The sound of clicking lighters is increasingly being replaced by glowing light and silent vapor. This is a part of a trend across the nation toward the adoption of e-cigarettes as a replacement forold-fashioned tobacco smokes.
But if a measure before the Los Angeles City Council gains traction, you might soon see this trend snuffed out.
The Arts, Parks, Health, Aging and River Committee recently submitted a proposal to the L.A. City Council to ban e-cigarette usage at farmers markets, parks, beaches, bars and nightclubs, among other areas. The proposal needs to be approved by the city council before it can become a law.
Citizens of Los Angeles can and should be able to use their own discretion when using e-cigarettes in closed buildings and public locations, especially when outdoors. These regulations infringe on personal freedoms. What people choose to put in their own body is a personal choice that should not be regulated by a city council, provided the choice does not harm other residents.
The push for regulation on e-cigarettes has already led to ordinances limiting their use in public places in both New York and Chicago. These cities appear to have jumped the gun on federal regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with the regulation of nicotine products.
This type of regulation has also hit closer to home. Beverly Hills is working to implement restrictions on where e-cigarettes can be used, where they can be sold and who can purchase them, with the mayor citing opposition to smoking as the reason.
But the sweeping trend of regulation is premature. The lack of peer-reviewed studies on e-cigarettes has spooked local officials into instituting regulations that are as strict as those governing cigarette smoke. What little data there is though, supports the idea that e-cigarettes are safer than normal cigarettes.
Whereas normal cigarettes are regulated because of the health risks associated with secondhand smoke, e-cigarette users exhale mostly water vapor.
In fact, a Drexel University study found that vapors from e-cigarettes “fall well below the threshold for concern for compounds with known toxicity.”
E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco, tar and some of the other toxic chemicals found in a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, for example. When an e-cigarette is used, the nicotine solution inside the cartridge is vaporized, the nicotine is absorbed by the person inhaling the product and the vapor is exhaled.
Nicotine, which is found in e-cigarettes, is extremely addicting and does hold its own health risks, so regulating who can buy e-cigarettes and at what age makes sense. This means identification should be required with purchase.
But dictating where you can ingest legal chemicals is clearly over-regulation.
The proposed Los Angeles ordinance must be approved by the entire council before becoming a law. If passed, the regulations would lead to unfortunate consequences for Westwood businesses such as smoke shops and corner stores, which would be impacted by the ban.
In particular, heavy regulation of e-cigarettes would make them less convenient and less appealing, resulting in a drop in sales.
Another repercussion of regulation is that, paradoxically, it could lead to fewer people quitting smoking.
The text of the ordinance states that allowing public use of e-cigarettes may “reverse the progress that has been made over the years to discourage smoking.”
But e-cigarettes have actually been used by smokers as a way to temper or satisfy their nicotine habit without the damaging tar and many of the toxins found in normal cigarettes. A small study done by the University of Catania in Italy found that e-cigarettes “substantially decreased cigarette consumption without causing significant side effects in smokers not intending to quit.”
Although it may be rude to pull out an e-cigarette in a restaurant to satisfy a nicotine craving, Los Angeles residents should retain the freedom to use e-cigarettes when they choose.
Like consuming alcohol, which many people find distasteful and which carries its own health risks, smoking an e-cigarette is a personal choice. Until the federal agency in charge of regulating tobacco products makes rules dictating the use of e-cigarettes, individual cities should not either, especially if their efforts essentially amount to nothing more than a moral crusade.
Innovation is a powerful thing. It has dramatically increased our quality of life, and the entrepreneurial spirit behind it continues to amaze us. If someone from 1964 were to see the computers, automobiles or medical diagnostics we have today, they would be astounded. But former U.S. surgeon-general Luther Terry, who released the first ground breaking Report of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health 50 years ago, would be saddened that cigarettes have not appreciably changed. They are still the same deadly and defective delivery system for nicotine and they remain, by far, the leading cause of preventable death, despite sound policy and improved treatment.
Although there has been little to no innovation in cigarettes (evidence suggests they may actually be more harmful today than they were in the past), there have been great advances in potentially massively less harmful ways to deliver nicotine to the body, such as electronic cigarettes. Unfortunately, Health Canada’s policy to these game-changing devices has been confused, to say the least.
We have known for decades that smokers smoke for the nicotine, but die from the smoke. It is the latter that is the overwhelming cause of the cancers, as well as heart and lung diseases. In other words, it’s the smoke, stupid. Were we to ingest caffeine by smoking rather than brewing tea leaves, the result would likely be the same. Approximately five million Canadians (one in five adults) continue to smoke cigarettes and get exposed to roughly 7,000 chemicals, including 60 that cause cancer. Others face health risks due to second-hand smoke. Many treatments for nicotine addiction, including nicotine gums and patches, are more effective than quitting cold turkey, but still not optimal.
Failure to distinguish between the nicotine and the smoke leads society to miss a huge opportunity to address the seemingly intractable problems associated with cigarette smoking. The quit or die approach is unethical. It is akin to thinking that anyone who drove a car the 1960s, when there were much less stringent safety standards, should totally forgo driving, rather than have easy access to alternate, potentially less risky, products.
Entrepreneurs have found a way to meet the needs those unable, or unwilling, to forgo nicotine by developing, marketing and selling products that can deliver the drug in ways that promise to reduce the associated health risks, simply by getting rid of the smoke. Electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine in a combustion-free vapour, are currently the most visible example. But these products are just the beginning of what has the potential to be a tsunami of innovation that could do to smoking what sanitation did to cholera. The products on the market today are just the beginning.
Over a billion smokers worldwide are spending over $800-billion a year on cigarettes. The desire for a safer alternative, however, has led to massive growth in e-cigarette sales. The private sector has an incentive to meet this demand, and if it’s done right, we could have a self-funding public-health revolution, with the potential to save the health-care system billions of dollars by reducing the prevalence of diseases caused by inhaling smoke.
This has happened before. Only a couple of decades before that first surgeon-general’s report, stomach cancer was the leading cause of cancer deaths. But within 50 years, it had been relegated to a minor cause of mortality. This was largely due to refrigeration. Manufacturers were able to harness the technology and innovate to make the products more consumer-friendly, promoting healthier diets and the subsequent reduction in stomach cancer cases. Such actions by the private sector are easily replicable because they are profitable and thus don’t require government subsidies. We now have the potential to virtually eliminate lung cancer and many other smoking-related diseases. Such a revolution in public health would be among the biggest in history. It would work with, rather than against, the market to make combustible tobacco obsolete.
ECigarette provider LeCig today announced the opening of its latest electronic cigarette store in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. The Broken Bow store located in the South Park Plaza Shopping center next door to the busiest Wal Mart in the area at 617 South Park Drive, Broken Bow, OK 74728 (Google Map), the Broken Bow LeCig store carries LeCig’s full line of electronic cigarettes, starter kits, e juice, batteries and accessories.
“We’re really happy with the reception we’ve had here in Broken Bow and are excited about expanding in to neighboring Oklahoma. Our customers appreciate the selection of vaping solutions and our wide range of e juice flavors,” said Mike Elias, CEO of LeCig.
LeCig Broken Bow is open Monday through Friday 9AM – 6 PM and Saturdays 10AM – 4PM and Sundays 1 PM – 5 PM.
The Broken Bow store is the fourth retail location opened by Arkansas based LeCig complementing its DeQueen, Glenwood and Hot Springs Arkasas locations.
LeCig offers electronic cigarette products and tobacco alternatives to both the novice and experienced e-cigarette enthusiast along with a 30 day money back guarantee. The benefits of LeCig’s e cigarettes include:
- No tobacco — which means no tar, carbon monoxide, or ash.
