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Members of the Scottish parliament have been told that electronic cigarettes offer a ‘huge potential public health prize’, according to a Press Association story.

And they have been urged to be cautious in regulating the sale of these products so that the potential benefits to smokers are maximized while the potential harm is minimized.

The government is consulting on whether to ban electronic sales to under-18s, make it illegal for an adult to buy electronic cigarettes for someone under age, restrict advertising of these products and introduce other regulatory changes.

Speaking to the parliament’s Health Committee, John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, said electronic cigarettes offered a huge potential benefit to public health by helping smokers to shift to an alternative source of nicotine.

“If all smokers in Britain were to do that we would be talking of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of premature deaths avoided,” he said.

When legislating to control the inevitable abuses of the market that would come with electronic cigarettes and the inherent risks posed by these products, about which little was known, it was important to manage those risks, he added, but not in a way that eliminated the benefits in the process.

There was a huge potential public health prize in these products.

The full story here.

In a new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, scientists at University of Leuven, in Belgium, report that e-cigarettes successfully reduced cravings for tobacco cigarettes, with only minimal side effects.

In an eight-month study, the researchers examined the effect of using vaping in 48 participants, all of whom were smokers with no intention to quit. The researchers’ goal was to evaluate whether e-cigarettes decreased the urge to smoke tobacco cigarettes in the short term, and whether e-cigarettes helped people stop smoking altogether in the long-term.

The participants were divided into three groups—two e-cigarette groups, which were allowed to vape and smoke tobacco cigarettes for the first two months of the study, and a control group that had access only to tobacco. In a second phase of the study, the control group was given e-cigarettes and all participants were monitored for a period of six months via a web tool, where they regularly logged their vaping and smoking habits.

In the lab, the e-cigarettes proved to be just as effective in suppressing the craving for a smoke as tobacco cigarettes were, while the amount of exhaled carbon monoxide remained at baseline levels. In the long-term analysis, results showed that the smokers were more likely to trade in their tobacco cigarettes for e-cigarettes and taper off their tobacco use.

At the end of the 8-month study, 21 percent of all participants had stopped smoking tobacco entirely (verified via a CO test), whereas an additional 23 percent reported cutting the number of tobacco cigarettes they smoked per day by half.

Across all three groups, the number of tobacco cigarettes smoked per day decreased by 60 percent.

“All the groups showed similar results after we introduced the e-cigs,” concluded Professor Frank Baeyens and postdoctoral researcher Dinska Van Gucht of the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology Unit. “With guidance on practical use, the nicotine e-cig offers many smokers a successful alternative for smoking less—or even quitting altogether. E-cig users get the experience of smoking a cigarette and inhale nicotine vapor, but do not suffer the damaging effects of a tobacco cigarette.”

“By comparison: of all the smokers who quit using nothing but willpower, only 3 percent to 5 percent remain smoke-free for six to 12 months after quitting,” says Baeyens.

Nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are currently banned in Belgium. In light of their study results, the researchers are now urging for a new legal framework for nicotine vaping in Belgium. All neighboring countries allow the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes.

The study is available here.

The JT Group has completed the acquisition of Zandera Ltd, which is known for the E-Lites brand of electronic cigarettes.

Japan Tobacco Inc, which announced on June 11 that it had concluded an agreement to buy Zandera, said today that the investment in Zandera provided the JT Group with an excellent entry-point into the fast-growing electronic cigarette category.

‘With E-Lites’ well-established brand and product portfolio, the Group is able to offer adult consumers another important extension to its growing range of emerging and innovative products,’ JT said in a note posted on its website.

‘In the international tobacco business, the Group remains committed to strengthening Japan Tobacco International’s … business foundations with an overall strategy to foster growth.’

JT said the acquisition was expected to have a minor effect on the Group’s consolidated performance and cash flows for the fiscal year 2014.

Vape is Oxford Dictionaries’ international word of the year for 2014, according to a story by Julian Drape for The Age newspaper.

Software that scours the Internet indicated that the use of the word vape doubled between 2013 and 2014.

“That’s a steady and sizeable growth,” senior editor Fiona McPherson was said to have told the Australian Associated Press.

“But it’s nothing like ‘selfie’ – that was so ridiculously phenomenal.” Selfie was the 2013 word of the year.

