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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© Japantimes

Citing safety as the reason for the legislation, a new Indiana law taking effect July 1 will require all cigarettes sold in Indiana to burn out more quickly when left unattended in an effort to reduce the number of smoking-related fires.

Cigarettes are the No. 1 cause of fatal residential fires in the country, killing approximately 800 people annually. One-quarter of victims of smoking-material fire fatalities are not the smokers whose cigarettes started the fire; 34 percent are children of the smokers, 25 percent are neighbors or friends, 14 percent are spouses or partners and 13 percent are parents.

Last year, there were 138 smoking-related fires in Indiana, leading to four deaths, 11 injuries and $3.4 million in property damage, according to the National Fire Incident Reporting System. In 2005, NFIRS showed that 124 reported smoking-related fires occurred. Those fires caused two civilian deaths, 16 civilian injuries and five firefighter injuries with property loss at almost $1.5 million.

The new design of cigarettes contains the same amount of tobacco as before but force a smoker to inhale to get the flame through two strips of paper incorporated into the cigarette. The two (or sometimes three) thin bands of less-porous paper act as “speed bumps” to slow down a burning cigarette. If a fire-safe cigarette is left unattended, the burning tobacco will reach one of these speed bumps and self-extinguish. The change in design isn’t expected to change cigarette prices. The law doesn’t apply to cigarettes that consumers roll themselves.

“The cigarettes are made from the same blend of tobacco as regular cigarettes,” Jim Greeson, Indiana state fire marshal and Indiana Department of Homeland Security Division of Fire and Building Safety director, said. “The only difference to the consumer is they need to puff it more often or relight it.”

Indiana’s law was signed in March 2008. Forty-eight states either have similar laws in place or will have new regulations in effect by August 2010.

To know which cigarettes are fire safe, check the UPC code for either the marking “FSC” (most common); a heavy black line above the UPC; a diamond symbol; or the letters FS, LIP or RIP.

Copyright © 2009 Corydondemocrat

Many smokers will tell you that they can’t answer a ringing phone or turn the ignition in their cars without lighting a cigarette.

For them, the feel of a cigarette in their hand is as important, maybe more important, than the nicotine they’re inhaling.

That tactile need explains a lot of the ruckus that arose when smoking was banned in bars and restaurants. For a segment of the population, a beer and a smoke go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and jelly.

Enter the e-cigarette.

It looks like a cigarette, feels like a cigarette, lights like a cigarette and produces a puff of “smoke,” all without the yucky bad stuff that smokers inhale into their lungs and spew into the air. Best of all, manufacturers say, you can use them anywhere, including airports and restaurants, because they produce vapor, not smoke.

Those touting the benefits include the president of the Electronic Cigarette Association, Matt Salmon, a former Arizona congressman whose work toward banning smoking in Arizona earned him a Congressman of the Year Award from the American Cancer Society, and William T. Godschall, executive director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania, who’s spent more than 20 years battling second-hand smoke.

Although these seem like strange bedfellows for manufacturers of smoking products, it’s all about the ingredients. E-cigarettes are 99.9 percent less deadly than traditional cigarettes, Godschall said, because they don’t produce traditional smoke.

“It’s the smoke that’s harmful in cigarettes, not the nicotine,” Godschall said.

The manufacturer of NJOY, one major brand of e-cigarettes, said the primary ingredient in the cartridge is propylene glycol, which is used in food coloring and flavoring, as an additive to keep food, medicines and cosmetics moist, and in machines that simulate smoke. It’s what creates the vapor mist in e-cigarettes.

Secondary ingredients are water, nicotine and a flavor to replicate the taste of traditional smoking.

What the cartridges don’t contain are the 4,800 ingredients, including tar, additives and carcinogens, found in most tobacco-based products.

But the American Cancer Society isn’t convinced. The society says e-cigarettes have no published clinical trials to suggest they might work as a way to help smokers quit and questions the safety of inhaling some of the flavorings and other substances in the nicotine mists into the lungs.

Earlier this year, the organization joined with the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to ask the Food and Drug Administration to immediately remove e-cigarettes from the market.

The FDA has blocked the importation of products from some manufacturers, particularly those from China, where the e-cigarettes originated.

And a bill passed by Congress this month could prompt the FDA to try to take action against e-cigarettes or e-cigarette manufacturers that make health claims, Godschall said. The bill, which President Barack Obama has promised to sign, gives the FDA power to regulate cigarettes and tobacco products for the first time. It does not directly apply to e-cigarettes because the definition of tobacco products doesn’t include them.

While those who would ban e-cigarettes cite user-safety and the threat of them falling into a youngster’s hands, Godschall said money is at the root of the debate.

Drug companies that manufacture smoking cessation products give millions of dollars to organizations like the American Cancer Society, he said, and they aren’t looking for competition.

They consider e-cigarettes competition even though most don’t market themselves as a cure-all for smoking.

IntelliCIG, a product of the United Kingdom, says on its Web site that its e-cigarette “has never been proven to be a smoking cessation device and is not marketed as such.”

The reason? Government restrictions on stop-smoking devices. If they claim to help people quit, the FDA will want to see proof in the form of long and expensive studies. But Godschall, who describes himself as a pragmatist, said he’s never encountered even one report of anyone harmed by e-cigarettes, while he’s heard countless stories of people who cut their cigarette consumption or quit completely with e-cigarettes.

“If they ban these e-cigarettes, just a blanket ban, you’re going to have tens of thousands of people who use them going back to cigarettes,” he said.

Michael Hass of Lower Swatara Twp. didn’t expect e-cigarettes to help him quit.

“I just wanted to get one of these to smoke where you couldn’t smoke, and within four days I hadn’t picked up a cigarette,” said Haas, 41, who smoked for 13 years.

Within days of buying his first Intellicig, he gave up a carton a week habit, which was costing him over $50 a week. The starter kit, with three batteries, two atomizers and five filters, cost him $67. He also picked up two bottles of flavoring — one Marlboro cigarettes, one coconut — for $60.

That’s all he has spent in the past month and a half, and he expects his stock to last six months to a year.

“I just take a couple of puffs of these and I haven’t needed a real cigarette,” he said.

Currently, the FDA’s block on imports has led to short supplies on some Internet sites. Those who turn to the NJOY site, for example, will find most starter kits unavailable and backordered. Intellicig also reports its products are out of stock.

E-cigarettes are available elsewhere on the Web, including Costco.com, where a starter kit is about $90, and at kiosks at some malls, including the King of Prussia Mall.

Lois Wells, who manages the store at Travel Centers of America at Interstate 81 and Route 39 said she’s stocked e-cigarettes since January, but they haven’t caught on with her customers. Sales are so slow that she hasn’t added to the original stock.

HOW THEY WORK

• The user inhales through a mouthpiece.

• Air flow triggers a sensor that switches on a small, battery-powered heater.

• The heater vaporizes liquid nicotine in a small cartridge (it also activates a light at the lit end of the e-cigarette).

• Users can opt for a cartridge without nicotine.

• The heater also vaporizes propylene glycol in the cartridge.

• The user gets a puff of hot gas that feels a lot like tobacco smoke.

• When the user exhales, there’s a cloud of PEG vapor that looks like smoke. The vapor quickly dissipates.

• E-cigarettes contain no tobacco products; even the nicotine is synthetic.

Source: Pennlive