Category: News This Week

Thailand’s Public Health Ministry plans to push through legislation to drag e-cigarettes under existing laws controlling the sale of tobacco cigarettes, according to a story in The Nation.

The move seems to be a step forward for e-cigarettes, which have been banned in Thailand for about five years but, nevertheless, have been growing in popularity.

Dr. Nopporn Cheunklin, deputy chief of the Public Health Ministry’s Disease Control Department, said that since e-cigarettes were popular despite being prohibited, the ministry had decided to draft a law and put them under the same controls as were applied to traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The draft of the new law is due to be sent to parliament for consideration “soon.”

Health officials have considered banning the use of e-cigarettes in enclosed public places in England, according to a story in The Independent quoting “documents from a recent board meeting.”

The suggestion, said to have been one of a number of options raised at a Public Health England (PHE) meeting in February, proposed prohibiting e-cigarette use in “workplaces, educational and public places to ensure their use did not undermine smoking prevention and cessation by reinforcing and normalising smoking.”

But PHE says that it has not called for a ban, and is still considering options.

“We have not called for a ban on e-cigarette use in public spaces,” said professor Kevin Fenton, PHE’s national director health and well-being.

“PHE is working with our partners to consider the options for supporting safe use of e-cigarettes to reduce harm and support smokers to quit, some of which were discussed by our board in February.”

E-cigarettes can change gene expression in a similar way to that of tobacco, according to a story by Daniel Cressey for Nature quoting one of the first studies to investigate the biological effects of the devices.

Presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting in San Diego, California, USA ,the research looked at human bronchial cells that contained some mutations found in smokers at risk of lung cancer. The cells were immortalized, grown in culture medium that had been exposed to e-cigarette vapor and their gene expression profiled.

The researchers found that the cells grown in medium exposed to the vapor of e-cigarettes showed a similar pattern of gene expression to those grown in a medium exposed to tobacco smoke.

The changes were not identical, said study researcher, Avrum Spira, who works on genomics and lung cancer at Boston University in Massachusetts. But “there are some striking similarities,” he said.

The researchers are now evaluating whether the alterations mean that cells behave more like cancer cells in culture.

The work is at a very early stage and therefore cannot establish that e-cigarettes can cause cancer in vitro, let alone in vivo.

Spira said that the use of e-cigarettes might be safer than the use of tobacco cigarettes, but that the researcher’s preliminary studies suggested that the use of the former might not be benign.

Some state lawmakers in Washington, USA, want to levy a 75 percent tax on e-cigarettes, according to a story by Annaliese Davis for the Bellingham Herald.

Sponsored by Seattle Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat, H.B. 2795 would subject e-cigarettes and other tobacco substitutes to a 75 percent tax, though it would exempt e-cigarettes prescribed by physicians to aid individuals in quitting tobacco, should e-cigarettes be found to be a cessation aid.

Carlyle’s original proposal called for a 95 percent tax, but the rate was reduced to 75 percent in legislation that passed out of the House Finance Committee on Tuesday morning.

The proposed bill passed 7-6, with Chris Reykdal, a Democrat representative, siding with Republican committee members against taxation.

Reykdal said that without data from the Food and Drug Administration, it was hard for him to justify punishing individuals trying to make a potentially healthier choice.

A group of doctors, professors and health advocates are calling on the Canadian federal government to authorize the sale in Canada of e-cigarettes containing nicotine.

Writing in The Gazette on behalf of the group, Gaston Ostiguy said e-cigarettes offered a safer and more acceptable alternative to regular cigarettes for smokers to appease their addiction.

No doubt, tremendous strides had been made over the years to impose a strict regulatory framework on regular cigarettes, he said, and more could be done. But it was wishful thinking that one day nicotine use would be eradicated. The vast majority of smokers wanted to quit, but studies showed that only 10 percent of them were still abstinent after trying to quit during the previous year.