- Savings for the average smoker of over $1,000 per year
- No more second hand smoke or having to go outside
- E Cig users can get the same amount of nicotine as a regular cigarette, and reduce that amount if they are trying to cut down
- A cartridge costs less than $2 and is about the same as an entire pack of cigarettes.
- No more “You Smell Like a Dirty Ashtray”
- Le Cig has a variety of different e liquid and cartridge flavors
- FREE SHIPPING in the United States
The electronic cigarette industry is expected to grow to over $10 Billion by 2017 as tens of millions of tobacco smokers make the switch to electronic cigarettes.
“Our customers find that our e cigarettes provide them a smokeless alternative to tobacco when they are out and about, as well as help them reduce the cost of smoking over the long term”, commented Dee Sanders, LeCig Operations Manager.
LeCig offers e cigarette starter kits, disposable electronic cigarettes, e cig batteries and chargers and e liquids and refills in a variety of flavors, both as e liquid refills and as electronic cigarette cartomizers. Check out LeCig’s e cig blog at http://lecigs.com for electronic cigarette news, how to, videos and more.
LeCig products are available on the web and at retailers across the country and is rapidly expanding its retail base nationwide.
Learn more about LeCig by visiting http://www.lecig.com or by calling 870-525-1440870-525-1440.
A front-page story in yesterday’s New York Times notes the divide within the anti-smoking movement on the merits of electronic cigarettes, as exemplified by the split between Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel and his former mentor, Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California at San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. The Siegel camp sees e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without tobacco or smoke, as a promising harm reduction tool, while the Glantz camp sees them as a public health menace. Because health reporter Sabrina Tavernise accurately summarizes the arguments of both sides, it is hard to see how a fair-minded reader could end up agreeing with Glantz. Here are the two main arguments against e-cigarettes:
E-cigarettes will lure teenagers into smoking. Since avoiding that smelly, dirty, and dangerous habit is the main motivation for vaping, this fear seems implausible. Furthermore, there is no evidence that e-cigarettes are serving as a gateway to the conventional kind. In fact, the recent increase in vaping among teenagers has been accompanied by a continued decline in smoking.
Vaping will discourage smokers from quitting by giving them a way to get their nicotine fix when they can’t light up. Again, there is no evidence that is actually happening, and the same objection could be raised against nicotine gum, lozenges, or patches.
As Tavernise notes, the “public health” debate about e-cigarettes “comes down to a simple question: Will e-cigarettes cause more or fewer people to smoke?” The testimonials of vapers tell us that e-cigarettes are a viable alternative for many people who would otherwise continue sucking smoke into their lungs. We know those people actually exist. The same cannot be said of smokers who never would have started or who would have quit but for e-cigarettes. Those vaping-enabled smokers may exist only in the imaginations of Glantz and his allies. So if your concern is the net impact on tobacco-related morbidity and mortality, the existing evidence strongly favors e-cigarettes.
Regardless of how that collectivist calculus comes out, the indisputable safety advantages of e-cigarettes would be enough to recommend them as an option for individual smokers. Unlike some of her colleagues, who in the past have implied that the relative hazards of smoking and vaping are a matter of scientific dispute, Tavernise understands the significance of eliminating tobacco combustion products:
Public health experts like to say that people smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar. And the reason e-cigarettes have caused such a stir is that they take the deadly tar out of the equation while offering the nicotine fix and the sensation of smoking. For all that is unknown about the new devices—they have been on the American market for only seven years—most researchers agree that puffing on one is far less harmful than smoking a traditional cigarette.
None of the e-cigarette critics quoted by Tavernise disputes that point, and it is hard to imagine how anyone reasonably could (although that does not stop some activists from trying). But the huge difference in risk between vaping and smoking is not enough for Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I think the precautionary principle—better safe than sorry—rules here,” he tells the Times. In what sense is it “safe” to prevent smokers from buying a product that could literally save their lives? If the Food and Drug Administration, which is supposed to start regulating e-cigarettes soon, takes its cue from Frieden, the result could very well be more smoking-related disease and death. “If we make it too hard for this experiment to continue,” says Siegel, “we’ve wasted an opportunity that could eventually save millions of lives.”
Frieden has been known to simply make stuff up in his campaign against vaping, claiming without any evidence that “many kids are starting out with e-cigarettes and then going on to smoke conventional cigarettes.” That he is now resorting to the precautionary principle—which my Reason colleague Ron Bailey aptly sums up as “never do anything for the first time”—says a lot about the weakness of the case against e-cigarettes, which is essentially an emotional reaction against a product that looks too much like a long-reviled symbol of evil. “Part of the furniture for us is that the tobacco industry is evil and everything they do has to be opposed,” University of Nottingham epidemiologist John Britton tells the Times. “But one doesn’t want that to get in the way of public health.”
Dr. Michael Siegel, a public health researcher, says that e-cigarettes could help end smoking. Matthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times
Dr. Michael Siegel, a hard-charging public health researcher at Boston University, argues that e-cigarettes could be the beginning of the end of smoking in America. He sees them as a disruptive innovation that could make cigarettes obsolete, like the computer did to the typewriter.
But his former teacher and mentor, Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is convinced that e-cigarettes may erase the hard-won progress achieved over the last half-century in reducing smoking. He predicts that the modern gadgetry will be a glittering gateway to the deadly, old-fashioned habit for children, and that adult smokers will stay hooked longer now that they can get a nicotine fix at their desks.
These experts represent the two camps now at war over the public health implications of e-cigarettes. The devices, intended to feed nicotine addiction without the toxic tar of conventional cigarettes, have divided a normally sedate public health community that had long been united in the fight against smoking and Big Tobacco.
The essence of their disagreement comes down to a simple question: Will e-cigarettes cause more or fewer people to smoke? The answer matters. Cigarette smoking is still the single largest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing about 480,000 people a year.
Dr. Siegel, whose graduate school manuscripts Dr. Glantz used to read, says e-cigarette pessimists are stuck on the idea that anything that looks like smoking is bad. “They are so blinded by this ideology that they are not able to see e-cigarettes objectively,” he said. Dr. Glantz disagrees. “E-cigarettes seem like a good idea,” he said, “but they aren’t.”
Science that might resolve questions about e-cigarettes is still developing, and many experts agree that the evidence so far is too skimpy to draw definitive conclusions about the long-term effects of the devices on the broader population.
“The popularity is outpacing the knowledge,” said Dr. Michael B. Steinberg, associate professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. “We’ll have a better idea in another year or two of how safe these products are, but the question is, will the horse be out of the barn by then?”
This high-stakes debate over what e-cigarettes mean for the nation’s 42 million smokers comes at a crucial moment. Soon, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to issue regulations that would give the agency control over the devices, which have had explosive growth virtually free of any federal oversight. (Some cities, like Boston and New York, and states, like New Jersey and Utah, have already weighed in, enacting bans in public places.)
The new federal rules will have broad implications for public health. If they are too tough, experts say, they risk snuffing out small e-cigarette companies in favor of Big Tobacco, which has recently entered the e-cigarette business. If they are too lax, sloppy manufacturing could lead to devices that do not work properly or even harm people.
And many scientists say e-cigarettes will be truly effective in reducing the death toll from smoking only with the right kind of federal regulation — for example, rules that make ordinary cigarettes more expensive than e-cigarettes, or that reduce the amount of nicotine in ordinary cigarettes so smokers turn to e-cigarettes for their nicotine.
“E-cigarettes are not a miracle cure,” said David B. Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder National Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Legacy Foundation, an antismoking research group. “They need a little help to eclipse cigarettes, which are still the most satisfying and deadly product ever made.”
