WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Customers may already have noticed the change—although it has been subtle thus far. But they will starting March 1. That’s the official launch date of the latest line extension from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.’s Camel brand: menthol cigarettes containing a menthol burst capsule that enhances menthol flavor when squeezed.

The new cigarette supplanted Camel Menthol cigarettes in August 2009 and evolved from the “wonderful success” of Camel Crush (launched September 2008), according to Brian Stebbins, senior marketing director for Camel cigarettes. Crush also contains the menthol capsule, but squeezing it turns that cigarette from nonmenthol to menthol. “Whenever we launch something new, we try to find out who’s interacting with it, who likes it, who doesn’t like it and who has an idea of how to make it even better,” Stebbins told CSP Daily News.

“We identified that there’s a pretty large group of adult menthol smokers who are interested in the capsule technology, but they want to see us use it differently,” Stebbins said, adding that they want to use it to use it to make menthol cigarettes “even fresher and even cooler at the moment of their choosing, or on demand.”

The soft launch in August included “very minimal communication on packs and on the website for those who were interested.” Stebbins added, “And the idea there was to let those smokers who already choose Camel Menthol have an opportunity to experience the innovation first, let them experience the product first, let them let us know what they think and the response has been very positive.”

As for March 1, Stebbins said, “That is where we actually go out and try and tell the story to a broader audience about the innovation on Camel menthol.” The launch will mean a new look for the packaging, retail communications, retail merchandising and a “very solid” launch promotion program—including direct mail, emails and person-to-person engagements in bars, nightclubs and festivals.

Stebbins described the new packaging as having “a fresher, cooler color pallet that menthol smokers respond very nicely to” and said it will also “tell the story of the product within,” using the Camel mascot. Stebbins also said the name of Camel Menthol Lights will change to Camel Menthol Silver; Camel Menthol will keep the same name. He added, “We will still have a couple of menthol products that are in the market that will not have capsules in them, but they are not a primary marketing emphasis…. That really just kind of depends upon the business opportunity in those markets and retailer choice about what they carry.”

He said the product’s demographics are wide ranging. “Our testing indicates that the adult smokers who are interested span different age groups, they span different brands that they buy from today and it’s male/female. It’s a very broad opportunity, and I think that’s mostly because it’s a provocative innovation. We’re talking about a category, menthol cigarettes, where there’s a lot of sameness, and Camel cigarettes is the exact opposite of that.”

According to a Jan. 17, 1997 New York Times article, Reynolds briefly tested a menthol version of Camel in 1966, but never sold it nationally. Camel Menthols were nationally launched in 1997.

“I think the ‘new news’ here is menthol is growing considerably in the category, and to be frank, until we had introduced Camel Crush, Camel wasn’t getting its fair share of that growth,” Stebbins said.

Although menthol is “expressly permitted” under the recent flavored cigarette ban, there has been concern in the industry. David Howard, an R.J. Reynolds spokesperson, told CSP Daily News, “Obviously, as [U.S. Food & Drug Administration] regulations take effect, one of the things is that there will be a committee looking into menthol…. And certainly, whatever information is needed from us, we’re going to cooperate for any information that they need or assistance that we can provide in that study. But at this time, menthol is specifically not part of the flavored bans and permitted by FDA regulations…. And certainly, we believe it’s a viable product category, obviously; it’s a very large and growing category with adult smokers.”

According to the National Survey on Drug Use & Health Report, published by the Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, on Nov. 19, 2009, among past-month smokers, the rate of smoking menthol cigarettes increased from 31% in 2004 to 33.9% in 2008. Past-month smoking of menthol cigarettes was more likely among those who were recent smoking initiates (i.e., began smoking in the past year) than among those who were longer-term smokers (i.e., initiated use more than a year ago) (44.6% vs. 31.8% respectively).

By Linda Abu-Shalback Zid, Cspnet.com
February 5, 2010

A new flavor kicked up sales sharply for a Marlboro brand of snuff and helped to boost profits at Altria Group Inc.

And as the tobacco giant’s aggressive push into noncigarette businesses starts paying off on the bottom line, directors yesterday voted to share more of future profits with stockholders.

Other Richmond corporate giants also reported profit gains yesterday for the end of one of the toughest years ever for American business.

At Henrico County-based Altria, parent company of Philip Morris USA, strong earnings led directors to decide they’ll pay about 80 percent of future profits as dividends, up from 75 percent now.

Altria’s profits rose despite a more than doubling in cigarette taxes that led some smokers to quit and others to switch to discount brands.

