Category Archives: e-cigarette advertising

e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, FDA, Uncategorized

FDA finally issues ruling on e-cigarettes

May 6, 2016 Pepe Lepew

At long last, after TWO years of deliberations, the Food and Drug Administration earlier this week FINALLY issued a ruling on e-cigarette (and tobacco) regulation.

Unfortunately, this came at a time when I was really busy, plus I wanted to take a few days to digest the news.

My initial reaction to the news was disappointment that the FDA will do nothing to control e-cigarette marketing, online sales or candy flavourings. The biggest obvious change is the sale of e-cig products to minors will be banned. However, over 40 states already ban e-cig sales to minors, so this ruling is a bit cosmetic.

However, then I started reading comments from the e-cigarette industry absolutely FREAKING OUT over these regs, and I started thinking, “wow, if the e-cigarette industry is so pissed off, the regs can’t be that bad.”

It turns out the FDA ruling is pretty complex, and I’m personally still sifting through it to see what it means, and I fully expect to be writing more posts about this over the next several weeks and months. I saw several headlines that screamed, “E-cigarettes virtually banned.” Here’s what they’re talking about and what turns out might be the biggest effect of this ruling: The FDA will require that all tobacco products (which under the FDA definition includes e-cigs even though they don’t actually contain tobacco — they do contain nicotine) that hit the market since 2007 must be individually approved by the FDA. E-cigs were basically non-existent before 2007, so this affects nearly all e-cig products.

From a USA Today article:

That means nearly every e-cigarette on the market — and every different flavor and nicotine level — would require a separate application for federal approval. Each application could cost $1 million or more, says Jeff Stier, an e-cigarette advocate with the National Center for Public Policy Research and industry officials.

One million dolalrs each for every flavour? Holy cow, on the face of it, that would cripple the industry. Sure enough, industry leaders are incensed.

From a CNN story:

Ray Story, the founder and CEO of the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, called the ruling “a complete disaster.” Since 2009, his association has advocated for a change in the law that would require age verification and restrict sales to minors.

“No children should have access to these products. Just like with alcohol, these are adult products,” he said.

What he takes issue with is the FDA requirement for approval on the products, down to the batteries. He said the rule “essentially bans the product across the land.”

Also, from a USA Today commentary, titled the “FDA went too far”:

E-cigarette shouldn’t be sold to minors, and government should restrict advertising so they aren’t marketed to kids. But the FDA’s drastic overstep today will require e-cigarettes not already on the market by February 2007 to undergo a costly and onerous Premarket Tobacco Application process that holds e-cigarettes to a standard nearly impossible to prove, and one that well-established actual cigarettes don’t have to face.

By the way, this commentary was actually written by Jeff Stier, who is from an organization called the National Center for Public Policy Research, which is described by Wikipedia as a “conservative think tank.” These are the same kind of “think tanks” that claimed for decades that there was no proof that smoking caused lung cancer or that secondhand smoke was completely harmless. If that wasn’t convincing enough … the National Center for Public Policy Research actually receives some of its funding from Big Tobacco and Big E-Cig (Which is rapidly becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Tobacco). So take this hyperbole with as many grains of salt as you please. I take it was LOT of grains of salt.

Now, it could be these industry folks are being hyperbolic as hell. I remember back in the day everyone thought the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement was going to be the death of Big Tobacco. But, I love that the e-cig industry is freaking out. GOOD. They deserve to freak out.

Here’s why. I walk a fine line with e-cigs. I get it that e-cigs genuinely help some people get off cigarettes. There’s mixed data about the effectiveness of e-cigs as a tool for smoking cessation. But, I’ve seen enough anecdotal information online about people praising them for helping to get them off cigarettes to believe that they have a genuine value.

However, here is the problem with e-cigs. It has been painfully clear to people actually paying attention that e-cigs are blatantly marketing their products to kids … using actors dressed up as race car drivers, using women’s panties, even using Santa Clause … to sell e-cigs. Jesus …even Santa Clause? Big Tobacco did this kind of stuff 60 years ago, heck they were still using race car imagery with Joe Camel as recently as 20 years ago.

They’re using this hip, young, active, savvy, sexy imagery to addict teenagers to nicotine. For all of the benefits of e-cigs, and it appears there are some real benefits, it’s still a delivery system for nicotine. And nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. And people still don’t know what all is in e-cigarette steam. We know it contains formaldehyde and another chemical called diacetyl, which causes a disease known as “popcorn lung.”