Smoking is already undergoing a rapid evolution. Nicotine, the powerful stimulant that makes traditional cigarettes addictive, is the crucial ingredient in e-cigarettes, whose current incarnation was developed by a Chinese pharmacist whose father died of lung cancer. With e-cigarettes, nicotine is inhaled through a liquid that is heated into vapor. New research suggeststhat e-cigarettes deliver nicotine faster than gum or lozenges, two therapies that have never quite taken off.
Sales of e-cigarettes more than doubled last year from 2012, to $1.7 billion, according to Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. Ms. Herzog said that in the next decade, consumption of e-cigarettes could outstrip that of conventional cigarettes. The number of stores that sell them has quadrupled in just the last year, according to the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, an e-cigarette industry trade group.
“E-cigarette users sure seem to be speaking with their pocketbooks,” said Mitchell Zeller, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Tobacco Products.
Public health experts like to say that people smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar. And the reason e-cigarettes have caused such a stir is that they take the deadly tar out of the equation while offering the nicotine fix and the sensation of smoking. For all that is unknown about the new devices — they have been on the American market for only seven years — most researchers agree that puffing on one is far less harmful than smoking a traditional cigarette.
But then their views diverge.
Pessimists like Dr. Glantz say that while e-cigarettes might be good in theory, they are bad in practice. The vast majority of people who smoke them now also smoke conventional cigarettes, he said, and there is little evidence that much switching is happening. E-cigarettes may even prolong the habit, he said, by offering a dose of nicotine at times when getting one from a traditional cigarette is inconvenient or illegal.
What is more, critics say, they make smoking look alluring again, with images on billboards and television ads for the first time in decades. Dr. Glantz says that only about half the people alive today have ever seen a broadcast ad for cigarettes. “I feel like I’ve gotten into a time machine and gone back to the 1980s,” he said.
Researchers also worry that e-cigarettes could be a gateway to traditional cigarettes for young people. The devices are sold on the Internet. The liquids that make their vapor come in flavors like mango and watermelon. Celebrities smoke them: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Leonardo DiCaprio puffed on them at the Golden Globe Awards.
A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2012, about 10 percent of high school students said they had tried an e-cigarette, up from 5 percent in 2011. But 7 percent of those who had tried e-cigarettes said they had never smoked a traditional cigarette, prompting concern that e-cigarettes were, in fact, becoming a gateway.
“I think the precautionary principle — better safe than sorry — rules here,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the C.D.C.
E-cigarette skeptics have also raised concerns about nicotine addiction. But many researchers say that the nicotine by itself is not a serious health hazard. Nicotine-replacement therapies like lozenges and patches have been used for years. Some even argue that nicotine is a lot like caffeine: an addictive substance that stimulates the mind.
“Nicotine may have some adverse health effects, but they are relatively minor,” said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has spent his career studying the pharmacology of nicotine.
Another ingredient, propylene glycol, the vapor that e-cigarettes emit — whose main alternative use is as fake smoke on concert and theater stages — is a lung irritant, and the effects of inhaling it over time are a concern, Dr. Benowitz said.
But Dr. Siegel and others contend that some public health experts, after a single-minded battle against smoking that has run for decades, are too inflexible about e-cigarettes. The strategy should be to reduce harm from conventional cigarettes, and e-cigarettes offer a way to do that, he said, much in the way that giving clean needles to intravenous drug users reduces their odds of getting infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Solid evidence about e-cigarettes is limited. A clinical trial in New Zealand, which many researchers regard as the most reliable study to date, found that after six months about 7 percent of people given e-cigarettes had quit smoking, a slightly better rate than those with patches.
In Britain, where the regulatory process is more developed than in the United States, researchers say that smoking trends are heading in the right direction.
“Motivation to quit is up, success of quit attempts are up, and prevalence is coming down faster than it has for the last six or seven years,” said Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London. It is impossible to know whether e-cigarettes drove the changes, he said, but “we can certainly say they are not undermining quitting.”
The scientific uncertainties have intensified the public health fight, with each side seizing on scraps of new data to bolster its position. One recent study in Germany on secondhand vapor from e-cigarettes prompted Dr. Glantz to write on his blog, “More evidence that e-cigs cause substantial air pollution.” Dr. Siegel highlighted the same study, concluding that it showed “no evidence of a significant public health hazard.”
That Big Tobacco is now selling e-cigarettes has contributed to skepticism among experts and advocates.
Cigarettes went into broad use in the 1920s — and by the 1940s, lung cancer rates had exploded. More Americans have died from smoking than in all the wars the United States has fought. Smoking rates have declined sharply since the 1960s, when about half of all men and a third of women smoked. But progress has slowed, with a smoking rate now of around 18 percent.
“Part of the furniture for us is that the tobacco industry is evil and everything they do has to be opposed,” said John Britton, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in England, and the director for the U.K. Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. “But one doesn’t want that to get in the way of public health.”
Carefully devised federal regulations might channel the marketing might of major tobacco companies into e-cigarettes, cannibalizing sales of traditional cigarettes, Dr. Abrams of the Schroeder Institute said. “We need a jujitsu move to take their own weight and use it against them,” he said.
Dr. Benowitz said he could see a situation under which the F.D.A. would gradually reduce the nicotine levels allowable in traditional cigarettes, pushing smokers to e-cigarettes.
If we make it too hard for this experiment to continue, we’ve wasted an opportunity that could eventually save millions of lives,” Dr. Siegel said.
Dr. Glantz disagreed.
“I frankly think the fault line will be gone in another year,” he said. “The evidence will show their true colors.”
The most important, devastating yet preventable public health problem in the western world is cigarette smoking. How bad is it? The W.H.O. predicts one billion lives cut short worldwide this century, if current trends continue. In America alone, the toll amounts to nearly a half million deaths each year.
Many tactics to combat this addictive scourge have been tried over the decades, but progress in reducing smoking’s carnage has essentially come to a halt over the past few years. Meanwhile, our ostensible public health experts’ contribution has been to proffer hyper-precautionary warnings against a highly promising new technology — electronic cigarettes (“ecigs”), a potential public-health miracle — perversely standing in the way of progress against smoking-related disease and death.
After passing through New York and Chicago, the e-cigarette ban-wagon is now threatening the public health of Los Angeles. A measure set to come before the L.A. City Council next week— February 24th — would make these low-risk devices difficult to use for millions of former smokers who have finally escaped from deadly, addictive cigarettes, treating them as though they were the real thing. While this is a ploy aimed at keeping cigarette taxes pouring in and clearly harmful for public health, the manner in which the L.A. lawmakers plan to go about it brings to mind nothing less than Orwell’s Big Brother.
The City Attorney proposes to restrict e-cigarettes to only those areas where cigarettes are permitted; thus, “vaping,” as using an e-cigarette is known, would be banned not only indoors, but even outdoors in parks and beaches — allegedly to “protect children from second-hand ‘smoke.’”
Is there any basis for their concern? No. Several academic experts’ evaluations of e-cigarette vapor show nothing harmful to anyone, so any such ban is regulatory overreach in the guise of a public health measure. Paradoxically, its effect would be to consign ex-smokers to vape outside among current smokers: a recipe for relapse.
It gets worse: in a bald-faced attempt to promote their agenda, the City’s leaders decided to simply redefine the words “tobacco” and “smoke” to squeeze e-cigarettes into current anti-smoking laws. The proposed revision states that the Council, being “concerned about the rising prevalence of e-cigarette use,” proposes to amend “smoke-free policies” to include e-cigarettes in the definition of smoking, and also to include “e-cigarettes in the definition of [a] tobacco product.”
