1. Japan Tobacco’s operating income in the first half of 2023 was 1.3928 trillion yen (approximately US$9.792 billion), a year-on-year increase of 9.9%; operating profit was 413.6 billion yen (approximately US$2.908 billion), an increase of 8% year-on-year; Net profit was 287 billion yen (about 2.017 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 8.7% year-on-year.

2. Philip Morris International (PMI) launched a new pod-changing vapeVeevOne in Italy. This product has upgraded the ceramic core technology, and the capacity of the e-liquid is increased to 2ml, which can reach 1000 puffsof use.

3. From January to June 2023, China’s e-cigarette export volume was US$5.482 billion, a year-on-year increase of 29.2%; the export volume was about 104,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 54.3%.

4. British American Tobacco (BAT) and Japan Tobacco (JTI) have been criticized by the media for using Internet celebrities and music festivals to market nicotine pouches in the UK. Britain’s advertising watchdog said it was reviewing the ads to determine whether they violated relevant regulations.

5. Since 2022, Japan Tobacco (JTI) has registered 102 e-cigarette-related design patents in South Korea.

6. Customs in Pskov, Russia seized 7.3 tons of smuggled cigarettes, involving 18 million rubles.

7. The Kazakh government has decided to completely ban vapeand e-liquid products. The Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan stated that in the past two years, the sales of vapein the country have increased by 300 times, and the number of imported vape is about 3 million pieces.

8. Siddharth Breja, former senior vice president of JUUL, previously accused JUUL of selling contaminated pods. On July 24, lawyers for both parties revealed that Breja had lost the case.

9. The Philippine Customs has reached a cooperation with the international tobacco company Philip Morris International to jointly combat the illegal tobacco trade in the country.