From another very well-written USA Today editorial, this written by the USA Today editorial board of directors, appropriate titled “FDA takes e-cigs out of ‘wild West'”:

Once before, the nation let an addictive product get by with little regulation. By the time the surgeon general first warned of cigarettes’ deadly dangers in 1964, about four in 10 Americans were already hooked. It has taken more than 50 years and a costly war on smoking to cut that adult rate in half and to bring teen smoking down to about 9%.

No wonder the government and public health advocates are wary of these new “vaping” products, which also contain nicotine, and some of which are made by the same companies that brought the nation Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man.

While advocates for e-cigarettes talk about their potential upside in the future — getting smokers to quit — they seldom acknowledge the facts on the ground right now: E-cig use among teenagers is exploding. Last year, 16% of high school students used e-cigarettes at least once in the past month, making the devices more popular than traditional cigarettes among teens, according to a national survey by the federal government. That’s up from 1.5% in 2011 — an astounding rise.

Promoters argue that teens are switching to a safer product. Great if true. But some earlier data show that many teens who use e-cigarettes have not smoked traditional cigarettes before. Exactly how many fit that description now is a key question that researchers need to sort out.

Industry players also underscore that their products are only for adults. Their advertising says otherwise: The women who vape are sexy and glamorous, the men rugged and rebellious, the very themes that attracted generations of teens to traditional cigarettes. In stores, e-cigarettes are sold above ice cream freezers, next to candy and in flavors that include Cherry Crush and Gummy Bear. About 85% of youths who had used e-cigs in the past 30 days used ones that were flavored.

Game. Set. Match. Thank you, USA Today.

These rules will not go into effect immediately. I was initially deeply disappointed in the lack of regs over e-cig marketing (I believe the FDA was wary of going here because of fears over First Amendment lawsuits, and guess what, if the FDA loses a First Amendment lawsuit over e-cigs, that might affect the federal government’s ability to regulate marketing of cigarettes.). I don’t get as worked up about the candy flavouring because so many adult users have told me they like the sweet flavours, too, but I know a lot of anti-tobacco advocates hate that e-cigs are allowed to have sugary flavours.

But, this subtle little language about requiring all e-cig products to be approved by the FDA might reel in this out-of-control industry, which is selling a drug and is selling an addictive drug … to kids … with a wink and a nod … “Moi? Not us!”

Now, there is apparently legislation in Congress to push up this 2007 date and grandfather current e-cig products so they wouldn’t require individual review by the FDA. Golly wonder whose lobbyists might be behind that? I hope Obama and any other future Democratic president vetoes any such legislation that reaches his or her desk. The e-cig industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, about 40 percent of which is actually owned by Big Tobacco. It can damn well pony up to have its products approved fair and square.

I will be posting more on this, I promise, as the story develops.

centers for disease control, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigarettes, e-cigs, Teen vaping

Teen vaping rate continues to climb

April 17, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Well, the Pollyanna side of me wants to say, “good news, bad news,” but I think it’s more bad than good.

According to the CDC, the teen vaping rate continued to climb in 2015. That’s the bad news. The good news is it isn’t climbing as rapidly as it was in 2014.

The teen vaping rate is now 16 percent; roughly one teen out of six has vaped in the past 30 days. In 2014, it was 13.4 percent. That figure tripled from 2013, when it was just 4.5 percent. So, basically it went from increasing 200 percent in 2014 to about 20 percent in 2015. Is that good news? I don’t know. It could be the teen vaping market is as saturated as it’s going to get.

Hopefully, part of the reason for the slowdown is most states now do prohibit selling vaping products to teenagers However, it really isn’t very hard for kids to order vaping products online, which seriously needs to be banned by the FDA.

The FDA has been dawdling for well over a year now on e-cigarette regulations. And in that time, the teen vaping use continues to climb … though perhaps it isn’t quite “skyrocketing” like it was a couple of years ago. It’s damned frustrating. I cannot envision why it has taken so long to finalize regulations. All I can think of is the lawyers must be making the decisions at this point.

The draft FDA regulations that came out a while ago now were pretty weak, and didn’t do a heck of a lot to address teen vaping use. The FDA proposed banning sales to minors, but as I mentioned earlier most states already do this anyway. That won’t make a dramatic difference.

The FDA neglected to ban online sales (you can’t sell cigarettes online), nor did the agency address e-cigarette marketing and advertising — both of these are serious issues that need to be dealt with in my opinion. E-cigarette companies are using the exact same kind of ads making e-cigs look sexy and sophisticated that cigarette companies successfully used for decades to make their products appear cool to kids.