There’s just this small problem: e-cigarettes neither contain tobacco nor do they emit smoke. Even the most vitriolic opponents of e-cigs do not contest those simple facts. Exhaling a plume of smoke-like vapor (almost entirely water vapor) does not make it smoke, nor does anything in e-cigs resemble tobacco.
This tactic smacks of despotism, as arbitrary and capricious as lawmakers can get. Am I being hyperbolic? Not only public health, but the rule of law could become collateral damage if regulators can simply re-define commonly used, long-established words to suit their agendas. What stands in the way of declaring certain words in the Code of Federal Regulations (or for that matter, the Bill of Rights) as something other than what we have always thought?
Ecigs have now been used by millions of American smokers, many of whom have either switched from deadly cigarettes to low-risk e-cigs, or cut down significantly. The more ecigs sold and used, the fewer cigarettes. Indeed, recent reports confirm skyrocketing ecig sales as Big Tobacco companies report historic declines in cigarette sales.
You’d think “public health” would be jumping with joy at this prospect, but they are not. In a bizarre, through-the-looking-glass scenario, the public health agencies and nonprofits all refuse to even consider ecigs, going so far as to advise (or warn) smokers not to even try them. Although the FDA-approved cessation methods they adhere to have a less than 10 percent “success” rate, their monolithic message to smokers remains, in essence, “quit or die.”
Why are ecigs more effective than the nearly useless FDA-approved products? The vaping experience closely mimics the smoking experience, helping addicted smokers quit by replicating the behavior patterns of smoking; moreover, ecigs also deliver a satisfying nicotine “hit.” Smokers smoke for the nicotine — but they die from the smoke. In simple terms, ecigs supply the former, and avoid the latter.
Why is the LA City Council, like so many other regulators and politicians, antagonistic to this apparent public health miracle? Some say they fear that young people will be attracted to e-cigarettes, noting the “child-friendly” flavors. This is consummate sophistry, as the 33,000 heart-rending anecdotes from grateful ex-smokers on my Facebook page, “HelpingAddictedSmokers,” attest: adults also prefer novel flavors. Further, the CDC’s own teen tobacco survey have shown a very low rate of underage vaping.
Studies have shown that e-cigarettes act as a gateway out of smoking, not into it. That same survey also showed a significant decline in teen cigarette smoking, further refuting these baseless fears of teen nicotine addiction.
The phony “public health” hype is clearly shown to be an excuse for a power grab by the ban on outdoor vaping: what possible rationale could there be for that?
The pervasive campaign against e-cigarettes by the CDC and local agencies is nothing other than a hypocritical desire to keep on collecting cigarette taxes. The propaganda warning smokers not to even try them — by the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and other nonprofits supposedly devoted to public health — are inspired by the high levels of funding support by pharmaceutical companies invested in selling ineffective nicotine replacement products. When the CDC advises desperate smokers to “stick with the FDA-approved products,” they are saying, in effect, “Keep on smoking.”
It is particularly ironic that those most forceful in opposition to ecigs come almost entirely from the “liberal” camp, those who have been fervent supporters of the “harm reduction” approach to dealing with health threats from antisocial behaviors or addictions: viral health threats from unsafe sex (“use condoms”) and drug abuse (methadone, clean needles). Why, now, such senseless, harmful opposition?
Some of these self-styled dictators of behavior proclaim that ecigs should be “regulated.” By this, they mean regulated off the market for years to come. I say sure, regulate them: strict age limits on sales and marketing, accurate ingredient labels, responsible manufacturing practices with inspections and enforcement, and childproof packaging — all should be mandated.
But the pervasive, corrupt, unethical failure of truthful communication smokers are getting from those who we trust to deliver sound science-based health messages has the effect of keeping would-be quitters on their deadly cigarettes instead of safe, effective e-cigarettes to help them quit. I hope that the citizens of Los Angeles will not allow their legislators to redefine e-cigarettes and vapor as real cigarettes and smoke, just because they say so. Vapor is not smoke, and e-cigarettes are not cigarettes. Let vapers keep on vaping.
By Dr. Gilbert Ross -Medical and Executive Director, American Council on Science and Health
Yesterday I wrote about electronic cigarettes, commonly called e-cigarettes, which have grown in sales from virtually zero five years ago $1.5 billion in 2013. This growth will likely continue, overtaking traditional cigarettes sales within the next decade.
Today, let’s consider how investors can profit from this new market sector.
Competitive Landscape
There are more than 200 e-cigarette producers. The number of competitors is decreasing, but competitive pressures are increasing as the large tobacco companies are entering the fray.
In 2012, Lorillard (LO_), the third-largest tobacco company and maker of Newport cigarettes, entered the e-cigarette market with its purchase of Blu. Reynolds American (RAI_), the second-largest U.S. tobacco company and maker of Camel, entered the market in 2013 with their own e-cigarette offering, Vuse. In 2014, Altria (MO_), the largest U.S. tobacco company and maker of Marlboro, acquired Green Smoke to enter the e-cigarette market.
The increased competition from larger players should lead to a consolidation in the market, with five to 10 players at the end of the industry shakeout. Economies of scale should be present in the market.
The large fixed costs associated with marketing and potential regulatory costs will likely eliminate smaller players. Marketing is particularly important at the early stages of an industry life cycle, when no brand has established itself as the clear leader and all companies are trying to increase brand awareness.
Limited shelf space at retailers creates another important market inefficiency, as the FDA may ban online sales of e-cigarettes. The access to retail outlets will be one of the key determinants of survival.
The large tobacco companies will gain access, given their relationships via traditional tobacco. But for smaller companies, this will be important to monitor.
Should electronic cigarettes be regulated like tobacco products, emblazoned with warnings and subject to tight marketing restrictions? Those are among the questions before the Food and Drug Administration as it decides in the coming weeks how to handle the battery-powered cigarette mimics that have become a $1.5 billion business in the United States.
Groups promoting intensive regulation include the American Lung Association and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. They worry that the health risks haven’t been fully established and that e-cigarettes will make smoking commonplace again, especially among teens. They are quick to push back in response to anything that might make e-cigarettes more attractive, such as the NJOY King ad that aired during the Super Bowl or when actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were shown “vaping” at the Golden Globes.
A surgeon general’s report released last month, on the 50th anniversary of the office’s first warning about the dangers of smoking, had little to say about e-cigarettes. Its suggestions for further reducing tobacco use were familiar, including: increase taxes on cigarettes, prohibit indoor smoking, launch media campaigns and reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes.
E-cigarettes, however, could be what we need to knock the U.S. smoking rate from a stubborn 18 percent to the government’s goal of 12 percent by 2020. We should not only tolerate them but encourage their use.
Although critics stress the need for more research, we can say with high confidence that e-cigarettes are far safer than smoking. No tobacco leaves are combusted, so they don’t release the tars and gases that lead to cancer and other smoking-related diseases. Instead, a heating element converts a liquid solution into an aerosol that users exhale as a white plume.
The solution comes in varying concentrations of nicotine from high (36 mg per milliliter of liquid) to zero to help people wean themselves off cigarettes, as well as e-cigarettes, and the addictive stimulant in them. But even if people continue using electronic cigarettes with some nicotine, regular exposure has generally benign effects in healthy people, and the FDA has approved the extended use of nicotine gums, patches and lozenges.
The other main ingredients in e-cigarettes are propylene glycol and glycerin. These are generally regarded as harmless they’re found in toothpaste, hand sanitizer, asthma inhalers, and many other FDA-approved foods, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. There are also traces of nitrosamines, known carcinogens, but they are present at levels comparable to the patch and at far lower concentrations than in regular cigarettes 500- to 1,400-fold lower. Cadmium, lead and nickel may be there, too, but in amounts and forms considered nontoxic.