Drape’s story tells how the earliest known use of the word vape was made in a 1983 UK magazine article on smoking in which Rob Stepney described a hypothetical device as: “an inhaler or ‘non-combustible’ cigarette, looking much like the real thing, but delivering a metered dose of nicotine vapour. (The new habit, if it catches on, would be known as vaping.)”

And since Drape’s story was written for an Australian newspaper, it almost inevitably starts with speculation about whether or not the word ‘vapo’ will supplant ‘smoko’ as a term for a break in the working day.

But perhaps that’s unlikely since it’s illegal in Australia to sell electronic cigarettes with nicotine.

Drape’s story is here.

The word vape has been named the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year 2014 in the U.K., reports The Telegraph.

Language research found that the use of the word vape has more than doubled this year compared to 2013.

Vape was added to the website OxfordDictionaries.com in August 2014 and is currently being considered for inclusion in future editions of the official Oxford English Dictionary.

The word of the year does not need to have been coined in the last year but must have become prominent or notable during that time.

In fact, the word vape dates back to the 1980s. Its earliest known use is in an article titled “Why do people smoke?” in New Society in 1983, in which the author, Rob Stepney, used the word to describe a hypothetical device being explored at the time.

He wrote presciently of “an inhaler or non-combustible cigarette, looking much like the real thing, but…delivering a metered dose of nicotine vapor. (The new habit, if it catches on, would be known as vaping).”

Last year’s word of the year was selfie.

Indonesian health authorities are planning to regulate the use of e-cigarettes, following calls from activists and health experts to recognize their negative impact on people’s health, reports The Jakarta Globe.

“We had a discussion with the Health Ministry and in the near future a regulation will be issued,” Roy A. Sparringa, head of the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM), said on Friday. “Some neighboring countries have already banned the e-cigarettes.”

Sparringa explained that the BPOM found that the health risks of e-cigarette use outweighed any advantages the product may have over traditional cigarettes, which significantly increase a user’s risk of developing certain forms of cancer, as well as other health issues.

“The BPOM will always look at things from the perspective of safety, quality and [health] benefits,” he said. “The World Health Organization has clearly stated that the e-cigarette is not safe, but risky.”

Sparringa did not disclose any details about the planned regulation.

Indonesia has started regulating tobacco use, including the obligation for cigarette companies to put pictorial health warnings on packages. The government, however, so far has not issued any regulation regarding e-cigarette use.

Blu eCigs is scheduled to launch its new Blu Plus+ Rechargeable Kit nationwide in US retail stores today.

The new product is said to use a pre-filled tank system that holds more e-juice and delivers more consistency from drag to drag than is the case with other products.

Blu uses, too, a new flavor formulation that, according to a publicity note ‘perfectly combines taste and nicotine strength’.

‘And while the battery in the Blu Plus+ Rechargeable Kit is larger, it lasts twice as long, and features rapid battery recharging; so users are never left waiting to use their e-cig,’ the note said.

The number of shops selling electronic cigarettes in Spain has fallen by 90 percent during the past 12 months, according to a story in The Local quoting the country’s electronic cigarette industry association, ANCE.

A year ago there were about 3,000 shops selling electronic cigarettes in Spain but now there are about 300.

“There has been a very intense attack by pharmaceutical companies which has generated bad publicity in the media,” ANCE vice president, Alejandro Rodríguez, was said to have told Spain’s El Confidencial newspaper.

The Local said that the ANCE comments had followed a leak of e-mails from GlaxoSmithKline showing that the company had been lobbying for tougher regulation of electronic cigarettes.

According to the leaked emails, the company wants the products to be regulated as medicines; so that they would have to compete with products such as nicotine gum.

Spain does not have such regulations but it has banned the use of electronic cigarettes in public places such as hospitals and schools.

Rodríguez conceded that part of the problem was down to the fact that too many shops had opened in Spain in too short a period. Many of the staff had been inexperienced and didn’t know how to advise their clients, he said.

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has redesigned it website, whitecloudelectroniccigarettes.com.

In the past year, White Cloud has increased web-based sales more than 33 percent, making its website an important key to the company’s rapidly expanding business. Designing and developing a faster, fully responsive website with a better customer experience on all devices was an obvious and natural progression for the company.

“Our new website is fully responsive, which gives mobile users a better experience,” explained White Cloud co-founder Danielle Steingraber. “It’s faster and more intuitive. We’ve upgraded the infrastructure to handle more traffic, and integrated some great tools that will help us process orders more efficiently than before.”