I’m perfectly fine with people using e-cigarettes to quit smoking. When all else fails, I feel they have nothing to lose. And while I certainly don’t trust that e-cigarettes are 100 percent benign (the vapour is known to contain formaldehyde and diactyl) , they are less toxic than cigarettes.

However, I’m not cool with teenagers simply finding different delivery system to get physically addicted to nicotine to begin with. And unfortunately, that is a big part of the e-cigarette market. The e-cigarette companies can act all innocent all they want … they’ve also put their brand names on women’s panties. That’s not about people getting off of cigarettes. That’s about enticing horny young teens to use your product.

The other good news is largely because of e-cigarettes, the teen smoking rate has basically completely collapsed. I saw one graph that showed that the 12th-grade smoking rate in 2013 is now at a minuscule 6.7 percent. When I started blogging about tobacco about 10-12 years ago, the teen smoking rate was pushing 30 percent.

The CDC report also states that the middle school vaping rate is about 5.3 percent. Again, this is up dramatically from 2011, when less than 1 percent of all middle schoolers were vaping.

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

Research: Candy-flavoured e-cig advertisements attract teen users

January 20, 2016 Pepe Lepew

This is an article from Medical Daily about research that strongly suggests that candy-flavoured e-cigarette products really are encouraging more teenagers to take up vaping.

Teen vaping has become a big deal. The rate of teens who use e-cigarettes triplied between 2013 and 2014, from about 4.5 percent to about 13 percent. I assume that figure is likely far higher than 13 percent now. In fact, the rate of teens who vape is higher than the rate of teens who smoke. And further research shows that a higher percentage of kids using e-cigs eventually move on to real cigarettes than those who never take up e-cigs.

Anyway, researchers from the Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge said their work showed that kids shown ads for candy-flavoured e-cigs were more likely to want to try e-cigs than kids showed generic ads for e-cigs or kids showed no ads at all.

From the article:

“We’re cautiously optimistic from our results that e-cigarette ads don’t make tobacco smoking more attractive, but we’re concerned that ads for e-cigarettes, with flavors that might appeal to school children, could encourage them to try the products,” said Dr. Milica Vasiljevic, from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, in a press release.

The Food and Drug Administration has been for some time now mulling new regulations for e-cigarettes. The FDA has already proposed banning e-cig sales to minors (already banned in the vast majority of states, though there is virtually no control over online sales of e-cigarette products). However, in its draft regulations, the FDA proposed ZERO regulations over e-cigarette advertising, even though the federal government has very strict control over cigarette advertising (no cigarette ads on TV or radio and no cartoon images or characters allowed in print ads as per the 1998 Master Settilement Agreement).

If you don’t believe these e-cig ads are pretty damn blatant about marketing their products to teens as being cool and hip, check out this infamous Blu E-Cigs Cherry Crush ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv7kxg5c3to

Me and a hell of a lot of other people ripped on FDA during the comment period about the lack of controls over e-cigarette marketing and advertising. The FDA was handed regulatory authority over nicotine products and e-cigs absolutely contain nicotine just like cigarettes, so from where I sit, it certainly appears the FDA has authority to control e-cig advertising, which has been very, very blatant as far as trying to market e-cigs to kids.

A lot of people and tobacco advocacy groups are also not happy about all the candy flavourings in general for e-cigs. Candy-flavoured cigarettes were banned by the FDA a few years ago (but Swisher Sweet cigars are still OK for some reason). I’m personally not as dogmatic about this issue (since I have talked to a lot of adult e-cig users who like the candy flavours), but I am adamant that the FDA needs to crack down — hard — on e-cig marketing to kids.

Anyway, will the FDA ultimately crack down on e-cig advertising? We’ll see. The agency has been working on its final regs for almost a couple of years now, so maybe that’s encouraging that it took the reams of comments about e-cigs and e-cig advertising seriously.

c-cigarettes, centers for disease control, E-cig advertising, e-cigarette advertising, e-cigs

Study: E-cigarette ads reach 7 kids out of 10

January 6, 2016 Pepe Lepew

Very upsetting study by the Centers for Disease Control which speaks to the absolute biggest problem I have with e-cigarettes — how they are marketed.

