The Issue
On the 11th of September 2019 President Trump announced that he would propose legislation in the USA to impose a national ban on all flavoured eliquids other than tobacco flavours. As you can imagine if this ban is successful it will have a devastating effect on the US vaping industry and a huge effect on public health as a result.

The ban comes on the back of reported effects from vaping a bad THC oil associated with the marijuana industry in the states. The CDC and the FDA are integrated into the political motivations surrounding this issue and are largely responsible for applying this to vaping. It’s still largely unclear what actually happened as many of the facts are obscured by political and activist agendas but what is clear is that this isn’t a problem with compliant nicotine or CBD vaping products.

With the small amount of information we have at present its clear that should the marijuana oil in question have been properly Risk Assessed then this would have been avoided. The Risk Assessment looks at the underlying toxicological data on an individual chemical level and then ensures that the make up of the product is not dangerous to the consumer when used as intended. The suspected vitamin which may have caused or contributed to these issues would have been easily identified in a correctly performed Risk Assessment and hence the product in question would never have been on the market.

Our Product Safety
All Phoenix products have been developed and fully risk assessed by our technical division, EL-Science. EL-Science are global leaders in eliquid safety and quality having invested over £2M in the development and assessment of eliquids over the past 5 years.

In fact, EL-Science test and assess products for companies all over the world to ensure they meet the TPDR requirements and also the General Products Safety Regulations 2005 which includes the requirement to perform a Product Risk Assessment to ensure that the product is safe for consumer use.

EL-Science have been warning about potential flavour bans since 2015 by engaging with legislators and presenting findings and solutions at international conferences such as the ENDs conference and the Next Generation conferences. Unfortunately, many companies have yet to act in having their products risk assessed.

To be clear, if a product has not been formally risk assessed this doesn’t mean that the product is dangerous, but you can be assured that any product assessed by EL-Science has negligible health impacts especially when compared to traditional cigarettes.

All of the Phoenix products hold a full and passed product risk assessment. The assessment is based upon toxicological data generated by external and independent expert toxicologists. All of our Product Risk Assessments are available upon request from PRA@elscience.co.uk and in light of the current news we are working to get physical copies distributed to all Phoenix stores over the coming weeks along with further information about the important work that EL-Science performs behind the scenes to ensure that the products we provide are of the highest quality available in the market.

Moving forward
In light of this news from the US, EL-Science will redouble our efforts to get the UK and European markets up to standard. We do not want to see the same ban implemented here. You can help by spreading the word and asking other retailers to contact us so that we can ensure that all products within the UK have supporting safety data to defend against any such moves to ban flavourings. We would like to stress again that products that have not been through an official assessment process are not therefore automatically dangerous. EL-Science stand fully behind Public Heath England’s report that vaping products are at least 95% safer than traditional tobacco products.

EL-Science would like to ensure that the entire vaping industry is fully armed with safety data to fight any moves in the UK should it be needed whilst we all perform our duty of care to ensure that the consumer is best protected. In order to contribute as best we can, EL-Science will subsidise some of the costs of performing these assessments for the coming few months.

If you are a consumer you can stay informed by follow us on your local stores Facebook page.

If you are a retailer or manufacturer who requires more information around Product Risk Assessment then please contact EL-Science directly.

 

 

 

 

Shaun Wedgewood
Technical Director