Though U.S. sales of all makers’ cigarettes fell about 8 percent, smokeless tobacco rose – a trend that many health advocates fear will keep Americans hooked on a deadly product.

For Altria, smokeless tobacco is starting to play an ever-moreimportant role in its business.

One big signal: a 15 percent jump in sales of Copenhagen snuff in the fourth quarter, to 77.9 million cans, mainly because of a new wintergreen-flavored variety launched toward the end of the quarter.

“When you look at the growth in Copenhagen it’s really strongly being driven now by Copenhagen long-cut wintergreen,” Altria Chairman and CEO Michael E. Szymanczyk said yesterday.

The wintergreen-flavored snuff was only the fifth product in Copenhagen’s 187-year history, but Altria Executive Vice President David R. Beran said yesterday that the company is introducing two more varieties early this year.

“Clearly, Cope’ wintergreen is off to a pretty good start,” Goldman Sachs analyst Judy Hong said.

Szymanczyk said Altria’s top brand, Marlboro, hung in strongly in a year that saw a 62-cents-a-pack federal tax increase as well as a 9-cent-a-pack price increase in the spring and a 6-cent-a-pack price increase in the fall.

“The loyalty factor remains high. It ended the year in pretty good shape,” Szymanczyk said. Marlboro’s market share slipped just 0.1 percentage point last year.

Beran said Marlboro’s menthol varieties were among the fastest-growing brands last year, largely because of the new Blend 54 version.

He said Marlboro will introduce two new nonmenthol varieties this year, both to be called “Special Blend” and both based on the Marlboro “Red” blend.

Cigarette price increases and what Szymanczyk called a “disciplined” approach to promotions – that is, not doing them as aggressively as some tobacco firms – meant the company’s net revenue per pack rose to $1.27 from $1.15 the previous year. The figure excludes federal taxes and various fees.

Altria’s earnings from continuing operations last year rose 4 percent to $3.2 billion, as revenue increased 21.7 percent to $23.6 billion.

Its shares rose 4 cents to close at $20.03.

Reporting from Denver – The Paragon Theatre’s artistic director, Warren Sherrill, has thought about staging “Agnes of God” for a while.

Problem is, one of the key characters is a psychiatrist who chain-smokes. And in Colorado — one of 25 states with indoor smoking bans — actors can’t light up on stage.

The state Supreme Court last month found the 2006 smoking restriction constitutional, rejecting theater companies’ argument that it infringed on their freedom of speech and stifled artistic expression. Actors, the justices noted, had alternatives to convey the act of smoking.

For Sherrill, the decision means he’ll keep passing on plays in which smoking is integral to the plot or to character development; he refuses to employ methods he considers unacceptable.

Miming is silly, he said. Talcum cigarettes are ridiculous. “The talcum lasts for a couple of puffs. If your actor sucks in rather than blows out, they’ve just swallowed a bunch of talcum,” he said. “And it’s going to look incredibly fake.”

Altering the stage direction so that the character doesn’t light up is equally distasteful, Sherrill said. “To me, that’s sacrificing the writer’s integrity.”

Instead the Paragon, along with Denver’s Curious Theatre, will pursue a legal case, hoping to win an audience with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Of the states that prohibit smoking in public venues such as restaurants and bars, at least six — including California — provide a theatrical exemption, according to the group Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

When Colorado passed its ban, theater companies objected. They weren’t demanding to smoke tobacco, but wanted at least the option of using cigarettes made of herbs or tea leaves, said attorney A. Bruce Jones. Such alternatives weren’t harmful, the Paragon and Curious theaters argued, and would allow them to replicate the act and ambience of smoking.

But the law banned smoking of all kinds.

While secondhand tobacco smoke is measurably harmful, particularly to those with heart disease, the risks associated with herbal cigarettes are less understood, said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer with the American Lung Assn.

However, he said, smoke from non-tobacco sources can be troublesome for people with smoke sensitivities, such as those with asthma. “Just a whiff of smoke will tighten their airways,” Edelman said.

Proponents of the smoking law argue that there is no need for actors to light up. After all, they point out, theater is all about make-believe.

“They aren’t allowed to use real guns. There’s no reason they should be allowed to use cigarettes, because there’s no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke,” said Annie Tegen, senior program manager with Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

“No, you don’t shoot a gun, but you don’t shoot a toy water pistol from Kmart, either,” said Chip Walton, artistic director for Curious Theatre. While some props can appear realistic, fake cigarettes don’t do the trick, he said. And smoking often is key to the development or expression of a character, he said.

