Blog

Denmark’s board of health, cancer society, lung association and heart foundation have warned against the use of electronic cigarettes, according to a story by Lucie Rychla for the Copenhagen Post, citing the scientific magazine, Videnskab.

Although the health consequences of using electronic cigarettes are not known, these health authorities are apparently recommending that the 150,000 Danes who are using them ‘consider carefully’ whether they should continue to use them.

It was not clear from the story whether or not the authorities were recommending that users of electronic cigarettes who had quit smoking or cut down on smoking by switching to electronic cigarettes should consider returning to smoking or returning to smoking full time. But given the apparently highly-addictive nature of nicotine and the poor quitting record offered by other products and systems, smoking would seem to be the only alternative to vaping.

The researchers were said to fear that electronic cigarettes containing nicotine could lead to addiction and be a step to smoking tobacco cigarettes.

They apparently worry that vaping, in addition to presenting a health hazard (though that health hazard is acknowledged to be unknown), might lead to an increased number of smokers.

The US-based Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) has dismissed a study released on Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine in which it was reportedly claimed that electronic cigarettes could cause cocaine use.

‘In reality, the study shows no such thing, and the authors and journal are just trying to score political points based on an unimportant technical study of mice with no real-world implications,’ the CASAA said.

‘The study results only suggest that mice dosed with nicotine one day react differently, biologically, to cocaine the next day compared to those who are not.

‘They do not suggest that nicotine use will cause people to seek out or use cocaine.’

Carl V. Phillips, scientific director of CASAA said that the study said little about human biology and nothing at all about real-world behaviour.

“It does not even measure mouse behaviour,” he said.

“The study provides no evidence there is a gateway effect, and there is no reason to believe there is one.

“Even if there were, this would merely be one hypothesis about why it happens, and tell us nothing about the real world.”

The CASAA response is at: ttps://docs.google.com/a/kachange.eu/document/d/1R_XsC0kOg5e1rXKztYt3ANbGPHC1pq6-xJSVB-EUgmg/edit?pli=1

A World Health Organization-commissioned review of electronic cigarettes contains errors, misinterpretations and misrepresentations that could lead to policymakers missing the potential health benefits of these products, according to a story by Kate Kelland, quoting tobacco addiction experts.

The background paper on electronic cigarettes acted as a blueprint for a WHO report calling for more regulation of the devices.

“I was shocked and surprised when I read it,” Ann McNeill, a researcher at the national addiction center at King’s College London, told reporters at a briefing. “I felt it was an inaccurate portrayal of the evidence on e-cigarettes.”

McNeill said that while e-cigarettes were relatively new and that the totality of their long-term health impacts was not known, it was clear that they were far safer than were tobacco cigarettes, which killed more than six million people a year.

Peter Hajek of the tobacco dependence research unit at Queen Mary University of London, who co-authored the critique, said it was vital that electronic cigarettes should be assessed in relation to the known harms of tobacco cigarettes.

“There are currently two products competing for smokers’ custom,” he said. “One – the conventional cigarette – endangers users and bystanders and recruits new customers from among non-smoking children who try it.

“The other – the e-cigarette – is orders of magnitude safer, poses no risk to bystanders, and generates negligible rates of regular use among non-smoking children who try it.”

Yet the WHO’s recommendations, if implemented, would make it harder to bring electronic cigarettes to market and could discourage smokers from using them, the experts said, putting policymakers and the public in danger of foregoing the public health benefits electronic cigarettes could have.

The full story is at: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/us-health-ecigarettes-report-idUKKBN0GZ2T420140904

Lorillard said yesterday that two of its electronic cigarette subsidiary companies, Cygnet UK Trading Ltd and Lorillard Technologies, Inc. d/b/a blu eCigs, had filed for an injunction and declarations with the High Court of Justice in London, England, to protect their BLU ECIGS® trademarks in the UK and throughout the rest of Europe.

