Category: News This Week

The Thailand Tobacco Monopoly (TTM) would consider developing and importing electronic cigarettes if the government were to legalize them, according to a story in the Bangkok Post.

Managing director, Torsak Chotimongkol, was quoted as saying that, as a government agency, the TTM could not proceed with such a project until electronic cigarettes were legalised.

“However, if the situation becomes clearer and the product is legally approved, we may consider importing e-cigarettes and developing our own product as an option for smokers,” Torsak said.

Electronic cigarettes cannot be sold legally in Thailand because they have not been approved by the Thailand Food & Drug Administration.

However, they are widely distributed online and sold discreetly in some stores.

The European Parliament’s environment, public health and food safety committee has voted to back the European Commission’s proposal to classify electronic cigarettes as medicinal products.

For many people, this proposal is the most health-negative of the raft of proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive put forward by the commission at the end of last year.

In its response to the proposed revisions, Parliament’s legal affairs committee said, in part, that Article 18 prohibited nicotine-containing products such as electronic cigarettes containing a certain nicotine level if they were not authorized pursuant to the Medicinal Products Directive. “It is, however, quite unclear if these products (which are much less harmful than tobacco products) even fall under the scope of the Medicinal Products Directive,” the committee said. “For products which do not fall under the Directive, this would effectively constitute a ban. Banning products which are less harmful than tobacco products and which can be a means of smoking cessation is certainly not in line with the public health aims of the proposal.”

Before Wednesday’s vote by the environment committee, a group of vapers wrote an open letter to the chairman of the environment committee, Matthias Groote, calling for a rethink on the proposal for regulating electronic cigarettes.

The group said that for 5 million to 7 million people within the EU, electronic cigarettes had provided and continued to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes.

And it asked Groote and his committee to imagine how many lives could be saved if electronic cigarettes were allowed to continue to flourish.

However, the group expressed concern that what it called this positive story was about to come to an abrupt halt because of the commission’s proposal. “By regulating e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, the Commission and its supporters in Parliament and Council are effectively banning e-cigarettes, as the Parliament’s own Legal Affairs Committee has made clear,” it said.

The group made the point that whereas electronic cigarettes were safe, tobacco cigarettes killed 700,000 people in the EU each year and neither the commission nor Parliament were proposing to ban them.

In fact, the commission and the environment committee are proposing that some cigarettes should be banned: slim cigarettes and those with characterizing flavors, including menthol.

It also voted in favor of graphic warnings covering 75 percent of the fronts and backs of cigarette packs, though it did not accept a proposed amendment seeking the imposition of standardized tobacco packs.

The proposals still have to go before a plenary session of Parliament.

A group of vapers has written an open letter to the chairman of the European Parliament’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, Matthias Groote, calling for a rethink on the European Commission’s proposal for regulating electronic cigarettes.

The committee is due to vote tomorrow on the totality of the commission’s proposals for revising the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which include the electronic cigarette proposal.

The group says that for 5 million to 7 million people within the EU, electronic cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes.

And it asked Groote and his committee to imagine how many lives could be saved if electronic cigarettes were allowed to continue to flourish.

However, the group expressed concern that what it called this positive story was about to come to an abrupt halt because of the commission’s proposals to amend the TPD. Under these proposals, electronic cigarettes could be placed on the market only if they were authorized pursuant to the Medicinal Products Directive. “By regulating e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, the Commission and its supporters in Parliament and Council are effectively banning e-cigarettes, as the Parliament’s own Legal Affairs Committee has made clear,” it said.

The group made the point that whereas electronic cigarettes were safe, tobacco cigarettes killed 700,000 people in the EU each year and neither the commission nor Parliament were proposing to ban them.

“The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely,” the group said in its letter. “It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes continue to be regulated as a consumer product. Many of us have tried numerous times to quit smoking using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed; however, with e-cigarettes we have all cut down our smoking or stopped completely. Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers like us have been quitting, switching and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated, not a cause for concern.”

The group posed the following question to the committee: “Why would the EU want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life?”

And it followed up that question with another: “Do MEPs really want to protect an industry that kills 700,000 people at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives?”

The group urged the committee to reject the electronic cigarettes proposal.

