U.S. - It's Back To The Future For E-Cigarette Ads, At Least For Now

[S.J.B.]

It's Back To The Future For E-Cigarette Ads, At Least For Now
April Fehling
NPR
October 21st, 2013

E-cigarettes are a booming business among smokers who want to light up indoors, smokers who want to quit and, as the CDC reported last month, among children.

And right now, e-cigarette makers have a tremendous amount of latitude in the U.S. to market those products as they choose, even on television, where traditional cigarette ads have been banned since 1971.

That's because the Food and Drug Administration has not yet determined if e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine to the lungs through a battery-generated vapor, rather than via tobacco smoke, should be considered tobacco products — with all the regulation that designation entails. The agency is expected to make its determination as early as this month.

In the meantime, "the marketing that you're seeing in these cigarettes now, it's the wild west," Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San Francisco, tells NPR's Melissa Block on All Things Considered. "They're they're using celebrities, movies, television — it's just like getting into a time machine."

Perhaps some readers will remember those heady, hazy days, when TV was filled with ads touting cigarettes' health benefits, as the center of a refreshing set break for John Wayne — even as part of a wholesome breakfast.

Read the full story here.

This article got my interest piqued, and I ended up searching for and buying an e-cigarette and some nicotine solution for it (cherry flavoured!). Unfortunately, it's illegal to sell nicotine e-cigarettes in Canada, but this seems to be rarely enforced and that's why I could find a legitimate vendor so easily. Americans have it way better though.

 

[kytnism]

we really need a mega e-cig thread.

...kytnism...

 

[S.J.B.]

Back-and-forth in the National Post on this subject:

E-cigarettes are a public health disaster waiting to happen for young people and existing nicotine addicts alike
Dr. James Aw
National Post
October 22nd, 2013

One recent evening I was walking my dog and stopped to chat with a neighbour. Knowing my occupation, and the fact that I have teenaged children, she asked what I thought of e-cigarettes. My neighbour was concerned about a rumour she’d heard at a recent meeting of her parent-teacher association, which said that kids were bringing these e-cigarettes to school.

I’ve been wary of the technology ever since a colleague brought me a package of marketing materials and a starter pack last year. So-called “e-cigarettes” are slender, tobacco-less devices that use electricity from a tiny battery to heat a flavoured solution into an aerosol that the user then inhales. The aerosol may or may not include nicotine. The device is designed to look like a cigarette; the end even glows red as you’re using it.

Manufacturers are spinning e-cigarettes as safer alternatives to conventional, cancer-causing cigarettes. They claim the devices can even help people stop smoking. But a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal took a more troubling line, wondering whether the products are “a Trojan horse that will allow the tobacco industry to reverse decades of global progress in reducing smoking prevalence.”

Here, then, are three reasons I’m concerned about e-cigarettes:

1. The intense marketing push According to newspaper reports, something resembling e-cigarettes were first patented in 1963, but they didn’t come to market in North America until 2006 — and since 2011, they’ve been the subject of an enormous marketing push, one that seems to have gained traction this year. The gift bag given to guests at last year’s Oscars included an e-cigarette starter pack. Celebrities such as Katherine Heigl and Leonardo DiCaprio have been seen using them, and the devices were all over New York’s Fashion Week. This sort of marketing seems calculated to make the act of smoking “cool” again. The products even come with their own lingo — rather than smoking, you’re apparently supposed to refer to the act of using an e-cigarette as “vaping” — a reference to the fact you’re inhaling vapour instead of smoke. The potential upside for manufacturers is enormous, with an e-cigarette market estimated to reach $10-billion in five years — and possible spillover effects related to greater sales of traditional cigarettes.

Read the full story here.

Don’t believe the fear campaign — e-cigarettes can save millions of lives
Jesse Kline
National Post
October 24th, 2013

Toronto was the first Canadian city to ban smoking in indoor spaces. It is now considering going one step further by prohibiting lighting up on patios, beaches and sports fields.

The proposed policy makes little sense from a health perspective: While there is evidence to suggest that standing close to someone smoking outdoors can have the same health consequences as if it were indoors, there is no evidence that the small level of exposure someone would get in a well-ventilated space where people are free to move about poses any danger to their health.

It’s just one more step in a campaign that has gone from trying to reduce smoking rates and protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke, to one designed to punish those who make the conscious choice to continue to smoke. Even more troubling is that, having won the battle to curb smoking and punish Big Tobacco, the anti-smoking brigade has now set its sights on fake cigarettes.

Writing in the National Post on Tuesday, Dr. James Aw recounts a conversation he had with a parent about electronic cigarettes. E-cigarettes, as they are commonly called, are a less harmful alternative to cigarettes. Instead of burning tobacco, e-cigarettes heat a liquid — which generally contains nicotine and flavouring — to produce a water vapour that gives users the illusion of smoking, without the harmful side effects associated with tobacco smoke.

Read the full story here.

In other news, I got my e-cigarette in the mail and it works wonderfully. The company was even nice enough to give me a free sample of chocolate hazelnut liquid along with the cherry liquid I bought.

 

[juno nightmare]

We dont need more regulation of everything. E-Cigs are not tobacco products. BECAUSE THEY DO NOT CONTAIN ANY TOBACCO. How is that difficult to understand. Pure nicotine is safer than tobacco cigarettes, period. I'M tired of all these worthless politicians and bureaucrats trying to legislate and regulate us to death. We cant even smoke in public anymore and when the tobacco consuming community locks onto a new, safer product that is more socially acceptable they gotta try and take that down too.
What happened to personal freedom? What happened to the usa? It is no longer a land of free people, it a land of cowering sheeple weakly begging to be allowed to use their naturally given chemical systems to make their live a little less shitty and a little more enjoyable. But, thats not acceptable to the authoritarians, they need to take everything from us while they engage in debauchery, hedonistic sex, drugs, and any other unholy behavior they want.

End Rant.

 

[sekio]

We dont need more regulation of everything. E-Cigs are not tobacco products. BECAUSE THEY DO NOT CONTAIN ANY TOBACCO. How is that difficult to understand.

Except for the nicotine (identical to that extracted from tobacco) and full spectrum tobacco extracts.

 

[Flynnal]

Except for the nicotine (identical to that extracted from tobacco) and full spectrum tobacco extracts.

They can overcome that by obtaining nicotine from another plant. There is in fact another plant that is similar to tobacco that contains even MORE nicotine in percentage terms.
Perhaps the e-cig nicotine producers should look at cultivating this plant instead of tobacco plants, considering that these plants contain so much more nicotine, it's a no-brainer. Why shouldn't they try?

BTW the FDA and the DEA have NO RIGHT to control nicotine as a substance anyway, since it is NOT a controlled substance!!! It's like the FDA and the DEA controlling alcohol. Sure, they can, but they just can't ban it.

 

[bloodshed344]

Except for the nicotine (identical to that extracted from tobacco) and full spectrum tobacco extracts.

So they don't use freebase nicotine like cigarettes?