The Liberal Democrats are trying to reintroduce an improvement to the health bill, calling for the government to cutting cigarette pack designs.

For example in Australia, the government’s Preventative Health Task Force has counseled it to remove advancements of tobacco products through design of packaging as part of a complete strategy to reduce tobacco deaths.

Meantime, a recent research from the University of Nottingham showed the tobacco branding and packaging deceptive signals to young people and adult smokers.

Participants in the Nottingham study were shown pairs of cigarette packs and asked to compare them on five measures: taste, tar delivery, health risk, attractiveness, and either relief of quitting or which they would choose if trying smoking.

At the end of the investigation was found that adults and children were significantly more likely to regards packs with the terms ‘light’, ’smooth’, ’silver’ and ‘gold’ as lower tar, lower health risk and either easier to quit or their choice of pack if trying smoking.

But more than half of adults and youth reported that brands labeled as ’smooth’ were less harmful than the ‘regular’ variety. The color of packs was also associated with perceptions of risk and brand appeal.

The research discovered that those smoking products which bear the word ’smooth’ or have a light colored branding can trick people into thinking that the products are less injurious to their health.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, an anti-smoking group, said: “This research shows that the only sure way of putting an end to this misleading marketing is to require all tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging.”

Researchers think that the change of cigarette packaging design would remove false beliefs about different brands and announce the message that all cigarettes are dangerous.

“This matter has been discussed by parliament and there is now a perfect chance to involve a requirement for plain packaging of tobacco products to be included in the health bill,” added Ms. Arnott.

According to previous studies, since 2002 it has been illegal for manufacturers to use trademarks, text or any sign to suggest that one tobacco product is less harmful than another. But investigators said that Tobacco Companies have now protected to using color and affable words to accomplish the same goal.

A principal characteristic of tobacco trade strategy has been to promote the sensation that some cigarettes are less hazardous than others, so that smokers worried about their health are supported to switch brands rather than quit, reported investigators.

As it is known these tactics are giving consumers a false sensation of reinsurance that simply does not exist.

Overall drug use among Indiana’s schoolchildren has declined, but marijuana use is up slightly.
A survey to be released today finds that the biggest bump was in marijuana use among 10th-graders.

In 2008, 13.5 percent of sophomores interviewed reported they had smoked marijuana in the previous month. This year: 14.6 percent said they had.

Marijuana use can affect the ability to learn and remember information. “The more a student uses marijuana, the more likely it can affect school performance,” said Ruth Gassman, director of Indiana University’s Indiana Prevention Resource Center.

Gassman said the rise in marijuana use is “something we need to pay attention to,” but “a one-year hike does not mean a trend for increasing usage.”

The interviews were conducted in the spring by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center. The research was funded by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.

The increases ranged from 0.5 percent to 1.2 percent, but marijuana usage remains below its levels of a decade ago.

In the peak year of 1996, the IPRC study found that 25 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana, compared with 17 percent this year.

Jamie Guilfoy, a narcotics detective with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, says the uptick in marijuana use among youths reflects the pattern of the greater population of drug users.

“Marijuana is being used a little more” among all populations, Guilfoy said.

He said the drug’s potency varies but is no different from that of recent years.

The study found that the use of psychedelic drugs, cocaine, crack, inhalants and amphetamines decreased. Alcohol and methamphetamine use held steady or declined.

Survey respondents included 182,000 students in 556 public and private schools.

Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043.
September 9, 2009

Pubs have started stocking simulation cigarettes to beat the smoking ban.
Licensed premises in Brighton and Hove have begun selling electronic cigarettes as an alternative to punters looking for a nicotine kick.

The battery-powered substitutes, dubbed “e-cigs”, contain liquid nicotine capsules and produce steam when exhaled.

The controversial product, which has been banned in Australia, is being stocked by the Prince of Wales and the Regency Tavern in the city.

Aron Barnes, the landlord of the Regency Tavern in Russell Square, Brighton, said: “It looks, feels and tastes like an ordinary cigarette.

“Because we don’t have an outside smoking area it’s something which we can offer to smokers as an alternative.

“It’s only the same as a nicotine patch except you can actually control how much goes into your system.

“The more we explain, the more and more people are trying them.”

E-cigs, which can be charged either through a socket or USB port, are on sale for about £5.

