Vape Holdings of Chatsworth, California, USA, has entered into an agreement with Illinois-based e-cigarette retailer Vapor Hut for the distribution of its new portable vaporizer to be launched under its newly formed, wholly owned subsidiary Revival Products, reports Market Wire.
Vape Holdings focuses on the designing, marketing and distribution of vaporization products.
A study conducted by scientists at the Netherlands-based Fontem Ventures (Imperial Tobacco Group) used a “prototype vaping product” with 2 percent nicotine concentration—the maximum limit set by the EU Tobacco Products Directive—and found that it was “well tolerated” in smokers.
According to the researchers, the product had a similar short-term safety profile to Nicorette, a nicotine gum, and has the potential for use as an aid for smoking reduction or cessation.
The study was published in the Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.
The U.S. Centers for Disease control has expressed concern about young people’s exposure to e-cigarette advertisements. According to the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey, nearly 69 percent of U.S. middle- and high-school students see e-cigarette advertisements from one or more media sources.
Cynthia Cabrera, executive director of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, said the CDC continues to mislead the public about the benefits of vapor products as far less harmful alternatives to smoking.
According to Cabrera, the report fails to mention that teens are exposed to many other adult issues, including violence, sex and alcohol, on the Internet, TV and in movies.
Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) has formed a new subsidiary, RAI Innovations Co., focused on product development, innovation and commercialization of next-generation vapor and nicotine products.
Carolyn C. Hanigan has been appointed president of RAI Innovations and is due to take up her new post on January 19. Hanigan has 20 years’ experience in consumer packaged goods companies, including Mars, Nestle, The Clorox Company and Kraft Nabisco Foods. Most recently, she was vice president of consumer marketing at Swander Pace Capital, a private-equity firm with holdings in consumer products companies.
“Product innovation has long been a hallmark of RAI’s operating companies,” said Susan M. Cameron, RAI’s president and COO. “By centralizing new-product development in these areas, we will be able to drive speed to market with new products across a range of platforms and more efficiently meet the preferences of consumers in a rapidly evolving marketplace.”
The U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said on Jan. 4 that it wants to ensure licensed nicotine containing products—including e-cigarettes—that make medicinal claims are available and meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and efficacy to help reduce the harms from smoking, reports Reuters.
The agency has already given a drug license to British American Tobacco’s e-Voke, allowing the e-cigarette to be prescribed on the National Health Service for patients trying to quit cigarette smoking,
The MHRA added it would continue to encourage companies to voluntarily submit medicines license applications for e-cigarettes and other nicotine containing products as medicines.
Under the revised Clean Air Act that took effect in Oregon on Jan. 1st, e-cigarettes use will not be permitted in indoor public places such as workplaces, restaurants and bars where smoking is already prohibited as well as within 10 feet of entrances and exits to these establishments, reports the Register-Guard.
Some 1.5 million Frenchmen and -women use e-cigarettes on a daily basis, according to France’s 2014 Health Barometer, a survey of 15,635 people aged 15-75.
About 400,000 smokers nationwide have quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes, according to the study, and 80 percent of current smokers who also use e-cigarettes have cut their daily cigarette consumption by an average of 8.9 pieces.
The results of the study were published in the International Journal of Public Health.
A recent study on the health effects of e-cigarettes, conducted by the University of California, San Diego, USA, has been taking out of context, according to observers.
The researchers treated human cells in a petri dish to an extract created from e-cigarette vapor and found that the exposed cells exhibited several forms of damage, including DNA strand breaks that can lead to cancer.
The press release accompanying the study acknowledged that the effect on cells could be entirely different in a real world environment and that the research team “didn’t seek to mimic the actual dose of vapor that an e-cigarette user would get.”
Media outlets, however, followed with headlines such as “E-cigarettes can cause cancer” and “E-cigarettes are not safe!”
Guy Bentley of the The Daily Caller said the journalists writing these articles “have barely looked beyond the first paragraph of the press release and are selectively leaving out key factors that call into question the study’s headline-grabbing lede.”
Boston University Professor Michael Siegel said the cell culture study didn’t warrant the conclusion that e-cigarette vapor has toxic or carcinogenic effects in users because the dose at which the e-cigarette vapor was found to have an adverse effect was much higher than the actual dose that a consumer receives.
Despite this, he said, one of the study’s co-authors made the “false and irresponsible claim” that vaping is no less hazardous than cigarette smoking.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller issued a statement declaring that e-cigarettes are dramatically less harmful than combustible cigarettes, according to the Des Moines Register.
“There has been an effort to say that combustible cigarettes and e-cigarettes are equally harmful, that their companies are equally evil, and that they should be strongly regulated the same way, which is incorrect,” he was quoted as saying.
Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, hailed Miller for becoming the “first (attorney general) in the country to enthusiastically endorse e-cigarettes,”
University of Michigan professor Ken Warner said Miller is a rare “middle-of-the-roader” on the issue of e-cigarettes, which he contended has been one of the most divisive health topics in at least 20 years.
The Polish government has announced draft legislation that would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, restrict their use in public places, and require health warnings on e-cigarette packaging, reports Thenews.pl.