Introduction
One year after its founding, the Global Vape Alliance remains dedicated to its mission of helping millions quit cigarettes and improve their health. With members from the U.S., Europe, and China, it supports consumers in switching from harmful cigarettes to less harmful vaping products, aiding global public health efforts. The Alliance focuses on youth protection through responsible marketing. It strives to balance accessible alternatives for smokers with ecological concerns, helping evolve tobacco control policies.
The Global Vape Alliance is a significant stride towards achieving these goals. The leaders of vaping industry associations from all over the world are coming together, in order to promote communication and cooperation on best practices that will better serve their members and consumers. In order to achieve this goal, the Global Vape Alliance will continue to cooperate on five critical issues: Regulation Compliance, Industry Promotion, Public Health, Environment Protection and the Engagement against the black market.
Regulation Compliance
The Alliance places a top priority on regulatory compliance. As such, the Alliance members will share information and strategies for best practices to educate and guide member companies on existing laws, regulations and industry standards. The Alliance will also share and develop strategies to ensure that industry members adopt and implement responsible marketing strategies, avoid packaging or advertisements that could mislead consumers, and condemn product design and marketing practices that target minors. We will also communicate the importance of ensuring that vaping companies do not promote or sell vaping products to the underage or people who do not reach the minimum age to legally purchase e-cigarettes.
Industry Promotion
The Alliance will share strategies for the promotion of the healthy development of the global vaping industry, and as a unified voice for the industry, will look to empower their member companies by promoting the sophistication, professionalism, and importance of the industry.
The Alliance will facilitate the communication among stakeholders in the industry, extending friendship and promoting commercial cooperation. It will ensure a sustainable development for the industry by protecting SMEs, championing fair competition and encouraging technological innovation.
Public Health
The Alliance will engage and cooperate on the most important issues affecting public health and the enormous potential that vaping products provide for reducing and eliminating public health risks. We will actively communicate on strategies for publicizing the harm-reduction aspects of e-cigarettes and the importance of encouraging conventional smokers to adopt vaping products to reduce harm.
The Alliance will objectively and openly provide information regarding the impact of vaping products on physical health and urge companies to be open and transparent of the information in the whole industry chain including design, manufacturing, advertisement, marketing and after-sales. All of these actions will fully take into account local regulations.
Environment Protection
We will develop strategies for educating businesses and consumers about the impact on the environment when producing and/or disposing of vaping products.
The Alliance will encourage the products or services that are beneficial to the environment, by recommending the adoption of recycling, reusing, environment-friendly material application, low-carbon design and manufacturing, and anti-plastic waste practices. We will urge industry to strictly abide by the environment laws in relevant countries and regions, and encourage companies to pioneer environment-friendly development through technological innovation, so as to drive a green and sustainable development of the whole vaping industry.
Engagement against the Black Market
The Alliance will focus its joint efforts on combating the illegal trade in e-cigarettes. Ensuring the proper regulation of e-cigarettes and creating a viable and diverse marketplace of regulated e-cigarettes is the best antidote to a black market. Products sold on the black market by unlicensed sellers pose a danger to consumers and threaten the business of honest retailers.
The Alliance will make significant efforts to take action through international cooperation to target illegal traders who choose to ignore regulatory requirements. The partners of the Alliance will support each other in assisting members and local associations to push for measures with the relevant national authorities that will suppress, if not eliminate, the black market trade.
Looking to the future
The Global Vaping Alliance is an opportunity, not just for the industry or its consumers at large. The global vaping industry faces various challenges, and improved communication and cooperation will benefit the industry in addressing those challenges more effectively. In addition, the Alliance can also be of great assistance to those organizations in working with and/or engaging with public health systems and regulators on the best ways to end the scourge of smoking. Wherever we are in the world, we, the signatories of this Declaration, are working towards the same objective: a world without cigarettes and smoking.
The Global Vaping Alliance aims to establish a roadmap for crafting essential future policies. By addressing the four major pillars, it demonstrates our commitment to making the industry well-prepared for a future featuring safer products tailored specifically for adult ex-smokers, all while adhering to both local and international regulations and prioritizing environmentally-friendly product production. The Declaration is our roadmap to a smoke-free, greener and continued secure future, and the latest milestone in a journey that began 15 years ago, at the beginning of our industry.
At its heart, the Declaration shows why we are stronger and can do better, as an industry, when we come together. With this Declaration, we enter a new stage, where we multiply our efforts globally. Together, for the good of the over one billion people who want to quit smoking.