Below is an excerpt from ISS ESG’s recently released paper “The Shifting Regulatory Landscape for Vaping Products: Premarket Removals, Flavour Restrictions, and Wholesale Bans” The full paper is available for download from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) online library.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The changing regulatory landscape for electronic cigarettes and vaping products suggests a general shift away from official acceptance of such products and towards recognition of their risks to youths and ‘never smokers’.
- This shift is evidenced by the disproportionately large number of Marketing Denial Orders issued to date by the US FDA against vaping products, and the expansion of the FDA’s scope of authority to regulate e-cigarettes that use synthetic nicotine. These changes may significantly narrow the vaping market in the US.
- An increasing number of governments have banned flavoured vaping products, with new laws coming into effect in the Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, and China in 2022, and regulations being proposed in Sweden and Canada. Within Europe, governments that accept such products as part of a tobacco-harm-reduction strategy are increasingly becoming the exception rather than the norm.
- A shift in regulatory positions regarding the treatment of e-cigarettes can also be observed in East and South Asia, including policies to institute novel lifetime bans and blanket prohibitions of such products.
Geographic Spread of Companies Involved in E-Cigarette Production, Distribution, and Services (ISS ESG Sector-Based Screening Universe)
Source: ISS ESG Sector-based Screening research data (as of May 2022)
Explore ISS ESG solutions mentioned in this report:
- Use ISS ESG Sector-Based Screening to assess companies’ involvement in a wide range of products and services such as alcohol, animal welfare, cannabis, for-profit correctional facilities, gambling, pornography, tobacco and more.
By: Jayshendra Karunakaren, Analyst, ISS ESG. Yuhan Guo, Analyst, ISS ESG.