The Denver theater companies have attracted the support of 1st Amendment advocates, including the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

Director Robert O’Neil noted that his group does not take issue with the validity of smoking bans. “But in order to serve those purposes, [states] don’t need to prohibit an otherwise 1st Amendment-protected activity related to artistic integrity,” he said.

The issue of whether actors can puff away on stage may not seem to be a critical one, O’Neil said. “But if you view it as a question of government intervention in a way that destroys artistic integrity, that’s a different matter.”

Mike Saccone, spokesman for the Colorado attorney general’s office, which defended the smoking law, praised the state Supreme Court’s findings. “We’re glad to see they sided with us,” he said. If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to the review, “it would be a fascinating 1st Amendment case.”
By DeeDee Correll
January 18, 2010

LANSING — It could be light up or lights out for a statewide smoking ban this week in the Legislature.

Senate Republicans will take another stab at prohibiting smoking in all workplaces, including restaurants and bars. But whether to exempt Detroit’s casinos remains a key question.

“It’s time to get it moving,” said Sen. Ron Jelinek, R-Three Oaks, who is prodding fellow Senate Republicans with a compromise.

That plan would ban smoking in all public places, but possibly allow it to some extent at the Detroit casino on gaming floors, as well as in cigar bars. Smoking would be banned at the Detroit casino restaurants and hotels, possibly answering concerns of bar owners about giving a competitive advantage to the casinos.

Jelinek and others said with only a couple of weeks before a long holiday break, the Legislature is under pressure to act on an issue that’s been in stalemate for more than a decade.

“It’s an emotional, important issue. They want it done,” said Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Highland Park, who wants Detroit’s casinos exempt from any smoking ban.
Casinos a wild card in smoking ban

Like Godzilla, the push to ban smoking in Michigan doesn’t sleep forever.

The issue resurfaced last week, as Senate Republicans discussed cracking a long-standing impasse: whether to exempt Detroit’s three casinos and cigar bars from a smoking ban that restaurant and bar owners generally oppose.

The revived effort brought Christopher Ilitch, president of Ilitch Holdings Inc., to the Capitol to personally lobby against a smoking ban for casinos. His mother, Marian Ilitch, owns the MotorCity Casino-Hotel.

“Some feel strongly there should be no exceptions, others say there need to be exceptions,” said Sen. Ron Jelinek, R-Three Oaks, who is drafting a compromise bill. “Some say they don’t care, let’s get something done. I think that’s where I am.”

In May 2008, the GOP-led Senate approved a total smoking ban statewide. The Democratic-run House in turn passed a smoking ban that would exempt Detroit casinos, cigar bars, bingo halls and horserace tracks.
No compromise was reached and the issue died unresolved.

Michigan is one of 13 states with no general smoking ban, although the state forbids smoking in state workplaces.

Last month, anti-smoking advocates stepped up lobbying for a total ban. They say smoking is a health hazard to employees — like waiters and waitresses — in workplaces who are exposed to potentially deadly secondhand smoke.

Restaurant and bar owners say the state should not decide whether their customers can smoke in their establishments. They say more and more restaurants become smoke-free as customers demand it.

But Detroit’s casinos remain the wild card.

They argue that a smoking ban would cost them tens of millions of dollars in lost business, as customers go where smoking is allowed, such as tribal casinos that are not subject to state smoking bans. Most of those casinos are in northern Michigan.

The likelihood of competition from new casinos in Ohio also threatens Detroit casinos.

Those cries of potential lost business and jobs in Detroit have been a powerful deterrent to a smoking ban, especially among Detroit-area House Democrats.

One is Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Highland Park, who said there’s no need for a state ban that might harm casino profits.

“I’m an optimist,” Johnson said. “There are cool heads at the table. The people on both sides respect the fact that what we sent over from the House is 98% of what strong advocates want.”

Anti-smoking crusader Sen. Ray Basham, D-Taylor, disagrees. He said allowing smoking anywhere exposes those employees to secondhand smoke.

Basham said if the Legislature can’t reach an agreement, he’ll help lead a campaign for a ballot issue to ban smoking, adding, “I expect it would pass, and it won’t have exemptions.”

That would take money the anti-smoking coalition doesn’t have, said Judy Stewart, spokesperson for the Campaign for Smokefree Air.

“We’d support it in any way,” Stewart said. “It’s just not financially possible.”