They can be used inside public areas because no flame or smoke is produced.

But critics claim the product presents a danger, particularly to young people.

Brighton and Hove city councillor Geoffrey Theobald has spoken out on the subject.

As chairman of the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services, which oversees trading standards in councils across the country, he said: “It is disturbing that these products are on sale in Britain without a warning to people about the high nicotine content and the danger they present to children.

“The Government needs to introduce new laws to force manufacturers to restrict sales to people over 18.

“Councils are testing as many of these e-cigarettes as possible and protecting people by dealing with the issues relating to incorrect packaging and labelling.”

E-cigarettes have also appeared in other businesses in the city.

Stuart Morris, the manager of Marketplace Brighton in Meeting House Lane, said: “We’ve only just started stocking it so it’s too early to tell if its a popular alternative.

“But it ticks all the boxes from a variety of tests and checks. We’ll just have wait for feedback from our customers.”

Theargus

In late June, President Barack Obama signed The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law. The law will allow the federal government broad authority over tobacco products and will also allow regulators to control cigarette packaging and marketing as well as how much nicotine—the addictive component in cigarettes—is added in tobacco products, explained the Washington Post previously.

Now, some tobacco companies—R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Lorillard Inc.—are included in a group that just filed a federal lawsuit to block some of the provisions of the law, claiming it violates their rights to free speech under the U.S. constitution, reported Reuters. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco is an arm or Reynolds American Inc., the maker of Camel and Winston brand cigarettes; Lorillard sells Newport cigarettes, said Reuters. Marlboro cigarettes are manufactured by the largest American tobacco company, Altria Group Inc., which is not involved in the lawsuit and supports the law, reported Reuters.

With the law in place, flavored cigarettes will be banned by this fall and shortly after—by January—tobacco manufacturers and importers will be required to provide the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the ingredients used in their products, said USA Today previously. By April 2010, those makers will no longer be permitted to place their logos on “sporting, athletic or entertainment events, or on clothing and other promotional items,” said USA Today, adding that by July 2010, verbiage including the words “light,” “low,” or “mild” will be banned from tobacco product marketing. Finally, by 2011, all tobacco products must “carry larger and stronger warning labels,” reported USA Today.

The lawsuit alleges that the law places too many limits on the firms’ commercial rights to free speech given bans in place on television and radio ads said Reuters, which noted that the group is not arguing the agency’s right to regulate tobacco products. “Even prior to the act, plaintiffs had few avenues of communication for speaking to their adult consumers,” the companies said in the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Kentucky. “The act imposes sweeping and unprecedented restrictions that effectively foreclose those avenues of communication that remain,” Reuters quoted.

The companies are seeking an overturn of warning label bans, the ban on color and graphics in label and cigarette ads, and some of the bans on ads and sponsorship of sporting and other venues, said Reuters.

Some argue that 1st amendment issues were not appropriately addressed; however, proponents of the law cite the hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in health care linked to cigarette smoking annually. At the bill signing ceremony, President Obama said he is hoping to cut down the numbers of teens each day—estimated at about 1,000—who take up smoking. “I was one of these teenagers. And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time,” said Obama, quoted USA Today.

President Obama noted that the law’s focus is on ending kid-geared marketing, said USA Today. “The kids today don’t just start smoking for no reason. They’re aggressively targeted as customers by the tobacco industry. They’re exposed to a constant and insidious barrage of advertising where they live, where they learn, and where they play. Most insidiously, they are offered products with flavorings that mask the taste of tobacco and make it even more tempting,” President Obama said, quoted USA Today previously.

© Newsinferno

ASH recently put out a press release stating that they had warned PayPal that they could be held criminally liable for processing payments for E Cigarette retailers in an attempt to shut down online retailers from selling their goods online, but the public reaction may not be what ASH expected and may have just solidified the resolve of e cigarette supporters to keep them on the market.

Due to the pressure by these special interest groups, PayPal has now not only frozen the money in the accounts of these retailers, but made sure no other transactions can be completed by the retailers that use PayPal as their merchant system, putting many online retailers in a financial crunch.

The backlash has begun as message boards, and forums have lit up with angry members and postings concerning the act’s of ASH and PayPals decision to cave to pressures from the special interest groups. On several online forums, dozens of users have stated that they are canceling their PayPal accounts and vow to never use them again as a payment processor online.