“Few, if any, chemicals at levels detected in electronic cigarettes raise serious health concerns,” a 2011study in the Journal of Health Policy determined. “A preponderance of the available evidence shows [e-cigarettes] to be much safer than tobacco cigarettes and comparable in toxicity to conventional nicotine replacement products.”
The potential for e-cigarettes to help people quit smoking is encouraging. Yet so far there has been little research on their effectiveness. A study published in the Lancet in November concluded that e-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were as effective as nicotine patches for helping smokers quit. Granted, patches have had a disappointing record in helping people stay off cigarettes for more than a few months. But there are reasons to think that e-cigarettes would be even more effective outside the laboratory.
Participants in the Lancet study were randomly assigned to nicotine e-cigarettes, patches orplacebo e-cigarettes. In the real world, of course, people get to choose. And e-cigarettes have several advantages over patches and gums. For one, they provide a quicker fix, because the pulmonary route is the fastest practical way to deliver nicotine to the brain. They also offer visual, tactile and gestural similiarities to traditional cigarettes.
Reporter Megan McArdle tested the comparison for a Bloomberg Businessweek article this month: “After I’d put it together, I had something surprisingly close to one of the cigarettes I used to smoke. The mentholated tobacco flavor rolled sinuously over my tongue, hit the back of my throat in an unctuously familiar cloud, and rushed through my capillaries, buzzing along my dormant nicotine receptors. The only thing missing was the unpleasant clawing feeling in my chest as my lungs begged me not to pollute them with tar and soot.”
This is where anti-smoking advocates get worried about e-cigarettes being too attractive and encouraging people, especially young people, to become addicted to nicotine and, in some cases, to progress to smoking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stoked concerns with data released in September showing that 1.78 million middle and high school students had tried e-cigarettes and that one in five middle school students who reported trying them said they hadn’t tried traditional cigarettes. “This raises concern that there may be young people for whom e-cigarettes could be an entry point to use of conventional tobacco products, including cigarettes,” the CDC concluded.
According to that same CDC study, however, an extremely small percentage of teenagers use e-cigarettes regularly only 2.8 percent of high school students reported using one in the previous 30 days in 2012. And while that number is rising it was 1.5 percent in 2011 teenage cigarette smoking rates are at record lows. That might suggest that increased exposure to e-cigarettes isn’t encouraging more people to smoke. But the numbers are so small that it’s too early to make definitive claims about the relationship between teen vaping and smoking.
Yes, we still need research on the long-term health and behavioral impacts of e-cigarettes. Brad Rodu, a pathologist at the University of Louisville, offers an apt analogy between electronic cigarettes and cellphones. When cellphones became popular in the late ’90s, there were no data on their long-term safety. As it turns out, the risk of a brain tumor with prolonged cellphone use is not zero, but it is very small and of uncertain health significance.
In the case of e-cigarettes, Rodu says that “at least a decade of continued use by thousands of users would need to transpire before confident assessments could be conducted.” Were the FDA to ban e-cigarette marketing until then, the promise of vaping would be put on hold. Meanwhile, millions of smokers who might otherwise switch would keep buying tobacco products. “We can’t say that decades of e-cigarette use will be perfectly safe,” Rodu told me, “but for cigarette users, we are sure that smoke is thousands of times worse.”
The FDA should call for reliable, informative labeling and safe manufacturing standards for e-cigarettes. It should also allay concerns about potential gateway use and youth addiction to nicotine by banning the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes to minors. It should not be heavyhanded in restricting marketing and sales to adults.
Instead, promoting electronic cigarettes to smokers should be a public health priority. Given that the direct medical costs of smoking are estimated to be more than $130 billion per year, along with $150 billion annually in productivity losses from premature deaths, getting more smokers to switch would result in significant cost savings as well as almost half a million lives saved each year.
We should make e-cigarettes accessible to smokers by eschewing hefty taxes, if we tax them at all, and offering free samples and starter kits. Those kits, which contain a battery, a charger and nicotine-liquid cartridges, typically run between $30 and $90. To reduce the hurdle to initiation, any payer of smoking-related costs health insurers, Veterans Affairs medical centers, companies that offer smoking-cessation programs for their employees, Medicare, Medicaid should make the starter kits available gratis. Users should have to pay for their own replacement cartridges, but those are much cheaper than cigarette packs.
Also, we should allow and welcome public vaping in adult environments such as bars, restaurants and workplaces. Vapers would serve as visual prompts for smokers to ask about vaping and, ideally, ditch traditional cigarettes and take up electronic ones instead.
It may be hard for anti-smoking activists to feel at ease with e-cigarettes in light of their view that traditional cigarette makers have long downplayed the health dangers of their product. This perception has generated distrust of anything remotely resembling the act of smoking. It doesn’t help that major tobacco companies are now investing in e-cigarettes.
But if we embrace electronic cigarettes as a way for smokers to either kick their nicotine addictions or, at least, obtain nicotine in a safer way, they could help instigate the wave of smoking cessation that anti-smoking activists and all of us are hoping for.
(Sally Satel is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a psychiatrist specializing in addiction. She has served as an expert witness in tobacco litigation. This commentary was distributed by Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.)
A controversial cigarette alternative – the electronic cigarette – is taking on a higher profile in Central New York with the opening of several stores that specialize in the product.
The two newest stores - called Evolution E-Cig - are in DeWitt on East Genesee Street across from Wegmans and in North Syracuse on South Main Street.
Electronic cigarettes, which are battery-operated devices designed to look like regular cigarettes, are soaring in popularity. Sales of the e-cigarettes, which turn nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals into a vapor that’s inhaled, are expected to double this year, hitting $1.7 billion nationwide.
E-cigarette stores spread in CNY: Are they safe?. Sales of the e-cigarettes, which turn nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals into a vapor that’s inhaled, are expected to double this year, hitting $1.7 billion nationwide.
What are e-cigarettes?
Controversy swirls around the e-cigarettes, with manufacturers and proponents saying they are a safe way to get people to quit regular cigarettes and are a safe alternative to smoking.
Many health officials and anti-cancer groups, however, say too little is known about e-cigarettes impact on the human body or what is in the liquids smoked in the devices.
The American Lung Association has strong concerns, said Michael Seilback, the group’s Northeast region vice president for public policy and communications.
“We simply don’t know what’s in the product as they are completely unregulated,” he said. “It’s like the wild, wild west out there. There are 250 or more different e-cigarette products out there, and each is made of different components.”
Some health experts point to preliminary studies that show potential carcinogenic chemicals in the vapor.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not made a determination on the safety of the product. The agency so far doesn’t regulate the sale of e-cigarettes although that’s expected to change down the road.
Some states, including New York, have made it illegal for those under 18 to purchase e-cigarettes. Opponents say young people are still trying them in record numbers, which they say often leads to tobacco use. The Centers for Disease Control found a 50 percent increase in e-cigarette use among middle school and high school students from 2011 to 2012.
Todd Harding, the co-owner of Evolution E-Cig, said his product is not a health risk. He said he uses pharmaceutical-grade products which aren’t imported from China in his liquid mixture, which is made on-site at both his stores.
“You want to know where the liquid is coming from, and with us you can see the product being made right in front of your eyes,” he said. “You aren’t getting the tar in your lungs with the e-cigarettes, and there are no carcinogens in the chemicals we use.”
Part of the attraction is the limitless flavors available, ranging from blueberry to tobacco to chocolate and specialty ones, such as Mountain Dew Code Red. Special flavors can be custom made. Harding said some people enjoy using e-cigarettes simply for the pleasure or doing it, and not as a way to stop smoking.