To further expand its smoke-free environment, Susquehanna Health has adopted a new policy that prohibits the hiring of smokers and other tobacco users.

Health system officials and legal experts noted the policy, to take effect Jan. 1, is perfectly legal under state law. It affects every position within the health system.

“In Pennsylvania, tobacco users are not a protected class under the law,” explained health system spokeswoman Tracie Witter. “So prohibiting the hiring of tobacco users is not discrimination.”

Everyone who seeks health system employment must apply online, Witter noted. At that time, they are made aware of the policy.

“We have been testing for drugs. We are adding a nicotine component,” she said.

Smokers already employed by the health system will not be screened.

“We are encouraging all our employees to quit smoking,” Witter said.

However, smoking and tobacco use at the three hospital campuses as well as physician practices will continue to be prohibited, a policy that went into effect two years ago.

The smoking ban for new employees, Witter said, means the health system is joining a growing list of hospitals and businesses around the nation that already have adopted similar practices.

The health system’s most recent policy would stand up in a court of law, according to Williamsport attorney Clifford Rieders.

“It is not illegal to discriminate against a smoker. The reason for that is an institution may discriminate against smokers,” he said.

Rieders noted any argument that the American Disabilities Act would protect smokers as a special class of people who cannot reasonably be accommodated fails from a legal standpoint.

On the other hand, that argument successfully could be made in the case of people suffering from certain medical conditions.

Witter noted that as yet, no one has offered up a challenge to the health system’s new policy.

“We are aware that we may lose some top candidates as a result of this policy,” Witter said. “It’s really a demonstration of our commitment to promote healthy behaviors.”

The local chapter of the American Cancer Society endorsed the new policy.

Announcement of the health system’s policy coincides with today’s annual American Cancer Society “Great American Smokeout,” which embraces smoke-free lifestyles.

“As a regional health system and a leader in both medical education and community health improvement, we have an important obligation to practice the healthy behaviors we promote to the general public and to our own employees,” said Susquehanna President and CEO Steven P. Johnson.

“This decision is highly appropriate and consistent with our mission, vision and values, which address the health and well-being of individuals in the communities we serve,” he added.

By MIKE REUTHER
November 19, 2009

Cars, patios and pharmacies are all in the Saskatchewan Party government sights as they plan “quite encompassing” new anti-tobacco legislation expected to be introduced later this fall, Health Minister Don McMorris said Monday.

The government promised new anti-tobacco measures in the throne speech starting the legislative session last week.

Among the measures being contemplated are banning smoking on restaurant and bar patios and in vehicles carrying minors, setting new limits on how close people smoking can be to public buildings and curtailing tobacco sales in pharmacies.

“Allowing pharmacies, especially the big box store pharmacies, to be selling tobacco products, it’s a little counterintuitive to be passing out (smoking) cessation … medicine, for example, as well as selling tobacco at the same time,” McMorris told reporters at the legislature.

He noted some provinces have banned stores with pharmacies from selling cigarettes or have required groceries and big box retailers to keep tobacco products separated from the pharmacy in an area with a distinct entrance.

McMorris said that details of the province’s legislation still need to be worked out but Saskatchewan must take steps to deal with smoking rates that are among the highest in Canada.

“All provinces are looking at the whole piece of trying to drive down the use of tobacco, denormalize it and more importantly, protect the people around a smoker from second-hand smoke,” he said.

Under the NDP, the provincial government instituted a province-wide smoking ban in enclosed public places at the start of 2005. Outdoor patios in bars and restaurants were exempt although some communities, such as Saskatoon, instituted local restrictions on smoking on decks.

A number of jurisdictions meanwhile, including Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Yukon have already implemented bans on smoking in vehicles carrying minors, with the cut-off point ranging from 16 to 19 years of age.

“Children in particular are especially susceptible to the poison in second-hand smoke, particularly in an enclosed, confined space like a car,” said Donna Pasiechnik, tobacco control co-ordinator of the Canadian Cancer Society’s Saskatchewan division.

In response to concerns about infringing on a drivers’ rights, Pasiechnik notes that cars are already regulated spaces, pointing to seatbelt laws, mandatory children’s seats and drunk-driving restrictions.

As well, the Sask. Party government intends to introduce legislation banning hand-held cellphone use while driving during this legislative session.

As for restaurant and bar patios, Peter Van Loon, an educator with the Lung Association in Saskatchewan, said smoking should not be allowed in spaces where people are gathered together.