There has also been speculation that PayPal has only targeted online retailers that sell e liquid while turning a blind eye to the actual e cigarettes, but the reports of retailers is growing by the day that are on the PayPal banned list, and some do not sell e liquid.

There have also been several discussions online and in comments of other news releases of the e cigarette users filing suit against Ash and Paypal for the actions and possibly forcing once tobacco free users back to tobacco products.

It seems that the general population is not buying the political tactics of the FDA, ASH and PayPal, but they are buying and supporting e cigarettes, the users and suppliers like e cigarettes national that was not a PayPal user.

© Officialwire

Health experts said that just as low-tar cigarettes still cause cancer, but a chocolate bar containing less fat is still fattening.
Australian’s junk food industry has adopted big tobacco’s tactics of ”deception, refusal and delay” for to move censure for the obesity epidemic and drive off regulation.

The Cancer Council and the World Health Organization said that the food lobby’s tempts to understate health risks linked to products high in fat, sugar and salt is like cigarette companies renouncing that smoking causes cancer.
The require come before a Federal Government report that could threaten the $70 billion food industry’s profits. The preventive health taskforce is set to dismiss a range of recommendations to tackle obesity that could include a ban on junk food advertising and tax increases on harmful products.
The Obesity Policy Coalition, which also includes Diabetes Australia, has compared pre-emptive moves by snack food companies to reduce fat and sugar in popular brands to low-tar cigarettes being marketed as ”healthier” alternatives.
In May, Mars Snack food Australia said it would reduce popular chocolate bars from 60 grams to 53 grams. And in June Australia’s fast-food chains pledged to stop advertising unhealthy products during children’s television programs.
The industry demands the move shows engagement to proposing healthy choices. But Jane Martin from the Obesity Policy Coalition said it was tricking consumers into thinking candy store was healthy.
She said that while some snacks had been restated to appear more nourishing, they often contained as many calories as originally.
Even the Dietitians Association of Australia, Australia’s largest professional nutrition organization, receives funding from major players including Nestle, Kellogg’s and Meat and Livestock Australia.
Ms. Martin said recent ads by Coca-Cola claiming the soft drink did not make people fat or rot their teeth proved the industry needed to be brought to heel.
”Where’s the sincerity? That’s exactly what the tobacco industry did. They disputed whether smoking was addictive and caused a whole lot of confusion around whether it caused disease or not … We used to have cigarettes sold with diaries, with CDs and key rings, now we’ve got fast food sold with toys and movie tie-ins. They argue it’s not there to encourage consumption – so why do they do it?” she added.
Kate Carnell, head of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, said it was absurd to compare food, which is essential to survival and not addictive, to cigarettes.
She reported: ”Nobody is suggesting that food consumed in excess of the amount of energy you expend doesn’t cause obesity. The issue is about a balanced diet which includes fat and sugar, and people need to exercise”.
But unlike tobacco companies, which produced only harmful products, the same food manufacturer that makes fatty meat pies might also sell nutritious cereal bars.
One leading health source said the tactics used by the food industry were similar to those used by big tobacco. For example, deny the evidence, delay, infiltrate yourself into governments, have big lobbying outfits, work through voluntary codes. It’s the same techniques.
■ Average volume of soft drink per person per year1970s: 43 liters
NOW: 113 liters
■ Fast food burger fat content
1980s: 12-24 grams
NOW: 24-42 grams
■ Standard size of a packet of chips1970s: 30 grams
NOW: 50 grams

The Scandinavian Tobacco Group is delighted to announce the addition of Café Crème Express Arôme to its range of Café Crème Express miniature cigars.

Launched earlier in the year, Café Crème Express is smaller than traditional miniature cigars and enhances the adult smoking experience, giving them a true moment of pleasure even if they are time poor or in a restricted venue.

Joining the existing variants, Blue and Original, new Café Crème Express Arôme are available now and packaged in distinctive, crush-proof tins of ten quality cigars that reflect the brands authentic heritage and have a RRP of £3.29.

Café Crème is the market leading brand in the miniature cigar sector, with over 60% of total sales.

James Higgs of Scandinavian Tobacco Group, comments: “We are extremely happy with how adult cigar smokers received Café Crème Express since launch earlier this year and we are pleased to be able to add Arôme and complete the range.

