 years of age” the letters begin. 

They go on to

A new report, which ranks EU countries by their vaper-friendliness, warns that some EU countries are restricting access to vape products and jeopardising citizens’ health.

Published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Nanny State index tracks 'overbearing lifestyle regulations' on product categories including alcohol, food/soft drinks, tobacco and e-cigarettes.

Their latest report centres on vaping and ranks European countries based on their approach to harm-reducing nicotine products.

‘Nanny state’ interventions

Christopher Snowdon, the author of the report, lays out the case against e-cigarette regulation right at the start of the report.

“Nanny state interventions… are invariably promoted on grounds of health and yet it is difficult to see how clamping down on vaping benefits public health,” he says.

“Paternalistic