Tag Archives: e-cigs

Study: E-cigs may contain more formaldehyde than actual cigarettes

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This is a big story I saw on NBC News, and

real startling news that’s leading me to change my attitude about e-cigs. I’m sure it had the e-cig companies scrambling afterward.

According to a study from the New England Journal of Medicine, the level of formaldehyde in e-cigarettes may be as much as 15 times higher than an actual tobacco cigarette, especially if you use e-cigs at a “high voltage” setting. (I didn’t realize you could change the voltage settings of an e-cig.)

From the NBC News article:

“It’s way too early now from an epidemiological point of view to say how bad they are,” said co-author James F. Pankow, professor of chemistry and engineering at Portland State University in Oregon. “But the bottom line is, there are toxins and some are more than in regular cigarettes. And if you are vaping, you probably shouldn’t be using it at a high-voltage setting.”

Pankow and his colleagues analyzed aerosolized e-liquid in “tank system” e-cigarettes to detect formaldehyde-releasing agents in “hidden” form at various voltages.

They found that vaping 3 milligrams of e-cigarette liquid at a high voltage can generate 14 milligrams of loosely affiliated or “hidden” formaldehyde. Researchers estimated a tobacco smoker would get .15 milligrams of formaldehyde per cigarette or 3 milligrams in a 20-pack.

Pankow told NBC News those numbers “may be conservative.”

“We are not saying e-cigarettes are more hazardous than cigarettes,” he said. “We are only looking at one chemical. … The jury is really out on how safe these drugs are.”

“A lot of people make the assumption that e-cigarettes are safe and they are perfectly fine after using for a year,” said Pankow. “The hazards of e-cigarettes, if there are any, will be seen 10 to 15 years from now when they start to appear in chronic users.”

I think the message here is a lot is still unknown about e-cigs and the chemical compounds they release when liquid is heated into steam. They’re not completely benign and harmless, especially for kids finding a different delivery system to get hooked to nicotine.

Formaldehyde is just one of many carcinogenic compounds found in cigarettes. Others include benzene, arsenic, vinyl chloride, Polunium-210, acetone, toluene and a bunch more.

Venture Bros.’ Brock Samson quits smoking, now he vapes

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Brock Samson is a chain-smoking assassin and bodyguard character on the Venture Brothers. In fact, the Venture Bros. have a long history of making fun of smoking and cigarettes.

In the new Venture Bros. special aired this weekend, I noticed that Brock no longer smokes. He was smoking an e-cig! I thought that was pretty funny. I didn’t like so much that it was a fairly blatant ad for Blu E-cigs, because it was obviously a Blu he was vaping. I don’t know why that cracked me up, but it did. I wonder when they decided that Brock should quit smoking, I haven’t watched the show much in the last couple of years because new episodes just became so spotty.

Here are some various characters from Venture Brothers smoking over the years and smoking jokes on the show. The show airs at 11 p.m. and is geared toward adults. Trust me, the smoking is the tamest stuff on the show sometimes.

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EPILOGUE

In the special epilogue of the Venture Brothers that you have to watch online, Brock Samson is back smoking.

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E-cig legislative roundup: Possible ban on e-cig sales to minors in Montana; Michigan governor vetoes e-cig bills; Island of Hawaii bans e-cigs in public places

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A bill was introduced during this session of the Montana State Legislature to ban e-cigarette sales to minors. I find this is a tad odd because the Food and Drug Administration is considering rules to ban e-cigarette sales to minors nationwide. However, I have no idea what the timeline is for those final FDA rules — it could be another year or more. The FDA draft rules released several months ago generated 135,000 comments which the FDA is still sorting through.

According to this Independent story on the bill, Montana is just one of 10 states in the country that still allows e-cigarette sales to minors. This story is pretty sympathetic to a local vaping store. The owner claims that he will sell e-cigarettes to kids under 18 only if they have a permission slip from their parent and that he never sells nicotine products to kids. (Colour me cynical …. but my bullshit alarm was going off somewhat on that one. In any case, I’ve seen plenty of kids buying e-cig products pretty easily at Montana minimarts, all this guy has to do is sell the inhaler.)

“I do know of quite a few kids that have curtailed their [tobacco] habit or quit it all together by replacing it with something that’s not nearly as harmful as the tobacco products,” said store co-owner Mark Townsend.

Well, maybe, but again, my bullshit alarm is going off. The data is pretty sketchy about whether or not e-cigs help people quit smoking. I can believe for a 20- or 30-year smoker who has tried everything else, why not use e-cigarettes to quit? But, where the store owner is wrong is studies have shown that more kids are using e-cigs now rather than cigarettes not to quit smoking, but because they are easy to get and kids have been given the idea they’re harmless. They’re going straight to e-cigs to begin with. And that’s nicotine. And that’s still turning them into nicotine junkies.