“Café Crème cigars are one of the most iconic brands on the tobacco gantry and instantly recognisable to consumers. Scandinavian Tobacco is constantly exploring products that will help grow the tobacco market and we appreciate all the support we receive from retailers.”


Copyright © 2009 Talkingretail

Tobacco’s younger, shinier cousin – the electronic cigarette – is gearing up for a battle with federal regulators, just as the fledgling industry is getting a foothold in a state built on smoking.

Electronic cigarettes, machines that turn liquid nicotine and flavoring into a vapor, have been sold in the U.S. for two years, and their popularity is surging. But the Food and Drug Administration signaled Wednesday that it might seek to stamp out e-cigarettes in their infancy.

The FDA said it plans to address safety issues, and that could include product recalls or criminal sanctions.

The industry is made up of small firms around the country that mainly sell online. Only one is based in North Carolina, still the country’s No. 1 tobacco producer.

The Charlotte company, Blu Cigs, is already branding itself as “E-Cigarettes 2.0” – and sees its product as a symbol for North Carolina’s changing economy.

Jason Healy, a native Australian with no prior background in the cigarette industry, launched Blu Cigs in May after seeing an electronic cigarette in a Charlotte bar.

Because no burning is involved and no tobacco is used, e-cigarettes are allowed in places their old-school brethren aren’t. In light of North Carolina’s impending smoking ban, Healy said this is the main draw.

The main differences between Blu and its competitors include a carrying case that will recharge the battery and a tip that lights blue instead of red – which Healy says keeps customers out of trouble.

“Before it was ‘Hey! He’s smoking,’” he said. “With the blue light, it’s more, ‘What the hell is that?’”

The FDA, however, found that e-cigarettes contain several toxic chemicals, including an ingredient in antifreeze. Scientists said they tested 19 varieties of electronic cigarettes, many of which contained fruit and candy flavors.

The FDA has blocked importation of electronic cigarettes in some cases, but this hasn’t affected Blu. Currently, the FDA is asking the courts to give it regulatory authority over e-cigarettes.

Health advocates say e-cigarettes are potentially unsafe and can lead kids toward traditional tobacco smoking. Because e-cigarettes are not covered by federal tobacco laws, they are often easier for young people to buy.

Blu Cigs doesn’t market its product as a healthier version of tobacco. Healy mainly promotes Blu as a cheaper alternative to cigarettes. Each nicotine and flavor cartridge costs about $1.

In general, one e-cigarette provides as many puffs as six or seven traditional cigarettes.

With the costs of the battery and other expenses, Healy estimates Blu Cigs costing about $1.25 to $1.50 per the equivalent of a pack of traditional cigarettes, which runs about $4 or $5.

The “starter kit” costs about $60, and has the equivalent of about 350 cigarettes. Target audience: ages 25-35, upwardly mobile and tired of going outside to smoke.

“You’re not a leper anymore,” said Healy, who looks younger than his 34 years. “Who wants to go outside, especially in the winter?”

From tobacco to technology

For 300 years, tobacco was the primary economic driver of North Carolina, and the state is still the top producer of tobacco in the U.S. The second- and third-largest U.S. cigarette companies, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard Tobacco, are based in North Carolina.

But in 1959, the Research Triangle Park near Durham opened, and technology began to rise as the state’s prominent industry. Soon after, tobacco began a long, steady decline in popularity and importance.

Blu Cigs embodies the change from tobacco to technology, spokesman Steve Goldberg said.

The company says it has been successful in its two months of operation. The main product is the starter kit, which contains a carrying case, batteries, chargers and flavor cartridges. Healy said the company has sold more than 50,000 starter kits and had to stop taking orders for two weeks this month to keep the backlog from piling up.

Blu Cigs employs eight people in Charlotte and more than 200 in the Chinese factory where the product is manufactured. Healy said he expects the Charlotte office – on Archdale Drive – to have more than 20 workers by the end of the year.

The Electronic Cigarette Association, a new trade group, estimates electronic cigarette sales will reach $100 million this year. The group was created three months ago, so it doesn’t have figures for last year. Spokeswoman Amy Linert said the ECA expects sales to continue to grow quickly, as long as the FDA doesn’t shut them down.

Despite the growth, the industry is still small potatoes compared to the tobacco companies.

Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, brought in nearly $3.9 billion in cigarette sales over the first three months of this year.

But the big three tobacco companies also are losing their customer base. Between 1996 and 2006, annual consumption fell 24 percent, to 371 billion cigarettes.

While tobacco firms aren’t looking to e-cigarettes as their future, they are counting on technology to face the expected consistent decreases in domestic cigarette consumption and declining public approval of smoking.

Philip Morris USA, the largest tobacco company in the country, built a 300,000-square-foot research and development facility in 2007, which sits in the center of a biomedical research park in Richmond, Va.

Winston-Salem-based R.J. Reynolds created a product that heats tobacco instead of burns it, but the company has focused its attention on making products that don’t produce secondhand smoke, don’t require spitting and don’t create a lot of trash. The result has been finely milled tobacco that’s made to be discreet – similar to mints or chewing gum, spokesman David Howard said.

The company also got a patent last year for a machine that inserts a smoker-controlled menthol capsule into regular cigarettes.

Lorillard, based in Greensboro, uses “advanced scientific equipment” to analyze tobacco properties and develop cigarettes with less smoke, according to its annual report.

While the big companies are trying to hold on to profits, Blu Cigs plans to expand. The next step is to distribute abroad, primarily in Europe and the Middle East. Blu Cigs might begin selling in retail stores, but Healy said he wants to see what action the FDA takes before starting that.

Hazardous or healthier?

Federal guidelines prevent the company from marketing the product as a safer alternative to cigarettes, though Healy points out that Blu Cigs don’t have the tar or carcinogens that traditional cigarettes have.

Still, the health effects of e-cigarettes are unknown. Some politicians, like Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, have called for the product to be taken off the market until the FDA has approved it.

Dr. Adam Goldstein, director of UNC Chapel Hill’s Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Program, said he’s “cautiously worried” about e-cigarettes.

While it’s possible that they’re healthier than regular cigarettes, they’re still a source of addiction and could appeal to younger people. And a new study implied that nicotine could itself be carcinogenic.

“You don’t encourage anyone to develop use of one nicotine product,” Goldstein said. “If a smoker tells me they’re using this instead of smoking, I’ll say, ‘Great, now let’s talk about quitting.’”

You have to hand it to entrepreneurs in the electronic cigarette business. In a time of economic recession, they are creating wealth, jobs and scores of tobacco converts.

Electronic cigarettes look like the real thing, but they are battery powered to deliver nicotine in a vapor rather than tobacco smoke.

Calls in Washington that e-cigarettes be banned from the market because of unknown health risks haven’t stopped people from buying. The smokeless smokes have been on the U.S. market for about two years, and already they are being sold in about 4,000 retail outlets, according to an industry group.

The device is simple: The battery, which resembles white tobacco-filled paper, joins with a replaceable cartridge filled with liquid nicotine solution. Draw on it like a cigarette and the battery heats the solution, producing a cloud of nicotine-enriched vapor that looks like smoke, but isn’t.

It’s clean, which has an eco-conscious appeal; no ashes, no stink, no butts littering the landscape. You can indulge anywhere without breaking no-smoking rules.

“It’s providing your body with nicotine without the secondhand smoke, without the tar and without the carcinogens,” said Mike Patrick, who sells e-cigarettes at the Smoke 51 kiosk at Beachwood Place. “This is a healthy alternative to smoking cigarettes, and it’s a lot cheaper.”
“We figured this is a no-brainer, it’s healthier, but apparently not everyone looks at it that way.” — Sebastian Cangemi, President of Liberty Stix in Willoughby
But health groups have raised alarms about the lack of safety data. The American Lung Association, American Heart Association and others came out in support of a call from Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, that the Food and Drug Administration take them off the market.

The FDA says the devices are subject to enforcement action because it considers them unapproved drug-delivery devices. The agency has stopped some shipments from China, but it has not taken steps to remove the products from the market.

“We don’t know what the health effects are. It’s not been studied,” said Shelly Kiser of the American Lung Association of Ohio. “Who knows what happens when you breathe vaporized nicotine into your lungs?”

Industry frontman Matt Salmon, a former U.S. representative from Arizona, has been busy trying to fend off regulators and critics. Salmon heads the Electronic Cigarette Association, which formed in the spring. He said in a prepared statement that electronic cigarettes are safer than tobacco, and he argues the FDA has no jurisdiction to regulate them.