The e-cigarette industry has been just downright brazen and blatant about marketing their products to teenagers. E-cig ads today employ all of the exact same techniques used by the cigarette industry for decades to entice teen smokers — sexy, suave, sophisticated people using their products, cartoon characters (even Santa Clause) and ads featuring women’s panties. Women’s panties? … I mean, seriously, you just don’t get more blatant than that.

Anyway, the CDC survey found that 7 out of 10 middle school and high school students had seen these e-cig ads, which are all over the place, magazines, mini-marts, billboards, etc. Tom Friedman, head of the CDC, makes this exact point:

ecig_custom-f5195ef495c578ad8c8850130b0d053934b80041-s6-c30 — Yeah, sure, e-cigarette companies aren’t trying to market to kids at all.

“The same advertising tactics the tobacco industry used years ago to get kids addicted to nicotine are now being used to entice a new generation of young people to use e-cigarettes. I hope all can agree that kids should not use e-cigarettes.”

It’s no secret that teen use of vaping products has absolutely exploded in the past three or four years. More than triple the number of kids vaped in 2014 than in 2013 and studies show that more teenagers vape today than smoke cigarettes.

This simply isn’t a good thing on so many levels. Kids are still turning into nicotine addicts, which is bad no matter what the delivery system of that nicotine is. And studies show that a higher percentage of kids who start out vaping eventually turn to cigarettes to get their nicotine fix than kids who never vape.

f1f74_screen-shot-2013-12-28-at-1 — Blu E-cigs, fast, sophisticated, cool … they make you feel like a race car driver.

So, what’s to be done. The Food and Drug Administration is mulling proposals for regulating e-cigarettes. One of the common-sense proposals by the FDA is to ban the sale of e-cig products to teens (most states already ban this, but it is not banned on a federal level … AND e-cig products can be easily purchased by kids online).

The CDC recommends that e-cigs can only be bought in “face to face” transactions, and that online transactions be banned. The FDA did not propose banning online e-cig sales in its draft regulations, but it’s been working on finalizing those regulations for nearly a couple of years now. The FDA also didn’t consider any curbs on e-cigarette advertising in its draft regulations, something that caused a major hue and cry from anti-tobacco advocates.

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

Teen smoking rate in Florida plummets; teen vaping rate skyrockets

September 25, 2015 Pepe Lepew

Good news, bad news out of Florida.

According to a state study, only 6.9 percent of Florida kids under 18 are smoking cigarettes, the lowest level ever recorded. However, NOT a coincidence, 15.8 percent are now using e-cigs. That number is up from 5.4 percent in 2013.

This follows a similar trend all over the country in which the teen smoking rate has plummeted in the past five years; at the same time the teen vaping rate is skyrocketing. Kids are simply ditching cigarettes for a different nicotine delivery system, one that is easy to buy and ultimately cheaper than cigarettes. And studies show kids who vape are three times MORE likely to ultimately take up cigarettes, which makes total sense to me — they got the nicotine Jones already and they gotta keep getting their little nicotine fix somehow.

So, I consider it mixed news. Kids getting addicted to nicotine sucks no matter what the delivery system. This just adds more fuel to the fire to have the Food and Drug Administration crack down on e-cig marketing to teens. The agency was supposed to issue new regulations on e-cigs months ago, but for some reason is dragging its feet. In draft regulations released a year or two ago, the agency made no recommendations to control e-cig marketing and instead recommending simply banning e-cig sales to minors (which is already banned in most states — but kids can still easily buy e-cig products, especially online.).

From an article out of West Palm Beach, Florida:

The use of e-cigarettes, and this dramatic increase that we’re seeing among youth, threatens to normalize smoking again,” said Shannon Hughes, director of the Florida Health Department’s Community Health Promotion Division. “We have worked for decades to de-normalize smoking.”

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

What is taking the FDA so long to make a decision on e-cigarettes?

May 26, 2015 Pepe Lepew

man late looking to his watch — Oh God, I’ve finally resorted to using lame clip art. I’ve gone to the Dark Side.

The other day, I was wondering, “what the hell is going on with the Food and Drug Administration and e-cigarettes, it’s been forever since I last heard.”

So, a quick Google and found stories stating that I’m not the only one out there wondering, “what the hell?”

Over a year ago, the FDA released its proposed regulations for e-cigarettes. The agency received so many comments about the draft regs that the comment period was extended. Over a year later, we’re still waiting for a response.

