Category Archives: e-cigs

UK study: E-cigarettes not effective in the longterm in helping smokers quit

May 23, 2015 Pepe Lepew

This study is going to go against a lot of anecdotal stories that I see repeatedly on the Internet. A study done in the UK has shown that E-cigarettes are not very effective for helping smokers quit and that most smokers who use E-cigs as a smoking cessation tool are back smoking within six months.

In a way, it’s not terribly shocking because the biggest problem with using e-cigs to quit is that the smoker is keeping the nicotine in his or her system and is not kicking the nicotine … which is ultimately what a smoker must do in the long run. I’ve seen a lot of e-cig advocates online touting them as a great help in quitting smoking. They claim you can slowly ratchet down the amount of nicotine you’re inhaling over the course of a few weeks.

I’m sure they’re a great help for some people, but I’ve also sure wondered at times how many of those people online telling these great success stories about e-cigs are actually from the marketing or public relations department of Blu E-cigs and other e-cig companies.

These findings were based on a review of 22 studies on e-cigs involving a total of 2,223 smokers. The study states that e-cigs seem pretty effective in helping smokers quit for three to six months, but after six months, most of the e-cig users were back on cigarettes. (So maybe some of the anecdotal stories I’ve read are coming from people in that three- to six-month period in which the e-cigs are still working.).

Scientists behind the study said that if smokers are serious about quitting, they should probably try more traditional methods, such as patches or gum, rather than e-cigs.

From the article:

Lead author Dr Riyad al-Lehebi, of the University of Toronto, said nicotine patches and other aids to help people quit should be used if there is no evidence e-cigarettes help people kick the habit.

E-cigarette users took up smoking again within six months, and the devices caused side effects like a dry cough, throat irritation and shortness of breath (file photo)

He said: ‘Although e-cigarettes are widely promoted and used as a smoking cessation tool, we found no data supporting their long-term efficacy and safety.

‘While e-cigarettes have been shown to significantly improve abstinence at one month compared with placebo, no such evidence is available supporting their effectiveness for longer periods.

‘Until such data are available, there are a number of other smoking cessation aids available that have a more robust evidence base supporting their efficacy and safety.’

Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: ‘Smoking remains the number one cause of preventable death in the UK, and we would encourage smokers who wish to quit to first try more well-established methods like smoking cessation services.

‘E-cigarettes are likely to be much less harmful then smoking conventional cigarettes so people who can switch using e-cigarettes have taken a big step forward.

‘However, the use of e-cigarettes is still relatively new, and these studies serve as a reminder that there may be potential risks attached to the long-term use of e-cigarettes so users, especially those living with a lung condition such as COPD and asthma, should try to quit them too.

My biggest issue with e-cigs isn’t whether they are an effective or ineffective smoking cessation tool. It’s the fact that a number of e-cig companies are very blatantly marketing to teens and kids with sexy and suave ads mirroring the sexy and suave ads used by Big Tobacco for several decades. Largely because of this advertising, and the lack of regulations over e-cig sales, teen use of e-cigs is skyrocketing while teen use of cigarettes is plummeting. To me, this is not the right answer. Nicotine is nicotine whatever the delivery system and It’s still massively addictive and this study shows to me that e-cigs are not an effective substitute for tobacco.

Blu, E-cig advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Simpsons

The Simpsons’ epic takedown of e-cigarettes and e-cig marketing to kids

May 13, 2015 Pepe Lepew

simpsons vaping 2 — I screencapped this off of Hulu, that is why there is a caption in the upper left-hand corner.

I absolutely LOVED this episode of the Simpsons. I want to give Matt Groening a big hug. Last week, the Simpsons had an absolutely devastating takedown of e-cigarettes and how they are marketed to kids. Oh, man, I would have LOVED to have been in the boardroom of Blu E-cigs on Monday morning after this episode.

In this episode (I am having to post screencaps from Hulu because that’s the only legal way I can do it … I’m not even positive it’s legal this way.), Bart meets his friend Millhouse’s cute older Dutch cousin Annika Van Houten (this is cute. Simpsons writers are a big fan of Game of Thrones and the Dutch actress who plays Melisandre — her name is Carice Van Houten), who is a big fan of e-cigs. She introduces Bart to e-cigs.

simpsons vaping 6 — Bart is offered bubblegum, strawberry shortcake and watermelon nicotine flavours for his e-cigarettes.

Annika asks Bart to go the Quickie Mart to buy five packs of e-cigs (it wouldn’t be packs, but cartridges). Bart slaps a five-dollar bill on Apu’s counter and Apu pulls out a pack of “Laramie e-cigs” (which looks exactly like Marlboros, funny joke because RJ Reynolds own the biggest e-cig company out there — Blu E-cigarettes) and says:

“Though it’s legal in this state, you’re asking for a nicotine delivery device that could quite possibly leave your breathing through a hole in your neck.”

Bart then imagines how cool it would be to have a hole in his neck, where he could eat spinach without actually having to taste it.