“Usually in a patio situation you’re clumped quite closely together, and frequently there’s not actually good wind flow because there can be partial roofing and that kind of stuff around there. And frequently the servers are very close, so it’s a concern for the people working there,” he said.

Van Loon said another benefit of a province-wide ban on smoking on patios is that it would level the playing field between restaurants that are able to have decks and those that can’t and between communities.

But Tom Mullin, president of the Saskatchewan Hotel and Hospitality Association, said the move will be a blow to rural hoteliers who were hard-hit by the smoking ban four years ago.

Many businesses sunk a considerable investment into building patios precisely because of the smoking law, he said.

However, the association won’t be “duking it out” with the government this time because public opinion is likely on its side, said Mullin. Instead, the hospitality industry will press for a better deal with the province on liquor sales.

Ray Joubert, registrar of the Saskatchewan College of Pharmacists, said pharmacists would welcome a move to ban tobacco sales from pharmacies, noting that many already don’t sell cigarettes.

“Generally, it’s a product that’s not compatible with good health and pharmacies are places where one goes for good health, health care,” said Joubert, adding that such legislation would level the playing field between small players and large retailers.

By JAMES WOOD, 27/10/09 Paherald

DANVILLE, Va. ― An international tobacco company plans to open a burley and flue-cured processing plant in Danville.

Japan Tobacco International Leaf Services plans to spend $19.5 million to build the plant, creating 39 full-time jobs and 150 seasonal jobs when fully operational, according to a news release Friday from Gov. Timothy Kaine’s office.

JTI Leaf Services is the international tobacco unit of Japan Tobacco Inc., based in Geneva, Switzerland. It produces two of the top three worldwide cigarette brands, Winston and Mild Seven. Its other brands include Camel and Benson & Hedges.

Enforcement of the tobacco ban at the Nov. 28 UK football home game will rely on the same method used on every other part of campus — self-compliance.

Anthany Beatty, vice president for public safety, said the university would rely on every member of the community to report violations of the policy, and punishments would be no different than on any other part of campus.

Police will be instructed to approach people who are violating the ban, but they will not be more involved in enforcing the ban than anyone else at the stadium, Beatty said.

“Remember again, this is not a criminal offense so our police officers will not be involved in this unless it becomes a public safety issue,” Beatty said.

Brendan Space, a finance sophomore and smoker, said the ban would not stop him from smoking at the stadium and does not think it will be possible to enforce the ban.

“They can’t stop underage drinking so how are they going to stop smoking?” Space said.

Beatty said if an employee were found to be violating the ban, Human Resources would handle the matter. If a student violated it, the matter would be taken care of through the Code of Conduct.

Visitors violating the ban could be asked to leave the campus if they do not comply.

Hilary Caballero, a marketing sophomore and nonsmoker, said the policy further encourages her to never start smoking.

“It’s just going to make me not want to do it even more,” Caballero said.

At the game in November, student and employee groups will hand out literature and information about the policy, its implementation and campus expectations, Beatty said.

“The approach will be again just everyone informing those who are offenders that tobacco products and smoking is not allowed on the property,” Beatty said.

Beatty said people would continue participating in cleanup efforts the days after games to take care of discarded cigarette butts in and around the stadium.

© September 29, 2009 Kykernel

Although it has only been in operation for a short time, DC Tobacco Free Families has proven effective at preventing kids from starting to smoke and encouraging and assisting smokers to quit, ultimately reducing tobacco use rates. Funding for DCTFF should be maintained at its current level of $3.6 million annually so it can continue its excellent work to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit.

Tobacco is not only the number one preventable cause of death and disease in DC – it is a substantial drag on the District’s economy. Investing in critically-important tobacco prevention and cessation efforts would produce enormous tobacco use declines and related public health and economic benefits immediately and for years to come. The people, businesses, and taxpayers of DC deserve no less.

Without renewed funding, DCTFF will be forced to eliminate more than 75 percent of its programmatic activities as of September 30, 2009. If that were to happen, at least a dozen organizations will no longer have funding to conduct prevention and outreach activities for DC smokers and youth. During the past three years, DCTFF has provided technical assistance, funding, and capacity-building programs to expand the reach of community-based organizations. All of these organizations provide direct services to the most at risk groups in the District: youth and the underserved African American, Latino, and LGBT populations.

Without providing the adequate funds necessary to keep DCTFF’s activities going, DC will be saddled with higher health costs and lower business productivity during these challenging economic times.

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

BOISE – Supporters call them an alternative to tobacco smoke but when it comes to electronic cigarettes there are some skeptics.