Anyway, according to Alex Clark, legislative director for the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association, his group has a concern with language in the bill lumping e-cigarettes in with tobacco products. Clarks calls this “an intentional, almost politically motivated mischaracterization.” The whole issue of lumping e-cigs in with tobacco products is pretty controversial, as we will see in Michigan.

Michigan bills vetoed

Gov. Rick Snyder this week vetoed bills regulating e-cigarettes and it sounds like a good thing, because it sounded like some sneaky kind of pro-e-cigarette industry end-around. I don’t have all the details, but one of the problems with these bills is they specifically designated e-cigs as a non-tobacco product, but would exclude other non-tobacco nicotine products from this definition (like nicotine gum or other types of inhalers, I assume). The legislation would have banned e-cig sales to minors. Like I said earlier, this is happening soon on a national level anyway.

Snyder vetoed the bills, saying the bills did not go far enough and would have just created confusion about e-cig regulation when the FDA is addressing this on a federal level. It’s telling to me that health organizations praised the vetoes, while the loudest critic was a Republican legislator, which makes me suspicious about what his real motives are.

“We need to make sure that e-cigarettes and other nicotine-containing devices are regulated in the best interest of public health,” Snyder said in a statement. “It’s important that these devices be treated like tobacco products and help people become aware of the dangers e-cigarettes pose.”

According to this story, the Michigan State Medical Society, which represents 15,000 doctors, praised Snyder.

“These bills would have been a giant step backwards, and Gov. Snyder was wise to veto them,” said James Grant, M.D., the group’s president.

Hawaii bans e-cigs in public places

The Island of Hawaii (not the whole state, just the Big Island), recently passed an ordinance banning e-cigs in public places islandwide. Essentially, e-cigs will be treated the same as cigarettes. Not only can you not use an e-cig in a bar or a restaurant, but they are banned at beaches and parks. (Maybe a bit much since e-cigs don’t have the littering issue that cigarettes have.)

More and more cities are banning e-cigs in public places as people simply don’t trust that the steam from e-cigs is completely benign. I don’t think there is a statewide public ban on e-cigs yet, but I like that they are getting people’s attention.

CNN report on the rise of e-cigarettes among teens — “Are e-cigs really the Wild West?”

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CNN did a piece Dec. 31 (Hey, the report includes that sucky Blu ad I hate with the racecar-driving Stephen Dorff).

When asked by CNN correspondent Poppy Harlow if e-cigs are “really the Wild West,” Mitchell Zeller, director of the Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products, responds, “Absolutely. They are currently unregulated.” Zeller goes on to say, “it took us way too long to get the proposed rule out.”

That “proposed rule” Zeller is referring to are FDA regulations being developed to govern the sale of e-cigs. Unfortunately, as they currently stand, those regulations pretty much only do one thing — ban the sale of e-cig products to kids under 18. That’s a good start, but other than that, nothing of substance. No control over that flashy, sexy e-cigarette advertising and no controls over the sugary and fruity nicotine flavours. I know the FDA is getting pressured to crack down on e-cig marketing and candy flavours, but who knows if their final rules will change from the draft the agency released a few months ago.

Zeller was also asked if the recent boom in e-cig use by kids threatens to create a whole new generation of nicotine addicts. (Nicotine is not the most toxic substance in cigarettes, but it is shockingly physically addictive.)

Wow, I didn’t know this. There are actually cotton candy and Gummy Bear e-cigarette flavours. Harlow asks a tobacco industry lobbyist if he could defend those kinds of flavours and even a lobbyist said he can’t.

“I wouldn’t go into a member of Congress’ office and say we need to protect candy-like flavours,” said tobacco lobbyist John Scofield.

Not real new information for me, but I’m glad to see CNN jumping on this story.

Survey: More teens now using e-cigs than cigarettes

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OK, I alluded to this in my previous posts, and here’s why I wasn’t aware of this — because this study just came out two or three days ago. I thought I was out of it or something.

According to a 2014 Monitoring the Future survey, more teens are now using e-cigs than cigarettes.

Thank you very much, wildly successful Blu E-Cigs marketing campaign.

Good news, bad news. Because cigarettes are bad … but e-cigs are still addictive and hence not a big improvement.

According to this U.S. News and World Report story

Survey results released Tuesday show more than 17.1 percent of high school seniors said they used an e-cigarette in the past month, while just 13.6 percent said they used a traditional cigarette in the previous 30 days.