On a video posted on the industry Web site, Salmon says: “Whatever is said, remember this: Withholding electronic cigarettes from the market is like telling someone who chooses to smoke that his or her only legal option is to smoke cigarettes, which is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.”

Dr. Scott Frank, director of the public health program at the Case Western Reserve University medical school, said even if e-cigarettes help people quit tobacco, nicotine-replacement products require FDA approval.

“I would never advocate for electronic cigarettes to be available in unregulated fashion,” Frank said.

None of that seems to matter to customers. U.S. sales this past year are around $100 million, and they are on pace to double, the association says.

A Willoughby company called Liberty Stix opened for business 11 months ago, and is now selling e-cigarettes to retail outlets and individual customers across the country. The company occupies 17,000 square feet of industrial park space, where four employees take phone orders and several others fill orders for shipping.

Liberty Stix, which sells starter kits for about $40, is working on deals to place the product in casinos, retail chains and military installations, said President Sebastian Cangemi.

“Where smoking bans are in effect, we do advertising,” said Cangemi.

He said he’s concerned about calls for e-cigarettes to be pulled off the market, “but hopefully they’ll look at it without fogged glasses.” The company is working with research labs in Ohio, New Jersey and Texas in hopes of showing that the devices are safer and healthier than tobacco, he said.

“We figured this is a no-brainer, it’s healthier, but apparently not everyone looks at it that way,” Cangemi said.

Cangemi had approached Iyaad Hasan, director of the Cleveland Clinic Tobacco Treatment Center, about recommending Liberty Stix as an alternative to cigarettes. Hasan said in an interview he considered it but declined. He said part of addiction treatment is breaking hand-to-mouth behavior. “We push breaking the linkage to a cigarette,” he said. Critics also say that nicotine itself can affect blood pressure, insulin and cholesterol levels.

Daniel Vaughn, 63, heard about Liberty Stix from a radio ad. The Cleveland resident said he smoked a pack and a half of regular cigarettes a day. Like most customers, Vaughn decided to try electronic cigarettes to help him quit tobacco, even though e-cigarettes are not approved for that purpose. Vaughn said they worked, though it took several months of electronic smoking to wean himself off tobacco.

“When I first wake up in the morning, I hook in a new cartridge and puff away,” Vaughn said.

Cartridges can be bought with varying amounts of nicotine, or no nicotine at all. The nicotine is contained in liquid propylene glycol, a chemical that produces the vapor. A cartridge lasts about as long as a pack of cigarettes, and they come in flavors such as chocolate, apple, mint and coffee.

The flavorings have prompted criticism that the industry is targeting young people. Cangemi said most of his customers are older, “because they realize their mortality.”

Patrick, whose family opened the Beachwood kiosk in May, launched into his pitch to two young women who stopped by one recent afternoon.

“Will this help her stop smoking?” Martika White asked, pointing to her friend, Bianca Johnson, 22. “I want to help her stop. I’ve been talking to her about it.”

Patrick explained how it works, and then demonstrated by drawing on an e-cigarette and blowing out a vapor stream. Johnson said she’d consider it and walked away with a business card.

“Now they’re thinking about it,” Patrick said. “That’s about as good as a sale.”


© Cleveland

Some of the newer smokeless products that tobacco companies are betting on may not be as good at helping smokers quit as the industry hopes, a new federally funded study by Virginia Commonwealth University shows.

And that means they may not be the kind of reduced-harm product that is the industry’s latest hope, now that tobacco is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Winning FDA designation as a “potential reduced-exposure product” could be worth billions of dollars, and a key element of that could be whether an item keeps smokers from lighting up.

But the tobacco and drug industries’ hottest contenders — snus, a traditional Swedish oral tobacco, as well as powdered tobacco tablets and nicotine lozenges — don’t ease smokers’ cravings for nicotine as well as cigarettes do, according the study by VCU researchers Caroline O. Cobb, Michael F. Weaver and Thomas Eissenberg.

Their report in the medical journal Tobacco Control is the first published study of how the smokeless products — into which the tobacco industry is investing billions of dollars — deliver nicotine and ease symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Because the products are so new in the U.S., the researchers have not had enough time to look at whether they helped people quit or caused cancer or other disease.