“I tried the patch, I tried chewing gum, I tried the nicotine inhaler,” said Noah Minskoff, owner of InnoVapor, LLC.

But Minskoff says none of them helped him quit smoking altogether.

“I still found myself smoking one or two cigarettes a day.”

He says that’s where electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, changed his life. In fact so much so he started InnoVapor, LLC, an online distribution company based in Boise.

“It’s been very effective for people who have used nicotine patches, or nicotine controlled inhalers, or nicotine gum has been unsuccessful,” said Minskoff.

Instead of inhaling burning tobacco, Minskoff says an e-cigarette works as a personal vaporizer powered by a battery.

“That battery heats a resistor up, a wire coil, and that wire coil reaches a certain temperature and it turns whatever liquid you have into a vapor,” he said.

But e-cigarettes don’t have everyone breathing easy.

“They have not gone through FDA approval,” said Nancy Caspersen, a registered nurse and tobacco cessation specialist.

Caspersen she says unlike nicotine gum and inhalers, little research and trials have been conducted on e-cigarettes in the United States.

“They’re not regulated so we really don’t know if there is a difference between a company making it in China and company making maybe in the United Kingdom,” she said.

Idaho health officials say the FDA recently did some testing on several companies selling e-cigarettes and found varying levels of nicotine as well as other chemicals known to cause cancer.

But Minskoff says the product and liquid he sells is independently certified in the U.K.

“Purely in my opinion it is far, far healthier than smoking,” he said.

But Caspersen says in her opinion that’s up to the FDA to determine.

The owners of InnoVapor say the company where they get their e-cigarette devices and liquids from is in process of going through drug trials in the United Kingdom.


© 2news

WASHINGTON — Something as simple as the color of a cigarette packet can dupe smokers into thinking the cigarettes it contains are less dangerous to their health, a study showed.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada showed that, in addition to words like “light,” “mild,” and “low-tar,” which have been banished from cigarette packets in more than 40 countries, design elements and color are being used by tobacco companies to lull smokers into a false sense of security about the harmful effects of smoking.

“Substantial proportions of adults in the study associated perceptions of risk and tar delivery with package design,” the study’s authors wrote.

The study involved cigarette packets that were specifically designed and presented in pairs to some 600 adult smokers and non-smokers, who were then asked questions about what they thought the content of the packets would be like.

The packets were made to look and feel as if they were real and contained cigarettes, but the brand names were made up, to avoid “contamination.”

Each packet carried a pictorial health warning, as required under Canadian law.

The pairs of cigarette packets that were presented to participants in the study were identical, except for one element: either a term such as “full flavor” or “light,” or a design element on the packet, such as the color, were different.

The researchers found that around 80 percent of participants in the study believed that cigarettes in a light blue packet would deliver less tar, have a smoother taste and pose less of a danger to health than those in darker blue packaging.

Seventy percent of study participants said a packet with a white symbol would deliver less tar, be smoother and less unhealthy than cigarettes in a packet with a grey symbol.

And an equal number — seven in 10 — believed the same benefits to be true of cigarettes in a packet bearing the words “charcoal filter” and showing an image of the filter.

Smokers were more likely than non-smokers to be duped by the imagery, words and color of a cigarette package because “they have greater incentive to believe that some cigarettes may be less harmful,” the study found.

According to the study, tobacco use is responsible for one in 10 deaths around the world and is the leading cause of preventable deaths.

With the tobacco industry recognizing “rising levels of health concern” as a key threat to its existence, it has made reassuring consumers about the risks associated with smoking “an important function of tobacco marketing,” the study said.

“A central feature of this marketing strategy has been to promote the perception that some cigarettes are less hazardous than others,” wrote David Hammond and Carla Parkinson, the authors of the study.

The pair said tobacco packaging “has served as a critical medium for shaping perceptions of consumer risk.”

Forty-four countries, including the United States, have banned the use of the words “light,” “mild,” and “low-tar,” on cigarette packages, saying they mislead consumers about the health risks of smoking, the study says.

The authors want the list of prohibited words to be expanded and for cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging to try to stop the tobacco industry misleading smokers.

“There is growing evidence that the removal of brand imagery from packaging — so-called ‘plain’ packaging — reduces the appeal of brands and increases the salience of health warnings,” the study says.

“Research to date suggests that plain packages are less attractive and engaging and may reduce brand appeal, particularly among youth.”

The study was published in the Oxford University Press Journal of Public Health.