The gap was wider among younger students. About 16.2 percent of high school sophomores used an e-cigarette in the past month, whereas 7.2 percent used a conventional cigarette. For eighth-grade students, self-reported e-cigarette use was also more than double the conventional use rate, at 8.7 and 4 percent, respectively.

Wow, this just sucks, in my opinion. I want to be happy about the decline in smoking, but nicotine is nicotine and in whatever form, it’s one of the most addictive substances on the planet. All these kids are just finding a different delivery system to get addicted to nicotine.

The FDA is set to impose new rules banning e-cig sales to minors, but is punting on regulating e-cig marketing, which has been incredibly blatant in trying to make e-cigs look sexy and exciting.

 

USA Today editorial: If the FDA won’t crack down on the marketing of e-cigs, perhaps states should

USA Today published an interesting editorial this week on how to stop the explosion of e-cig use by teenagers.

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The editorial first brings up a shocking statistic (shocking to me, at least) — that the percentage of kids under 18 who have used e-cigs (17 percent) is now higher than the percentage of kids who have smoked cigarettes (14 percent). Wow, I’m sure that number has been out there, but I never noticed it before.

The rate of teen smoking has nosedived in the past two or three years, in some states dropping below 10 percent. There’s your biggest reason why, unfortunately.

E-cigs might have some value for helping some people quit cigarettes when everything else has failed. However, they are being used as a substitute for cigarettes by too many kids — not people trying to quit a 20-year habit.

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed a series of rules for e-cigs (since e-cigs contain nicotine, the FDA has regulatory authority). One rule is fine — banning e-cig sales to minors under 18. However, the agency noticeably failed to propose any control over how e-cigs are marketed, even though the federal government does have the power to control the marketing of cigarettes (through both the Federal Trade Commission and the FDA.).

E-cig companies, the biggest of which (Blu) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of RJ Reynolds, have been brazenly aggressive in marketing e-cigs as cool, hip and sexy, deploying the exact same marketing techniques used by Big Tobacco for decades to make cigarettes appear alluring to teens.

From the USA Today editorial:

For manufacturers, the logic is inescapable: Addict a teenager and you could have a customer for life; miss the moment and you have no customer at all. So in ways subtle and not so subtle, e-cigarette makers have applied Big Tobacco’s advertising and marketing practices.

One prominent tactic is their use of celebrities — including former Playboy centerfold Jenny McCarthy, singer Courtney Love, actor Stephen Dorff and teen heartthrob Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame — to make “vaping” look sexy and rebellious.

USA Today acknowledges that with a very conservative Congress being sworn in in January 2015, that could tie the FDA’s hands somewhat in developing new regulations for e-cigs. So, as an alternative, it proposes that state attorneys general use the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with Big Tobacco to clamp down on e-cig advertising.

From USA Today:

Alternatively, states could fill the breach. Nearly a dozen still allow e-cigarette sales to minors when they plainly should not. They could also use the 1998 tobacco settlement negotiated with the industry long before e-cigarettes existed. The accord defines covered products in a way that includes e-cigarettes, because nicotine is derived from tobacco.

By invoking the settlement, state attorneys general would be able to clamp down on marketing that’s targeted at youth, including certain celebrity promotions, concert sponsorships and access to free samples.

After a decades-long battle against youth smoking, it would be tragic to see a new generation of teens hooked on a different but potentially dangerous substitute.

I have no idea if such a tactic would work, but I personally think something needs to be done to crack down on these commercials and stem the tide of the explosion of e-cig use among kids. I think the FDA is wimping out here — screw Congress, the FDA is part of the Executive branch, they don’t answer to Ted Cruz, they answer to Obama.

Whatever it takes to tackle this problem head-on.

 

Good news, bad news — CDC: Teen smoking lower than ever, but largely because of e-cigs

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According to a survey from the Centers for Disease Control released this week, the teen smoking rate in the 2013 dropped to its lowest recorded level — 12.7 percent (down from 14 percent in 2012 and 15.8 percent in 2011).

This is pretty impressive when you consider the teen smoking rate was 28 percent in 2000, so the rate has been cut by more than one-half in 13.

Sounds great at first, unfortunately, there’s more to the story. Anti-tobacco education funding has been dropping for the past 15 years, so what’s really behind these numbers (I would like to think that seeing less smoking in movies and TV is a factor.)?

Unfortunately, the rise of e-cigs is probably one of the biggest factors. According to the group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the rate of teens using e-cigs has jumped from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 4.5 percent in 2013 (in raw numbers, that’s an increase from 250,000 kids in 2011 to 760,000 kids in 2013).