“If you switch to these thinking you’re going to use them to replace cigarettes and they don’t deliver you the nicotine you’ve been getting and the withdrawal still makes you feel bad, what are you going to do? You’re going to go and grab a cigarette,” Eissenberg said.

And that means they will not be effective in reducing harm to smokers, he said.

That snus delivers less nicotine is no surprise to Swedish Match, the Stockholm-based tobacco giant that bases its U.S. operations in Chesterfield County. Swedish Match supports federal regulation of tobacco, hoping that snus will be recognized as a reduced-harm product.

“If you are a smoker, there is nothing that compares with a cigarette. . . . It has been designed to be the best nicotine delivery device,” said Lars-Erik Rutqvist, vice president of scientific affairs.

“Snus is not as good delivering nicotine, but it is good enough to have helped hundreds of thousands of people quit smoking,” he said.

. . .

Snus is a moist powdered tobacco, cured in air and pasteurized. Unlike snuff, users do not need to spit. The VCU study found snus delivers less nicotine than cigarettes — about one-third to one-seventh as much.

Powdered tobacco tablets marketed by Petersburg-based Star Tobacco deliver about one-sixth the nicotine that a cigarette does, while one of the largest-selling nicotine lozenges delivers a bit less than one-fourth the nicotine.

The smokers studied reported sharp drops in their craving for another cigarette after smoking. Their craving after smoking was roughly half the intensity of what they felt after using snus, tablets or lozenges, as measured by the researchers’ numerical scoring system.

When researchers asked whether the various products were pleasant, the smokeless items’ scores were roughly half those of cigarettes.

The researchers asked the study’s 28 participants to respond to 10 questions designed to measure their intention to smoke and their anticipation of relief having a cigarette. The participants used a sliding scale on a computer screen to respond to 35 more questions about how they were feeling.

Rutqvist said Sweden’s experience is that snus can help smokers quit.

Only about 11 percent of Swedish men smoke, while 19 percent use snus, according to Swedish National Institute of Public Health statistics. That compares with smoking rates ranging between 25 to 30 percent in most of the European Union and the United States.

“Without snus, based on European prevalence numbers, we’d have another 1.5 million smokers,” Rutqvist said, in a telephone interview from his Stockholm office.

Some American tobacco-control advocates say Sweden’s experience isn’t comparable because there is a long tradition of snus use in Sweden, dating back more than a century, as opposed to the limited introduction of snus here in the past few years. An entire generation of Swedes came to prefer snus during World War II, when cigarettes were hard to get, which affects the smoking-prevalence rates, they say.

. . .

Eissenberg and his colleagues have been studying the effects of what tobacco industry officials and tobacco-control experts alike call PREPs, for Potential Reduced Exposure Products, under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Such products will be a focus of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under its new authority enacted last month to regulate tobacco.

They are already a focus of industry attention — in addition to Swedish Match’s efforts to introduce Americans to snus, Philip Morris USA is test-marketing snus in Dallas, Indianapolis and Arizona. In January, Philip Morris’s parent company, Henrico County-based Altria Group, bought UST Inc., the nation’s biggest snuff-producer, for $10.4 billion. Reynolds America Inc. is also marketing snus.

Altria spokesman Bill Phelps declined to comment on the study.

“However, we believe that scientific study of potentially reduced-harm products is an important area of scientific inquiry,” he said. “With the recently signed legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco products, there is now a regulatory structure to evaluate potential reduced-harm products.”

“Altria believes innovation in developing reduced-harm products is crucial to the success of the new law,” he added.


© Timesdispatch

Susan Albano took her first drag at 15 in a Brooklyn school yard. By her early 20s, she was addicted.

The 51-year-old Prince’s Bay woman — who sometimes plans her day around where and when she can smoke, which even she admits is absurd — has tried to kick her pack-a-day habit “a million different ways” ever since.

Hypnosis and acupuncture failed. She was allergic to the adhesive in nicotine patches, and Chantix — a smoking-cessation medicine — made her sick. Cold turkey didn’t work either.

Last week, Mrs. Albano took her first puff on an electronic cigarette — simply known as an e-cigarette.

The battery-powered, tobacco-free, nicotine-delivery device looks like the real thing, right down to the odorless vapor mist. And while e-cigarettes are being criticized by anti-smoking groups and monitored by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they are embraced by large numbers trying to quit or avoid bans on lighting up in public.