“We believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, takes an easy shortcut by applying medicines regulation rather than designing appropriate regulation, and has been prepared without proper consultation of the industry and users like us,” the group said. “Members of your committee should insist that the Commission starts again and does a thorough job, looking properly at all the regulatory options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals.

“In the meantime, Member States should enforce the existing legislation properly and report on what they are doing.

“For the sake of 7 million e-cigarette users and the millions of potential e-cigarette users, we urge you to do the right thing.”

The letter can be read in full at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/152389430/Open-Letter-From-Electronic-Cigarette-Users-From-Across-the-European-Union.

AucklandUniversity is carrying out a study into the effectiveness of electronic cigarettes as a quit-smoking aid, according to a TVNZ story.

More than 650 people are participating in the study comparing electronic cigarettes with the commonly-used nicotine patch.

Participant, Luis Paraha, who was said to have twice previously tried to quit, believes she has cracked the problem by combining exercise with electronic cigarettes.

“I just used the e-cigarette and then three weeks later, that was it – stopped,” she told ONE News.

University of Auckland researcher, Chris Bullen, said bodies such as the World Health Organization were asking what to do about the devices, but no-one had the answers because no-one had done a study until now.

As the proposed revision of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive is now being discussed in the European Parliament, the UK-based electronic cigarette manufacturer, Totally Wicked Ltd, is sending an electronic cigarette to all 754 MEPs.

‘Accompanying the e-cigarette will be a briefing document that simply and factually explains why e-cigarettes do not belong in the TPD,’ the company said in a press note issued through PRNewswire.

‘A covering letter asks MEPs to examine the e-cigarette in detail and poses the following question: “What do you do with a product that mimics smoking, but is not a cigarette, that stops people smoking, but is not a medicine?”.

‘Totally Wicked is concerned that at present, EU policy makers believe that e-cigarettes should only be placed on the market if they are authorised pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC (the Medicinal Products Directive).

‘By wishing to regulate e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, Totally Wicked believe the Commission and their supporters in Parliament are effectively banning e-cigarettes, a view that is supported by the European Parliament’s own Legal Affairs Committee.’

“The e-cigarettes we have chosen to send to MEPs look nothing like a conventional tobacco cigarette,” said Fraser Cropper, business development director at Totally Wicked. “Contrary to what many MEPs think, the vast majority of e-cigarettes sold throughout the EU look nothing like cigarettes.

“We hope to make it clear to MEPs that e-cigarettes are not a medicinal product and that users do not see themselves as ill or in treatment.

“MEPs have an incredible opportunity to craft regulation that reflects the reality of e-cigarettes – they are nicotine-containing consumer products that compete with cigarettes but with many superior characteristics, mainly by virtue of not using combustible tobacco.

“Tobacco cigarettes have been unequivocally proven to contribute to the early mortality of the European population. During this time, our legislators have been unwilling or unable to ban cigarettes, a product that if it came onto the market today, would without question be prohibited.

“Surprisingly, rather than be applauded and encouraged by our elected representatives as the potential panacea to the smoking epidemic, we find Article 18 of the draft TPD, stifling the potential of these products and effectively handing over the product’s concept to the pharmaceutical sector, destroying a safer alternative.”

Philip Morris USA will launch an e-cigarette under the MarkTen brand in Indiana in August, reports The Wall Street Journal.

MarkTen is a disposable e-cigarette but can be reused by buying a separate battery recharging kit and additional cartridges. Made in China by a contact manufacturer, the e-cigarette is expected to sell for about $9.50.

PM USA is the last of the major U.S. tobacco companies to introduce an e-cigarette in an industry-wide effort to diversify beyond the traditional cigarette business, which has become more challenging in the face of tax increases, smoking bans, health concerns and social stigma.

Last week, R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American, announced it would start selling its Vuse e-cigarette to retail outlets throughout Colorado in June.

Vuse was developed in-house by R.J. Reynolds R&D experts, and will be manufactured in the United States.

In April 2010, Lorillard acquired e-cigarette maker Blue Ecigs. It has expanded into more than 80,000 retail outlets.

Analysts estimate sales of e-cigarettes could double this year to $1 billion. Some have even said consumption of e-cigarettes could surpass consumption of traditional cigarette within the next decade. The Food and Drug Administration plans to assert regulatory authority over e-cigarettes in the near future.