Combine the smoking and e-cig numbers (crude mathematics, because it doesn’t take into account kids smoking and using e-cigs both, but I’m just doing it to make a point). In 2011, that combined number would be 17.3 percent of kids using some nicotine product. In 2013, number would be 17.2 percent using a nicotine product.

I believe that is probably giving a pretty fair picture of what’s really going on. Fewer kids taking up smoking, more kids taking up e-cigs.

Now, e-cigs are not as bad as cigarettes, they don’t contain anywhere near the same level of carcinogens as cigarettes, but they still contain nicotine, which isn’t any good for you and is incredibly addictive. Also, the jury is out about whether e-cig use will eventually lead to cigarette use.

Numbers on a smaller scale from the state of Minnesota paint a similar picture.

From a Minneapolis Star-Tribune article:

An estimated 15,000 students have tried e-cigarettes without having tried any traditional tobacco products before, according to results from the 2014 Minnesota Youth Tobacco Survey released Monday. Overall, 12.9 percent of high-schoolers said they had tried e-cigarettes in the 30 days prior to the survey.

By comparison, just 10.6 percent of high school students said they had smoked traditional cigarettes within the previous 30 days — down from 18.1 percent in 2011.

The survey, which included more than 4,200 students from 70 schools, suggests that e-cigarettes are now more popular among teens than the real thing.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is using these numbers as a clarion call for the Food and Drug Administration to crack down harder on e-cigs.

The FDA a few months ago proposed a set of regulations on e-cigs that were fairly lax. The best part of these proposed regulations was banning sales to kids under 18. However, there was absolutely zero in the proposed regs to crack down on e-cig advertising, which uses many of the same techniques used by cigarette makers to make cigarettes look cool and suave. Activists also want the FDA to crack down on sweet flavourings for e-cigs (I’m not as worked up about this, but I do want the FDA to curtail the advertising.).

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids sees it the way I do:

This increase [of e-cig use] comes as e-cigarette makers have marketed their products with the same tactics long used to market regular cigarettes to kids, including celebrity endorsements, slick TV and magazine ads, sponsorships of race cars and concerts, and sweet flavors such as gummi bear and cotton candy.

Minnesota officials agree:

Given looser restrictions on marketing “vaping” products, Dr. Ed Ehlinger, state health commissioner, said he worries that Minnesota youths will try the new devices and eventually develop addictions to nicotine.

“I have a real sense of déjà vu about e-cigarettes,” said Ehlinger, who cited the youth marketing — now outlawed — that drew children and teens to cigarettes years ago.

France cracks down on e-cigarettes, tobacco packaging

France, which all but epitomizes European cool when it comes to cigarettes, is proposing to impose strict new rulesE-cigarettes regulation on the public use of e-cigarettes.

A bill has been introduced that would ban the use of e-cigs in public places.

I loved this response from a French spokesman for tobacco products:

The president of the French Tobacconists’ Confederation, Pascal Montredon, told the Guardian that Touraine was being unrealistic by modelling her reforms on “Anglo-saxon” countries such as Australia and Britain where the cigarette distribution network is completely different from France.

“Tobacconists are fed up with being stigmatised at a time when instead the government should be doing something about the unemployment rate,” he said. The confederation is pressing for e-cigarettes to be sold solely in tobacconist stores, but the proposed legislation fails to address this, he said.

Modeling reforms on “Anglo-Saxon” countries like Britain and Australia. Too funny. (Apparently, Australia has banned e-cig use in public according to this story).

Don’t have a strong opinion one way or another on this, other than I think it highlights that people really don’t trust e-cigs and don’t trust that the steam coming out of them is  completely benign. A few cities in the U.S. have banned e-cigs in public places, I don’t believe any states have, though I’m sure bills have been introduced.

This will be interesting to watch, because much of western Europe has imposed the same kind of strict anti-smoking measures seen in the U.S. (I have no idea how strictly they are enforced), which is a boon for the e-cig industry. Because people can’t smoke in bars anymore, now they can vape instead … except a lot of people aren’t comfortable with that nicotine-laced steam and don’t want to be around it.

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In addition, France is also set to require plain packaging on cigarettes, much as Australia has done. Again, French tobacco spokespeople are not happy:

Celine Audibert, spokeswoman for French firm Seita, which is a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco, slammed the move as “completely incomprehensible”.

“It’s based on the Australian experience which, more than a failure, was a complete fiasco,” added Audibert.

In 2012, Australia forced all cigarettes to be sold in identical, olive-brown packets bearing the same typeface and largely covered with graphic health warnings.