“My sister got it first, and me and Mom are trying it now,” Mrs. Albano said after purchasing a starter kit in the Staten Island Mall at the Smoke Anywhere Kiosk, a cart decorated with gold ribbons to match the product packaging, glossy boutique-style shopping bags and glamour shots of e-cigarette users who might make the Marlboro Man jealous.

“My sister had some spots the doctors thought could have been lung cancer. We just got the good news that it’s not. She had a kidney removed due to cancer and we thought it was spreading. It was kind of a wake-up call to all of us.”

Starter kits, which typically include the battery-powered cigarette, replaceable cartridges and chargers, range in price from $70 to $150 at mall kiosks or online retailers.

When the user inhales, a heating element is activated, vaporizing the nicotine solution, which comes in a variety of strengths and flavors.

The tip glows red, imitating a real cigarette, but without the odor or secondhand and tar-filled smoke. E-cigarettes can be used in airports, shopping malls, restaurants and movie theaters — or anywhere a cigarette can’t.

“We think this is a reliable and safe alternative to smoking,” said Matt Salmon, president of the Electronic Cigarette Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing an industry on track to make $100 million this year.

“It gives smokers the nicotine they crave, but without all the known carcinogens found in combustible cigarettes.”

TOO MANY UNKNOWNS?

But some see e-cigarettes as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

The American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have joined Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in calling on the FDA to remove them from the market until they can be tested.

Critics also charge children may be attracted by the e-cigarette’s novelty, accessibility and its chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, cherry or mint flavorings.

“These devices haven’t been examined by any government agency,” said Alberta Brescia, regional vice president of the Staten Island American Cancer Society. “We don’t know how the ingredients are affecting the body.

“Many smokers who use [e-cigarettes] also continue to smoke cigarettes, and they are under the false impression that because they are smoking fewer cigarettes, it’s OK to keep smoking.”

The FDA has banned several shipments of e-cigarettes from coming into the country — mostly from China, where they have been manufactured for the last five years — saying the product is a drug-delivery device requiring agency approval before being legally marketed and sold in the United States.

There is also no scientific data documenting the safety of e-cigarettes, a spokeswoman for the agency said.
But Salmon said his group’s members sell e-cigarettes strictly as an alternative that allows smokers to get their nicotine in a way that is more palatable, not as smoking-cessation products that need federal regulation. They also do not sell to minors, though many non-members play by their own rules.

“There are a lot of anecdotes out there about people kicking the habit, but those aren’t claims we’re making,” said Salmon, a non-smoker who as an Arizona congressman pushed through a state law that was among the nation’s first public-smoking bans.

Some companies have taken the FDA to court, arguing the agency has no jurisdiction over e-cigarettes because they are not designed to help people quit.

“You’ve got special interests out there that see us as a threat or maybe even a displacing technology and they’re trying to do everything they can to gear up the FDA and the powers that be here in Washington to protect them,” said Salmon, noting his association is not involved in any of the pending litigation.

“Withholding the e-cigarette from the market is like telling someone who chooses to smoke that his or her only legal option is to smoke tobacco,” he said. “My feeling is government should try to help people have an alternative, not take them away.”

For Mrs. Albano, an executive assistant to the CEO of Thomson Reuters in Manhattan, there is only one reason to power up her e-smoke.

“I think the concept is just perfect for people who want to quit — and I want to quit.”

Salaried workers feeling cornered by the ever-expanding ban on smoking in Tokyo can rest easy at a recently opened cafe in the Shinbashi district that caters exclusively to smokers.

Stogies OK?: Cafe Tobacco opened in April in Tokyo’s Shinbashi district. KYODO PHOTO

At Cafe Tobacco, smoking is allowed on all three floors, according to its operator, Towa Food Service Co.

The cafe, with 44 places, opened near JR Shinbashi Station in April. Towa Food Service has also opened a second Tobacco Cafe in the nearby Yurakucho business district.

A sign posted at the entrance advises people with children and those under 20 to refrain from using the cafe.

The smoke, meanwhile, is not visible inside the building as smoke neutralizers are installed on each floor. “Smokers also hate smoke from other smokers,” said a Towa Food Service official.

The cafe also offers original blend coffee with a bitter taste, which is believed to go well with cigarettes.
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