The FDA did one right thing in its draft regulations, which was to ban all e-cig sales to minors (42 states have already banned e-cig sales to minors, but this is not slowing their popularity with kids.). However, in the draft regs, the agency completely punted on regulating sugary candy flavours for e-cigs (Even though the FDA banned sugary, candy-flavoured cigarettes) and ignored regulating e-cig marketing (Again … even though the federal government has strict guidelines for tobacco advertising, like no more Joe Camels.).

Many of the comments the FDA received were outrage over the lack of regs over flavourings and marketing. I’m not sure how to read the long delay for the final regs, I’d like to think it’s taking so long because they’re making a lot of changes, but I’m not that naive to think a federal agency is actually going to listen to the public.).

Last week, 31 public health organizations urged the FDA to stop dawdling and taking action. In the past year since the FDA has been working on the final version of the regulations, teen e-cigarette use has skyrocketed (It literally has more than tripled since 2013, which is hard to believe.). These groups agree that regs regarding marketing and flavouring need to be stronger than what was in the draft rules (I feel very strongly that the feds need to crack down on the out-of-control Joe Camelesque advertising for e-cigs, and I’m starting to feel more strongly about them banning the candy flavours, too.):

From a Time.com article:

The medical groups say cigar and e-cigarette brands are using marketing tactics that they feel appeal directly to young people, like promoting candy and fruit-flavored products, and they want regulations to put an end to it.

“It’s no wonder use of e-cigarettes by youth has skyrocketed,” the letter reads. “This process has already taken far too long. We cannot afford more delays that allow tobacco companies to target our kids with a new generation of tobacco products.”

“My concern is always the first-time users,” says Shyam Biswal, a professor in the department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s bad it took so long to make a dent in [conventional] tobacco users, and we are now starting something else, and we are just waiting and waiting and waiting. We don’t have the data that e-cigarettes are a gateway [to other tobacco products], so we just wait. It should not be like that.”

Noted tobacco control advocate Stanton Glantz sounds like he’s in the same boat with me about the FDA, given the agency’s track record so far with tobacco. (The FDA gained regulatory control over tobacco products in 2009.)

“Given that the White House has blocked eliminating menthol from cigarettes for years despite strong evidence—including from the FDA’s own analysis that doing so would protect public health—I am not holding my breath,” Glantz said.

I mean, I expected the FDA to begin actually regulating nicotine when it took over tobacco regulation six years ago, and other than banning candy flavours for cigarettes and bidis, it hasn’t done all that much with nicotine. This agency moves glacially slow. It’s frustrating.

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-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.

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

Edgy, racy, sexy ad for e-cigs … Blu E-cigs will make you as cool as a racecar driver … or Joe Camel

November 15, 2014 Pepe Lepew

joe camel, stephen dorff race car driver — Joe Camel and Stephen Dorff (Yup, that’s actually Stephen Dorff) were race car drivers

OK, I am literally sending an email to the FDA about this new Blu E-cigarette ad. Man, this ad annoyed me the first time I saw it about a week ago, and it’s still bugging me.

It’s with our longtime Blu spokesman — washed-up actor Stephen Dorff, advertising a new cherry-flavoured Blu e-cig. Stephen Dorff is shirtless and tattooed, vaping on an e-cig, then he’s climbing a mountain vaping on an e-cig, then he’s walking on a beach vaping on an e-cig, then he’s riding a bicycle vaping on an e-cig, all, then he’s walking on a racetrack wearing a Blu racing uniform vaping on an e-cig, then he is at a formal party vaping on an e-cig, then he is at a hip bar, vaping on an e-cig, then playing pool, while vaping on an e-cig … all to a jazzy, funky song by T-Bird and the Breaks (with the refrain of “Lift me up” as in “Blu cigarettes lift me up not only with their little charge of nicotine, but with their cool hipness, too.”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFVYMP1skvk

So, e-cigs are portrayed as sexy as hell. Funky music blaring, Dorff shirtless, partying, drinking, … heck, even driving a racecar. Blu E-cigs will actually make you as cool as a racecar driver.

Wow, just wow, this is the most annoying Blu commercial I’ve seen yet, blatantly stealing from the “cool, suave” school of tobacco advertising. … heck, e-cigs will even turn you into a racecar driver. Just like Joe Camel. Yup, Joe Camel was a racecar driver, too.

Never mind the fact that activists are concerned that the candy-flavoured e-cigs are directed at kids even without the cool, hip, jazzy advertising … this is just over the top. E-cig use among teens has tripled in three years and ads like this are one of the big reasons why. This is what the FDA needs to STOP. This is a prime example of the kind of e-cig advertising they need to crack down on.