E-cigarettes: A lone activist fights to protect them from regulation

 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.

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com 

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E-cigarettes: A lone activist fights to protect them from regulation