Oh, boo hoo Celine. How was it a “fiasco?” Because Imperial Tobacco’s profits declined? No matter the culture or location, tobacco weasels all speak the same language.

BTW, graphic warnings on cigarette packages was derailed on First Amendment grounds, but I found a really fascinating story about this that I will post later.

CDC: E-cig use more than doubles among teens — see, I TOLD YOU

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The Centers for Disease Control released a report last month (in a major catch-up mode right now with the Lounge going down for a couple of weeks), that the use of e-cigs  more than doubled from 2011-2012.

I reiterate … I reiterate until I make your eyes bleed reading it, I don’t have a problem with e-cigs EXCEPT for the way they are being marketed to kids. Sure enough, according to the CDC, the use of e-cigs rose from 4.7 in 2011 to more than 10 percent in 2012 among high school and middle school kids (I cringe at what the rate is today, it takes a year or two to compile this data.). 10 percent in 2012? That rate might be 25 or 30 percent by 2014.

According to the CDC press release:

“These data show a dramatic rise in usage of e-cigarettes by youth, and this is cause for great concern as we don’t yet understand the long-term effects of these novel tobacco products,” said Mitch Zeller, director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “These findings reinforce why the FDA intends to expand its authority over all tobacco products and establish a comprehensive and appropriate regulatory framework to reduce disease and death from tobacco use.”

Unlike cigarettes, there are absolutely no regulations regarding the marketing of e-cigs. Big Tobacco in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement agreed to stop marketing — at least blatantly marketing — to teens. That meant no more Joe Camel, and no more product placement of tobacco products in PG and PG-13 movies. The MSA was a badly flawed agreement, but that is genuinely one of  the really good things that came out of it — marketing of tobacco products to kids (or what Big Tobacco calls, “new smokers,”) has ostensibly stopped.

However, the FDA recently completely punted on controlling the marketing of e-cigs to kids. The FDA did ban e-cig sales to minors, but run away like a spinless banshee from the idea of controlling the advertising of e-cigs, apparently paranoid over a First Amendment lawsuit (never mind the fact that nicotine is now officially a federally controlled substance, like Vicodin or codeine, which means the FDA has the regulatory authority over how it’s promoted … it’s THEM, not ME). Me — and thousands of others, hopefully — wrote the FDA about this and told them they were screwing the pooch on this issue and hopefully when the agency releases the final version of its regs, it will show more spine over marketing of e-cigs. Then again, I’m not holding my breath.

I’m perfectly OK with e-cigs being used by people trying to quit cigarettes, especially as a last resort when all else has failed, in fact I’ve urged my brother to try e-cigs, but I am not OK with kids using e-cigs instead of cigarettes. E-cigs still contain nicotine, which is a staggering addictive substance and it doesn’t do anyone any good for kids to get physically addicted to something that has little other value than a short-term jolt of energy.

 

 

 

WHO: Regulate e-cigs, control marketing to teens

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I missed this a couple of weeks ago. The World Health Organization came out with a very strongly worded statement ripping e-cigs, over both their marketing and lack of regulations.

WHO, a United Nations agency, joins the American Heart Association in expressing strong concerns about the exponential growth of mostly unregulated e-cigs. WHO specifically talks about its concerns that the tobacco industry, seeing cigarettes in decline and a booming new industry in e-cigs, is getting aggressively involved in the e-cig business. (Blu E-Cigarettes, which is the No. 1 e-cig company, was purchased last year by Lorillard, which in turn is being purchased by RJ Reynolds.

In its report, released late last month, WHO specifically calls for:

* Stopping the marketing to teens

* Banning them in public places

I’m 100 percent for the FDA to control the marketing of e-cigs to teenagers, as I see this as by far the biggest problem with e-cigs. More and more kids instead of becoming addicted to nicotine through cigarettes, are becoming just as addicted to nicotine through e-cigs. And the industry has been incredibly blatant in marketing to kids. In my opinion, the FDA has this power over tobacco products because tobacco products contain a controlled substance — nicotine — and thus the agency has the same power over e-cig marketing. However, in its draft regulations on e-cigs released several months ago, the FDA completely punted on the marketing issue and instead focused on banning sales to teenagers, which to me is just a start.

I’m not so worked up about banning them in public places, at least not yet, because the effects of the e-cigs’ steam doesn’t appear to be nearly as bad as cigarette smoke (studies are mixed on this and I’m trying to keep an open mind on it.)

WHO doesn’t have any regulatory authority so its report is simply a recommendation to world governments.

Not everyone is on board with the WHO recommendations as a number of public health officials signed a letter asking WHO not to overreact and over-regulate e-cigs because of their potential health benefits of helping some smokers quit.