Some health officials, however, advise the public to be wary of using e-cigs until they have been studied thoroughly.
Patricia Briest, manager of the Tobacco Cessation Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, said there are too many unknowns about e-cigarettes.
“We also find that most people who use this revert back to tobacco,” she said. “The nicotine content varies, but it’s still addictive.”
Tim McAffe, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‘s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a medical journal article last month that switching to e-cigarettes over traditional cigarettes would be healthier, but noted that studies show most people wind up using both products.
If someone is considering an e-cigarette as a way to stop smoking, there are several FDA-approved tools like chewing gum to use instead, said Seilback, of the American Lung Association.
Harding, the business owner, hopes to capitalize on the growing demand for the product, with some analysts predicting the market could top $10 billion by 2017. In addition to the two stores here, Harding owns a store in Watertown and plans to open five more retail outlets in March in Albany, Plattsburgh and in Massachusetts.
Harding also plans to open an “e-cigarette lounge” in the DeWitt location, where people can mingle while they “vape,” the term used instead of smoking. He also expects the recent decision by CVS drug stores to stop selling cigarettes to help his business.
“We live in New York where it’s cold and you have to go outside to smoke,” Harding said. “With e-cigarettes, you can smoke inside because there’s no second-hand smoke.”
Should electronic cigarettes be regulated like tobacco products, emblazoned with warnings and subject to tight marketing restrictions? Those are among the questions before the Food and Drug Administration as it decides in the coming weeks how to handle the battery-powered cigarette mimics that have become a $1.5 billion business in the United States.
Groups promoting intensive regulation include the American Lung Association and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. They worry that the health risks haven’t been fully established and that e-cigarettes will make smoking commonplace again, especially among teens. They are quick to push back in response to anything that might make e-cigarettes more attractive, such as the NJOY King ad that aired during the Super Bowl or when actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were shown “vaping” at the Golden Globes.
A surgeon general’s report released last month, on the 50th anniversary of the office’s first warning about the dangers of smoking, had little to say about e-cigarettes. Its suggestions for further reducing tobacco use were familiar, including: increase taxes on cigarettes, prohibit indoor smoking, launch media campaigns and reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes.
E-cigarettes, however, could be what we need to knock the U.S. smoking rate from a stubborn 18 percent to the government’s goal of 12 percent by 2020. We should not only tolerate them but encourage their use.
Although critics stress the need for more research, we can say with high confidence that e-cigarettes are far safer than smoking. No tobacco leaves are combusted, so they don’t release the tars and gases that lead to cancer and other smoking-related diseases. Instead, a heating element converts a liquid solution into an aerosol that users exhale as a white plume.
The solution comes in varying concentrations of nicotine — from high (36 mg per milliliter of liquid) to zero — to help people wean themselves off cigarettes, as well as e-cigarettes, and the addictive stimulant in them. But even if people continue using electronic cigarettes with some nicotine, regular exposure has generally benign effects in healthy people, and the FDA has approved the extended use of nicotine gums, patches and lozenges.
The other main ingredients in e-cigarettes are propylene glycol and glycerin. These are generally regarded as harmless — they’re found in toothpaste, hand sanitizer, asthma inhalers, and many other FDA-approved foods, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. There are also traces of nitrosamines, known carcinogens, but they are present at levels comparable to the patch and at far lower concentrations than in regular cigarettes — 500- to 1,400-fold lower. Cadmium, lead and nickel may be there, too, but in amounts and forms considered nontoxic.
“Few, if any, chemicals at levels detected in electronic cigarettes raise serious health concerns,” a 2011 study in the Journal of Health Policy determined. “A preponderance of the available evidence shows [e-cigarettes] to be much safer than tobacco cigarettes and comparable in toxicity to conventional nicotine replacement products.”
The potential for e-cigarettes to help people quit smoking is encouraging. Yet so far there has been little research on their effectiveness. A study published in the Lancet in November concluded that e-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were as effective as nicotine patches for helping smokers quit. Granted, patches have had a disappointing record in helping people stay off cigarettes for more than a few months. But there are reasons to think that e-cigarettes would be even more effective outside the laboratory.
Participants in the Lancet study were randomly assigned to nicotine e-cigarettes, patches or placebo e-cigarettes. In the real world, of course, people get to choose. And e-cigarettes have several advantages over patches and gums. For one, they provide a quicker fix, because the pulmonary route is the fastest practical way to deliver nicotine to the brain. They also offer visual, tactile and gestural similiarities to traditional cigarettes.
Reporter Megan McArdle tested the comparison for a Bloomberg Businessweek article this month: “After I’d put it together, I had something surprisingly close to one of the cigarettes I used to smoke. The mentholated tobacco flavor rolled sinuously over my tongue, hit the back of my throat in an unctuously familiar cloud, and rushed through my capillaries, buzzing along my dormant nicotine receptors. The only thing missing was the unpleasant clawing feeling in my chest as my lungs begged me not to pollute them with tar and soot.”
This is where anti-smoking advocates get worried about e-cigarettes being too attractive and encouraging people — especially young people — to become addicted to nicotine and, in some cases, to progress to smoking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stoked concerns with data released in September showing that 1.78 million middle and high school students had tried e-cigarettes and that one in five middle school students who reported trying them said they hadn’t tried traditional cigarettes. “This raises concern that there may be young people for whom e-cigarettes could be an entry point to use of conventional tobacco products, including cigarettes,” the CDC concluded.
According to that same CDC study, however, an extremely small percentage of teenagers use e-cigarettes regularly — only 2.8 percent of high school students reported using one in the previous 30 days in 2012. And while that number is rising — it was 1.5 percent in 2011 — teenage cigarette smoking rates are at record lows. That might suggest that increased exposure to e-cigarettes isn’t encouraging more people to smoke. But the numbers are so small that it’s too early to make definitive claims about the relationship between teen vaping and smoking.
Yes, we still need research on the long-term health and behavioral impacts of e-cigarettes. Brad Rodu, a pathologist at the University of Louisville, offers an apt analogy between electronic cigarettes and cellphones. When cellphones became popular in the late ’90s, there were no data on their long-term safety. As it turns out, the risk of a brain tumor with prolonged cellphone use is not zero, but it is very small and of uncertain health significance.
In the case of e-cigarettes, Rodu says that “at least a decade of continued use by thousands of users would need to transpire before confident assessments could be conducted.” Were the FDA to ban e-cigarette marketing until then, the promise of vaping would be put on hold. Meanwhile, millions of smokers who might otherwise switch would keep buying tobacco products. “We can’t say that decades of e-cigarette use will be perfectly safe,” Rodu told me, “but for cigarette users, we are sure that smoke is thousands of times worse.”
The FDA should call for reliable, informative labeling and safe manufacturing standards for e-cigarettes. It should also allay concerns about potential gateway use and youth addiction to nicotine by banning the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes to minors. It should not be heavyhanded in restricting marketing and sales to adults.
Instead, promoting electronic cigarettes to smokers should be a public health priority. Given that the direct medical costs of smoking are estimated to be more than $130 billion per year, along with $150 billion annually in productivity losses from premature deaths, getting more smokers to switch would result in significant cost savings — as well as almost half a million lives saved each year.
We should make e-cigarettes accessible to smokers by eschewing hefty taxes, if we tax them at all, and offering free samples and starter kits. Those kits, which contain a battery, a charger and nicotine-liquid cartridges, typically run between $30 and $90. To reduce the hurdle to initiation, any payer of smoking-related costs — health insurers, Veterans Affairs medical centers, companies that offer smoking-cessation programs for their employees, Medicare, Medicaid — should make the starter kits available gratis. Users should have to pay for their own replacement cartridges, but those are much cheaper than cigarette packs.
