Cancer specialist Filip Lardon: 'Every day we have to give people devastating diagnoses because they smoked so much. They have just one wish: to turn back the clock.'
including in primary schools. He describes how the tobacco industry took over the vape, added flavours, and deliberately targets children. The core of his message: vaping is less harmful than smoking, but far from harmless, and thanks to its accessibility and flavours, nicotine is now reaching younger users than ever before.
Read the original articleFlavours with names like 'grandma's apple pie', 'summer watermelon' or 'pancakes' leave little doubt about which young audience is being targeted."
Professor Lardon's concern is legitimate: vapes bearing these kinds of names are deliberately aimed at young users. But anyone selling these products is, by definition, operating outside the law. 'Grandma's apple pie' and 'summer watermelon' are flavour names consisting of multiple words. This has been explicitly prohibited under Belgian law since January 2023. A product bearing such a name on its label does not come from a licensed, legal retailer, but from the illegal market. [Royal Decree 07/11/2022, art. 5 Royal Decree 28/10/2016] 'Pancakes' is a single word and therefore a compliant flavour name. The name alone says nothing about the legality of the product. When names like these appear in schools or on the street, this is not a failure of the legal vaping sector, but a matter of illegal products sold by illegal vendors. The legal sector is bound by exactly the same rules and complies with them.
View permitted flavour namesThe article rightly describes how vapes with attractive names target minors. However, the examples cited, 'grandma's apple pie' and 'summer watermelon', are not products of the legal vaping sector: multi-word flavour names have been prohibited since January 2023. Anyone selling these products is, by definition, operating outside the law. The suggestion that the vaping industry uses these names is misleading: these are illegal products sold by illegal vendors.