“In such a context, we believe that the time has come for tobacco control to move beyond the usual approaches of education, total nicotine cessation and prevention,” Ostiguy said. “In a landmark report published in 2007, the Royal College of Physicians makes a compelling case why harm reduction should no longer be ignored by health authorities to lower the death and disease caused by tobacco use.”

Ostiguy’s piece is at http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/time+authorize+sale+electronic+cigarettes/9655937/story.html.

The United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Health has rejected requests from shop owners for permission to sell e-cigarettes and electronic shisha pipes, according to a story in The National.

Officials told The National’s Arabic-language paper, Al Ittihad, that a number of municipalities had referred store owners to the ministry for advice on applying for licenses to sell e-cigarettes.

However, officials at the ministry said the sale of e-cigarettes had been banned after the products had been examined and found to be harmful to health.

Apparently, the officials dismissed claims that e-cigarettes could help people quit smoking.

They said that such products had not been proved to be safe, so their sale could not be allowed in the UAE.

The ban was said to be part of the ministry’s efforts to fight all forms of smoking and tobacco.

JAC Vapour has launched an e-liquid that emits no vapor when exhaled, according to a company press note issued through PRNewswire.

The company described Clear Steam as being the first British-made, branded e-liquid that emitted no vapor.

It said the innovative product could revolutionize vaping in public spaces.

Existing e-liquids emit a visible vapor when puffed by e-cigarette consumers, something that has led to calls for the use of these devices to be banned in public places, as has happened in the case of cigarettes and cigars.

JAC says Clear Steam has the same strength, flavor and throat hit as does its other e-liquids.

Figures published last week by France’s national drugs watchdog showed that the number of cigarettes sold in France fell by 7.6 percent last year, according to a Naharnet story.

Sales of hand-rolling tobacco continued to rise but, at 2.6 percent, more slowly than in recent previous years.

And for the first time since 2005, the overall value of tobacco-product sales shrank in 2013.

One survey was said to have put the proportion of adults who smoke every day at about 27 percent, down from more than 33 percent in 2010.

Health experts were quoted as saying it was too early to say if a corner had been turned. Survey results varied and the line between regular (daily) and occasional smoking was hard for researchers to assess accurately.

But the Naharnet story said it seemed that the combined impact of recent price hikes—at a time of economic stagnation—and the “phenomenal success” of e-cigarettes might be encouraging millions of French smokers to reassess their habit.

Following a request from the Phnom Penh municipality on Tuesday, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, has ordered a ban on the importation and use of shisha and e-cigarettes, according to a story in The Phnom Penh Post.

After receiving an assessment from the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD) claiming that these products posed a risk to Cambodian youth, the prime minister asked the municipality to take urgent and firm action, while allowing the NACD to lead and implement that action.

According to the Post’s story, in his letter assessing the products, the president of the NACD and deputy prime minister, Ke Kim Yan, made recommendations about how to “curb” their use.

“The general public sees that shisha and e-cigarettes are drugs which get youths hooked and make them neglect their studies and work, and may lead to serious problems for the nation,” wrote Kimyan.

And he recommended “ceasing use by seizing and destroying the shisha and e-cigarettes, [implementing] banning measures and stopping imports.”

Tenants at an apartment complex in the US have been told that they ‘are not allowed to use electronic cigarettes’, according to a story by WHSV-TV3 Channel 3.

Presumably, this means that they will not be allowed to use electronic cigarettes in their apartments.

Tenants of the Harrisonburg [Virginia] Redevelopment and Housing Authority recently received a notice with details of a tobacco smoking ban due to be imposed on July 1.

But, according to the notice, tenants living in the J.R. Polly Limeweaver Apartment complex also ‘are not allowed to use electronic cigarettes’.

The story said that the reasons given for the imposition of the ban on electronic cigarettes included ‘an effort to decrease health effects’, maintenance costs, the risk of fire and the cost of fire insurance.