In a note posted on its website (http://investors.lorillard.com/investor-relations/news/news-details/2014/Lorillard-Subsidiaries-Sue-Zippo-in-the-UK-to-Stop-Unfounded-Threats-Against-BLU-ECIGS/default.aspx), Lorillard said the injunction ‘seeks to restrain Zippo Manufacturing Company (“Zippo”) from threatening Lorillard and others with proceedings in the UK for alleged infringements of Zippo’s trademarks and the declarations seek to validate Lorillard’s rights to market and sell their products throughout Europe under the BLU ECIGS® brands’.

As was reported here on August 20, last month Zippo said that it has been granted a preliminary injunction in Germany against Cygnet, preventing Cygnet from using the blu brand name for e-cigarettes sold in that country.

The Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main was said to have agreed with Zippo that the blu e-cigarette brand created a likelihood of confusion with Zippo’s EU trademark BLU, used in connection with its line of high performance, precision butane lighters and fuel.

The court found the confusion was due to the high degree of similarity between the marks, an existing similarity between the parties’ respective goods and the Zippo BLU mark’s ‘at least’ average degree of distinctiveness.

Zippo’s action in Germany and the resulting preliminary injunction against Cygnet was said to have been part of Zippo’s ongoing, global effort to protect its worldwide portfolio of its BLU trademarks.

Zippo had commenced proceedings to oppose applications to register, or to cancel trademark registrations, for the blu electronic cigarette brand in the US, Canada, Mexico and the EU.

Sweden was said to have already rejected outright Lorillard’s application to register a trademark for blu.

Authorities in Thailand might soon regulate and levy taxes on shisha tobacco and electronic cigarettes, according to a Phuket News story quoting officials at the Ministry of Finance.

Neither product is currently registered under any Thai laws; so both are illicit before the law.

However, shisha, known in Thailand as baragu, is increasingly popular among Thais and widely sold in nightclubs and restaurants; while electronic cigarettes have recently entered the Thai market.

Thai officials believe that amending the Tobacco Act of 1996 to include shisha and electronic cigarettes would allow the state to legitimize, regulate, and tax these products.

A number of anti-smoking advocates yesterday urged the Taiwan government to regulate electronic cigarettes as a tobacco product rather than as a controlled drug, so as to address the ‘rampant illegal sales’ of these devices, according to a story in the Taipei Times.

The call came one day after the World Health Organization issued a report calling for tighter regulation of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).

The government treats electronic cigarettes containing nicotine as a regulated drug subject to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act; so, given the stringent requirements for obtaining a permit to manufacture or sell a drug, no electronic cigarettes can be sold in Taiwan legally.

Lin Ching-li, director of the John Tung Foundation, Taiwan’s most prominent anti-smoking group, said categorizing electronic cigarettes as a regulated drug had only prevented them from entering the country legally.

People could still purchase them online, on the street or in night markets.

Meanwhile, Foundation CEO Yao Shi-yuan was quoted as saying that products that contained nicotine and that were not designed for medical purposes should be regulated under the same law as applied to tobacco products.

Since the manufacturers would be required in this case to comply with the packaging and labeling regulations covering conventional cigarettes, people would stop thinking that electronic cigarettes were safe to use, he added.

The World Health Organization conceded in a report released yesterday that ‘experts’ suggest that electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) could have a role to play in helping some smokers quit their habit.

But overall, the report is cautious to the point of negativity and one informed observer said that though WHO’s mission was to save lives and prevent disease, once again it was exaggerating the risks of electronic cigarettes while downplaying the huge potential of these non-combustible low-risk nicotine products to end the epidemic of tobacco related disease.

‘WHO claims e-cigarettes are a threat to public health, but this statement has no evidence to support it, and ignores the large number of people who are using them to cut down or quit smoking completely,’ said Professor Gerry Stimson, Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London and co-director of Knowledge-Action-Change (KAC), in a statement issued shortly after the release of the report.

‘The WHO recommendations will do more harm than good, ironically protect cigarette sales, and do little to decrease the avoidable burden of non-communicable diseases.’