Apu adds:

“You are right, but remember this is not kids’ stuff. Now, would you like bubblegum flavour, strawberry shortcake or watermelon dream.”

simpsons vaping 10 — Maggie finds one of Bart’s e-cigs.

Oh, SNAP. This is awesome. I literally squealed out loud. Here is THE issue with e-cigs. This is what pisses me off SO MUCH about e-cigarettes. They’re not marketed to kids? Bullshit. Why are there so many candy and fruity flavours then? These aren’t for grown-ups. These are for 14- and 15-year-olds. You aren’t … fooling … anyone, Blu and every other e-cig company out there.

Later, Marge catches Bart vaping e-cigs. Bart’s response: “It’s still legal in this state … the bill is stuck in committee.” Yup, the Simpsons got it right. The FDA has proposed banning e-cig sales to minors, but those regulations have been stuck in the “draft” phase for well over a year now. In many states, young teens can still easily buy e-cigs.

simpsons vaping 12 — Bart tells Annika to take her “poison penlights.”

When Marge tells Homer about Bart using e-cigs, Homer says, “Oh, those are totally legal. Tell me, does he like bubblegum or strawberry?”

In the end, Bart tells Annika off at the airport as she returns to the Netherlands, telling her to “take these poison penlights with you.”

Thank you, Simpsons. Thank you, thank you. For this epic takedown of what’s turned into an absolutely craven, amoral industry — e-cigarettes.

Blu, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Teen smoking

More bad news about teens and e-cigs — e-cig use among kids tripled from 2013 to 2014

April 17, 2015 Pepe Lepew

Man, this is frustrating news. Teen smoking down, of course, but down for the wrong reason — because a LOT more kids than ever are now “vaping” instead.

A recent Centers for Disease Control survey shows that the use of e-cigs has tripled in just one year among teens (from 4.5 percent to 13.4 percent). More kids are using e-cigs today than cigarettes (9.2 percent).

This is such a “good news, bad news” scenario. The good news is the rate of teen smoking is at its lowest level ever record — 9.2 percent. However, the bad news is, e-cigs still contain nicotine and are still turning teens into nicotine addicts. Nicotine all by itself is bad for your blood pressure.

I get that e-cigs don’t appear to be as deadly as cigarettes and that they might help some people quit cigarettes, but kids are using them as an out-and-out substitute for cigarettes is not good news. And it really torques me when e-cig companies employ the same ad techniques used by tobacco to make e-cigs looks sexy and suave.

From a Washington Post article:

The use of e-cigarettes among teenagers has eclipsed the use of traditional cigarettes and all other tobacco products, a development that Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called “alarming” and “shocking.”

“What’s most surprising is how incredibly rapid the use of products other than cigarettes has increased,” Frieden said in an interview, adding that some e-cigarette smokers would undoubtedly go on to use traditional cigarettes. “It is subjecting another generation of our children to an addictive substance.”

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed rules to ban the sales of e-cigs to minors (this rules have been in the “proposed” stage for over a year, but took a completely hands-off approach to a number of other problems with e-cigs, including fairly blatant e-cig marketing to teenagers and surgary flavourings designed to make e-cigs more palatable to teens.

On the surface, that might seems like good news, given the hundreds of thousands of Americans that still die from smoking each year. And it might be. “The drop in cigarette use is historic, with enormous public health significance,” said Matt Myers, with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. But, he was quick to add, “the explosion of e-cigarette use among kids means these products are being taken up in record numbers with totally unknown long-term consequences that could potentially undermine all the progress we’ve made.”

e-cigarettes, e-cigs, nicotine

Tourist dies drinking nicotine tea — you don’t mess around with nicotine

February 6, 2015 Pepe Lepew

This is a tragic story. A young tourist in Peru was participating in an ayahuasca ceremony. As part of that ceremony, she drank nicotine tea to purge her body beforehand. She then died of nicotine poisoning.

This demonstrates a little-known fact about nicotine: Not only is it incredibly addictive, arguably the most addictive substance on the planet, it’s also incredibly poisonous, especially in larger doses than a person gets from a cigarette. I never even heard of nicotine tea before. Obviously, this story makes it’s clear that it’s something to be handled very carefully.

What’s brought how dangerous nicotine really is to light is e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes require these little vials of liquid nicotine. Thousands of people have been poisoned by nicotine the past few years because of these vials. Some people have been poisoned just by spilling a vial onto their skin.

In 2011, there were 271 cases of nicotine poisoning reported in the U.S. By 2014, that number had jumped to 3,957. More than half of these poisonings involved children under the age of 6. That’s a 14-fold increase in just three years. Thanks, e-cigs.

e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Formaldehyde

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

January 23, 2015 Pepe Lepew

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.

e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Venture Brothers

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

January 21, 2015 Pepe Lepew

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.

e-cig bans, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, FDA

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

January 20, 2015 Pepe Lepew

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, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, FDA

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

January 8, 2015 Pepe Lepew

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.

E-cig advertising, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs

Survey: More teens now using e-cigs than cigarettes

December 18, 2014 Pepe Lepew

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.

E-cig advertising, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs

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

December 18, 2014 Pepe Lepew

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

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.