Electronic cigarette maker Njoy said Monday it had raised $75 million in financing from investors including Napster founder and ex-Facebook president Sean Parker.

A group including Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker is investing $75 million is NJOY, a leading manufacturer of e-cigarettes, reports The Wall Street Journal. Parker co-founded the music-sharing site Napster, was the first president of Facebook and has been a big donor to cancer research.

NJOY accounted for 35.6 percent of the U.S. cigarette market in U.S. convenience stores in the four weeks ended May 11, according to Wells Fargo Securities. NJOY Kings’ brand more closely resembles regular cigarettes than do some competing products. The company has been advertising on TV and attracted celebrity endorsers such as musicians Courtney Love and Bruno Mars.

In March, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona joined NJOY’s board, saying it is important to explore alternatives to traditional cigarettes because the adult smoking rate has remained stuck at around 20 percent of the population.

E-cigarettes are believed to be less harmful than traditional cigarettes because they don’t rely on combustion However, the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers in 2009 the new technology could pose its own health risks and required further study. The long-term impact of inhaling e-cigarette vapor, which contains substances such as propylene glycol, has yet to be determined. The agency is planning regulation that would treat e-cigarettes as tobacco products.

Industry experts says U.S. retail sales of e-cigarettes could reach $1 billion this year—just 1 percent of the country’s cigarette market but twice that of 2012.

Vapor Corp. said on Wednesday that CEO, Kevin Frija, was due to make a presentation at the Second Annual Marcum LLP MicroCap Conference on May 30 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

The company’s presentation is scheduled to begin at 16.00 hours Eastern Daylight Time.

More information and registration is available at the conference website: http://www.marcumllp.com/microcap

Researchers in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US have concluded that electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) might have the potential to serve as cessation aids, according to a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers set out to examine patterns of ENDS awareness, use, and product-associated beliefs among current and former smokers in four countries.

Their data, which was collected between July 2010 and June 2011, and analyzed through June 2012, came from studying 5,939 current and former smokers in Canada (1,581), the US (1,520); the UK (1,325); and Australia (1,513).

‘Overall, 46.6 per cent were aware of ENDS (US: 73 per cent, UK: 54 per cent, Canada: 40 per cent, Australia: 20 per cent); 7.6 per cent had tried ENDS (16 per cent of those aware of ENDS); and 2.9 per cent were current users (39 per cent of triers),’ according the Results section of an abstract of the paper.

‘Awareness of ENDS was higher among younger, non-minority smokers with higher incomes who were heavier smokers.

‘Prevalence of trying ENDS was higher among younger, nondaily smokers with a high income and among those who perceived ENDS as less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

‘Current use was higher among both nondaily and heavy (≥20 cigarettes per day) smokers.

‘In all, 79.8 per cent reported using ENDS because they were considered less harmful than traditional cigarettes; 75.4 per cent stated that they used ENDS to help them reduce their smoking; and 85.1 per cent reported using ENDS to help them quit smoking.’

The researchers concluded that the awareness of ENDS was high, especially in countries where they were legal – the US and UK.

‘Because trial was associated with nondaily smoking and a desire to quit smoking, ENDS may have the potential to serve as a cessation aid,’ they said.

The European Commission has said that the majority of e-cigarettes sold in the EU would most likely fall under pharmaceutical legislation if the commission’s proposed revisions to its Tobacco Products Directive were to be accepted. The commission has proposed that e-cigarettes would fall under the legal framework for medicinal products if they contained levels of nicotine above certain thresholds.

It is generally thought that, for cost or technical reasons, most e-cigarette companies would struggle to have their above-the-threshold products authorized under pharmaceutical laws, and that below-the-threshold products would be unacceptable to many consumers.

“The nicotine threshold has been identified by considering the nicotine content of nicotine replacement therapies that have already received a marketing authorization by Member States,” the commission said in a written answer to two questions raised by the Polish MEP, Filip Kaczmarek.

“For electronic cigarettes below the thresholds, the commission proposal foresees that they carry health warnings. They would also have to comply with the General Product Safety Directive as … is the case at the moment.”