What was needed was light touch regulation derived from an appreciation of the trade-offs needed between protecting consumers and not destroying the value that electronic cigarettes offered to smokers who wanted to quit smoking, said Stimson, who was a signatory to a letter addressed to WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan by 53 leading scientists in May urging the WHO not to treat electronic cigarette regulation in the same manner as traditional tobacco regulation.

‘The WHO position paper appears to have cherry-picked the science, used unnecessary scaremongering and misleading language about the effects of nicotine,’ Stimson added.

‘WHO want to regulate these products as either tobacco products or medicines, but in reality they are neither. They do not contain tobacco and they aren’t used for treating or preventing disease. They are consumer products, and should be governed by consumer protection legislation with specific standards for liquids devices and packaging, and proportionate controls on marketing.’

The report is due to be discussed at the sixth Conference of the Parties to WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control at Moscow on October 13-18, and Stimson made the point that trying to apply to electronic cigarettes a treaty designed to reduce tobacco consumption was completely inappropriate.

The report could – depending on the response of COP6 – make life difficult for the electronic cigarette industry. It says that the main responsibility for proving scientifically claims about ENDS should fall on the shoulders of the industry, but it expresses concern about the involvement in the industry of the major tobacco companies, which are the companies best able to carry out or commission such science. Under the heading, ‘Protection from vested commercial interests’, the report says, in part, that ‘[n]o matter what role the tobacco industry plays in the production, distribution and sale of ENDS, this industry, its allies and front-groups can never be considered to be a legitimate public health partner or stakeholder while it continues to profit from tobacco and its products or represents the interests of the industry’. ‘Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC should be respected when developing and implementing ENDS legislation and regulations,’ it adds.

The vaper organization, European Vapers United Network (EVUN), has added its voice to the growing call for the World Health Organization to be guided by the principle of risk reduction when considering electronic cigarettes.

According to a story on the Nicotine Science and Policy website, vaping organizations from 13 countries have written to WHO’s director general, Dr. Margaret Chan, ahead of the organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control meeting in October.

They have appealed to the WHO not to succumb to unjustified fear or do anything that would obstruct the opportunities for risk reduction provided by electronic cigarettes.

Their letter follows one penned by 53 scientists in May asking WHO to recognize the harm reduction opportunities of electronic-cigarettes and other safer nicotine products. It said that WHO should see these products as part of the smoking solution, not as part of the problem.

National vaping organizations have sent copies of the EVUN letter also to their national governments and health ministers.

A copy of the EVUN letter is at: http://nicotinepolicy.net/documents/letters/july2014-to-miss-chan-and-annex.pdf.

Contact details of the vaping organizations are at: http://nicotinepolicy.net/who-is-who/consumers.

Medical professionals should support but not promote using e-cigarettes as cessation devices, according to recently released statement from the American Heart Association (AHA).

E-cigarettes should also be subject to the same laws that apply to tobacco products, and the federal government should ban the marketing and sale of e-cigarettes to young people.

The group also called for thorough and continuous research on e-cigarette use, marketing and long-term health effects.

“Over the last 50 years, 20 million Americans died because of tobacco. We are fiercely committed to preventing the tobacco industry from addicting another generation of smokers,” Nancy Brown, CEO of the AHA, said in an association news release.

The recommendations were published Aug. 25 in the AHA journal Circulation.

British e-cigarette manufacturer Totally Wicked said it received permission from the U.K.’s Administrative Court to seek a judicial review by the EU Court of Justice of the revised Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), specifically Article 20 pertaining to e-cigarettes.

 The company claims that the TPD article “represents a disproportionate impediment to the free movement of goods and the free provision of services, places electronic cigarettes at an unjustified competitive disadvantage to tobacco products, fails to comply with the general EU principle of equality, and breaches the fundamental rights of electronic cigarette manufacturers.”

 A hearing is scheduled for October 6th in the Administrative Court to determine if the matter is to be referred to the EU court, a hearing is likely to take place in 2015.