Also, we should allow and welcome public vaping in adult environments such as bars, restaurants and workplaces. Vapers would serve as visual prompts for smokers to ask about vaping and, ideally, ditch traditional cigarettes and take up electronic ones instead.
It may be hard for anti-smoking activists to feel at ease with e-cigarettes in light of their view that traditional cigarette makers have long downplayed the health dangers of their product. This perception has generated distrust of anything remotely resembling the act of smoking. It doesn’t help that major tobacco companies are now investing in e-cigarettes.
But if we embrace electronic cigarettes as a way for smokers to either kick their nicotine addictions or, at least, obtain nicotine in a safer way, they could help instigate the wave of smoking cessation that anti-smoking activists — and all of us — are hoping for.
By Sally Satel
Sally Satel is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a psychiatrist specializing in addiction. She has served as an expert witness in tobacco litigation.
Bill Godshall is appalled that anyone – including public health officials or agencies – would deride electronic cigarettes as being a health hazard.
Godshall, executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania, a non-profit group that has for several decades urged states and Washington to adopt rigorous anti-smoking laws, says the war on e-cigarettes is a ruse to safeguard the monied interests of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.
He believes e-cigarettes, the battery powered devices that deliver nicotine without any of the harmful combustion of cigarettes, is simply a better mousetrap poised to edge out its competitors – cigarettes and nicotine replacement products such as gum and patches.
“It’s simple economics,” said Godshall, who campaigned for 25 years to get anti-smoking policies passed in Pennsylvania. “E-cigarettes are to cigarettes what the automobile was to the horse and buggy industry. They weren’t too happy. They wanted to ban cars.”
Godshall, in 2012, testified before the Food and Drug Administration to urge officials to refrain from imposing stiff regulations on e-cigarettes, which he believes, offer an irrefutably viable alternative to cigarettes and even a cessation method.
“They are saving lives,” he said. “My goal has always been saving the lives of smokers.”
Since their introduction in the United States in 2009, e-cigarettes have seen a surge in sales as a growing legion of adult smokers turn to them as an alternative to smoking – or a means to quit. The e-cigarette industry has grown into a $1.7 billion monster that threatens to topple the tobacco industry, some experts say within the nex decade.
No studies have confirmed that e-cigarettes successfully help smokers accomplish either; nor have any studies concluded the health impact of e-cigarettes.
The FDA has handed down no ruling on the regulation of e-cigarettes, but has come under growing pressure from public health organizations to regulate, restrict and in some cases, ban e-cigarettes.
Godshall claims the federal agency, most major universities that are conducting research into tobacco-related issues, and public health organizations are waging a war on e-cigarettes because they continue to receive millions of dollars from big pharma to promote products as the only viable way to quit smoking.
“If you receive millions of dollars to lobby and a new product comes along that is even better at smoking cessation what do you do?” Godshall said. He claims to have never received money from neither the tobacco industry, drug companies, nor e-cigarette makers.
E-cigarettes have in recent years come under attack from public health officials who claim little is known about their effects on health, and that they may be luring kids into nicotine addiction and cigarette use. Law enforcement officials have also filed reports that minors are using e-cigarettes to inhale illegal drugs.
“The anti-drug people are running around with fear mongering stories where local police chiefs are claiming children are smoking marijuana with e-cigarettes and this needs to be stopped,” Godshall said. “Where is the evidence. They still can’t find one kid who got addicted to e-cigarettes. Not one. I challenge them. The fact is I don’t think any child or teen in Pennsylvania has ever used e-cigarette to smoke marijuana.”
Godshall points out that while nicotine replacement products such as gums, lozenges and patches have a dismal 5 percent success rate at helping people kick the tobacco habit, the FDA continues to endorse it as a viable cessation method.
“That’s not public health information,” he said. “That’s called I want to keep my money flowing in from Big Pharma, so I will keep hawking their product.”
Godshall says e-cigarettes have helped more people quit smoking in the last five years than all the FDA-approved cessation products.
By his own calculation, Godshall estimates that last year e-cigarettes replaced 600 million packs of cigarettes (from being smoked). His calculation estimates that the 2.5 billion of cigarettes sold last year replaced $4.5 billion in cigarette sales, which, he said, comes to about 600 million packs.
The analysts forecasts the Global E-cigarette Market to grow with a CAGR of 30.56 percent for the period 2013-2018. Several driving factors and trends will contribute to this growth—all of which will be outlined with detail in this report.
The analysts use a unique methodology to scrutinize individual vendor performance, trends, drivers and challenges, and a number of other factors to provide the most accurate and detailed market research reports possible.
A more specific breakdown of this report’s contents is below.
Overview of market share and landscape for the following key geographies:
- Western Europe
- North America
- Eastern and Central Europe
- South America
- APAC
- ROW
Overview of market share and landscape for the following key countries:
- US
- Germany
- Russia
Contents:
Commenting on the report, an analyst from the team said: “The Global E-cigarette market is witnessing changes in lifestyle and preferences among people across the globe. The introduction of e-cigarettes in the Tobacco industry has found a way to lure a large number of smokers. E-cigarettes are being adopted among smokers who want to quit smoking tobacco but would like to continue vaping. Furthermore, e-cigarettes are becoming popular among children between the ages of 7 and 14 years. This in turn has led to criticism of e-cigarettes in many countries. However, the market is expected to witness huge growth in the demand for e-cigarettes from children during the forecast period.”
According to the report, the Global E-cigarette market is driven by many growth factors, one of which is high demand from North America and Europe. The increased adoption of e-cigarettes among smokers in the US and developed countries in Europe is propelling their demand, which in turn is creating revenue for the market.
Further, the report states that one of the major challenges is stringent government regulations and standards. E-cigarettes are banned in many countries, including some of the big economies such as Brazil and Japan. Many countries are planning to impose stringent regulations or even ban the sale of e-cigarettes.
The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.
Companies Mentioned
- Lorillard Inc.
- NJOY Inc.
- Vapor Corp.
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Most people wouldn’t mind electronic cigarette use near them, although approval of use in stores, restaurants, and other spaces covered by smoke-free laws came in lower, a national survey showed.
Fully 63% of American adults said they would not be bothered by someone “vaping” in close proximity in the survey conducted by mar
ket research firm Harris Interactive for e-cigarette maker Mistic.
Men were significantly more tolerant of e-cigarette use, with 71% stating they would not be bothered by the use of an e-cig in their vicinity, compared to 55% of women.
Also age was a factor: 70% of individuals ages 18-34 would not be bothered by someone nearby using an e-cigarette, compared with 46% of those aged 65 and over.
Approval ratings among respondents who stated an opinion were highest for use at sporting events (58%) and fell from there to:
47% for malls
45% for restaurants and bars
35% for offices
29% for movie theaters
26% for airplanes
“Because the e-cigarette is a relatively new consumer product, there are a lot of questions about government regulation and whether these devices should be allowed in certain places,” Mistic CEO John Wiesehan Jr., said in a release. “This survey serves as an important first step in setting the benchmark for public opinion.”
Only a dozen states limit or ban e-cigarette use in public spaces, while less than one in five cities and towns with the stiffest smoke-free laws do so, according to the databases of theAmericans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
A few more are expected to join that list, like Chicago and New York City, but these are early days without any federal regulation.
It’s deja vu back to the ’80s before public opinion started to shift against smoke exposure, noted Cynthia Hallett, MPH, executive director of that Berkley, Calif., nonprofit.
It took a Surgeon General’s report highlighting the health risks of second-hand smoke to nonsmokers to generate wide support for smoke-free laws, she explained.
“We’re back in that stage where [e-cigarettes] are still relatively new, the science is still being developed,” she told MedPage Today. “I think that this survey right no
w reflects the fact that the public health community isn’t out there with information about what’s in the secondhand vapor.”
Another study released last week by the same group showed third-hand exposure from e-cigarettes too.
Nicotine concentrations left on the floor after vaping averaged 24 ng/cm2 and about 4 to 5 ng/cm2 on glass and metal surfaces, Maciej L. Goniewicz, PharmD, PhD, of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., and colleagues reported.
Nicotine deposits are “incredibly difficult to remove” and actually increase in potential harm over time as they react with oxidants to form carcinogens, the group pointed out in their poster presentation at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco meeting in Seattle.
“From where I sit, the more science that comes out, the more damning it is that there are toxicants, fine particulates, and volatile organic compounds in that e-cigarette vapor are dangerous,” Hallett commented. “E-cigarettes may be less polluting than say a combustible tobacco cigarette, but there are still pollutants in that e-cigarette and in that vapor that could be harmful.”
She cautioned that an unknown proportion of survey respondents were likely smokers, given that about 20% of American adults use tobacco.
The survey consisted of telephone responses from 1,011 Americans ages 18 and over, weighted for age, sex, geographic region, and race to reflect the national population.
Only 2% of respondents said they didn’t know what an e-cigarette was.
The survey was sponsored by e-cigarette maker Mistic.
The study was supported by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
A study co-author reported research support from Pfizer, maker of smoking cessation medications.
By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner
When electronic cigarettes made their debut in the United States just a few years ago, they generated some curiosity, mostly from skeptical smokers.
The devices quickly stirred up debate about whether they were appropriate for the workplace and other public places, and even whether they had replaced the sinister chemicals of cigarettes with unknown but equally harmful ingredients.
Unless you know of someone who uses e-cigarettes — or use them yourself — you probably are under the impression that they have been banished to that dustbin of newfangled products that promise miraculous results for the consumer.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
In the past five years, the e-cigarette industry has grown exponentially in the United States into a $1.7 billion moneymaker. Millions of users who have tried the battery-powered devices — which deliver liquid nicotine without any of the harmful chemicals — have converted over to them, many sharing compelling testimonials of how the devices helped them to once and for all beat a lifelong habit.
Sales of e-cigarettes have seen such tremendous growth, some business forecasters predict that in a matter of 10 years, the e-cigarette industry will have surpassed the behemoth tobacco industry.
Little is known about the effects of e-cigarettes. Five years after they landed in stores, e-cigs remain free from federal government regulation.
Yet, against this backdrop, little is known about the effects of e-cigarettes to users and those around them. And five years after they landed in stores, e-cigarettes remain free of federal government regulation, and widely, with few exceptions, unencumbered by state laws.
After decades of aggressive anti-smoking policies and campaigns, e-cigarettes still struggle to gain a positive public image, the perception about e-cigarettes at best uninformed.
Meanwhile, public health officials increasingly are calling on government agencies and state legislatures to fast-track restrictions on a product that, many of them say, has not been completely cleared by empirical research.
Electronic cigarettes vaping overviewKeith Kepler of Susquehanna Township shows the parts of an electronic cigarette vaping device. After smoking for 43 years, he now uses a vaping device, and plans to open a retail store to sell electronic vaping devices and supplies in Linglestown.
Beginning today, PennLive will present a comprehensive look at this growing and promising industry. We will wade into topics of health and medical research to see what, if any, findings have been documented about e-cigarettes.We’ll update you on the laws and regulations governing the devices, and we’ll bring you stories of lifelong smokers whose lives have been radically altered by this invention.
Throughout the week, we invite readers to weigh in and share their thoughts on e-cigarettes. Should they be banned from public places and workspaces? Should they be regulated — even taxed — like tobacco products? Are their concerns that they may lure kids into smoking or emit harmful chemicals, not yet known?
The move to regulate nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes has highlighted the lack of research about their health hazards, leading to a backlash from consumers who use the device as a nicotine-replacement therapy.
Though some users think these e-cigarettes are a godsend, helping them quit or cut back on real cigarettes, the lack of research into their long-term effects is “a cause for concern,” says Dr. Milan Khara, clinical director of the Tobacco Dependence Clinic at Vancouver Coastal Health Addiction Services in British Columbia.
“Though it is highly probable that e-cigarette vapour is much less harmful than smoke, it is not the case that the vapour is certainly harmless,” Khara says in an email.
Despite the lack of conclusive evidence one way or the other, many countries have taken aggressive approaches to the regulation of e-cigarettes. In Canada, e-cigarettes that deliver nicotine are considered drugs under the Food and Drugs Act, says Health Canada spokesperson Leslie Meerburg. Companies wishing to sell them must submit scientific evidence to Health Canada demonstrating safety, quality and efficacy. To date, none of these products has been granted marketing authorization.
E-cigarettes without nicotine can be legally sold in Canada, but are subject to the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, which means companies must ensure the products they manufacture, import, advertise or sell don’t pose dangers to human health or safety.
In Nova Scotia, a seller of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes recently received a cease-and-desist letter from Health Canada for violating the Food and Drugs Act. The province’s government has also promised to soon create e-cigarette regulations. Store owners in other parts of the country have also received cease-and-desists letters, though several are disputing the government’s request to stop selling nicotine-containing e-cigarettes.
In Europe, regulation of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes depends on where you live. A court in France recently ruled that these e-cigarettes qualify as tobacco products and must be sold by registered tobacconists. The European Union, however, ruled that e-cigarettes can be sold as consumer products, though countries could independently decide whether to regulate them as medical devices.
E-cigarettes marketed in the United States as therapeutic devices are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Other e-cigarettes are not yet regulated, though a rule has been proposed to bring them under the control of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products.
The FDA does warn consumers, however, that little is known about the potential risks, possible benefits or how much nicotine or other chemicals are being inhaled. “Additionally, it is not known if e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other tobacco products, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death,” the agency warned in a recent release.
Some parts of the US aren’t waiting for the FDA to issue regulations. New York City has banned all e-cigarettes in bars, restaurants, parks and other public areas. Similar measures have been taken in Utah, North Dakota, Arkansas and areas of California.
Regulated or not, e-cigarettes are touted by many users, or “vapers,” as a blessing. Sean Phillips, 31, of Toronto, Ontario, has been using e-cigarettes with nicotine “e-juice” since 2009, after smoking for 13 years. He once smoked up to 40 cigarettes a day.
“I knew if I didn’t quit, it would eventually kill me, but my will power is very weak and I was hopelessly addicted,” he says.
He stopped smoking after finding “a good e-cigarette,” says Phillips, and doesn’t plan to start as long as he has access to “e-juice.”
Phillips purchases his hardware from a Canadian vendor but buys liquid nicotine online from the United States. “I usually tell the US vendor to not label the juice as containing nicotine, even though it does, so it will get past customs. I have made over 40 juice orders from the States and only lost one to customs agents,” he says. “Cigarettes are killers and are available at every corner store. E-cigarettes are many magnitudes safer than cigarettes, yet face a ban.”
John White, 49, of Kitchener, Ontario, says he exhausted all his options for quitting smoking before trying an e-cigarette with nicotine. “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even try, and I had quit smoking,” he says.
White says he’s aware of the lack of research on e-cigarettes. Although he would be interested in seeing more research, White thinks e-cigarettes should be evaluated in comparison with cigarettes in terms of research and health hazards.
The sound of clicking lighters is increasingly being replaced by glowing light and silent vapor. This is a part of a trend across the nation toward the adoption of e-cigarettes as a replacement for old-fashioned tobacco smokes.
