Blog

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.

Freedom Smokeless has unveiled its new, U.S.-built, high-speed e-cigarette automation machinery at the TPC [Tobacco Plus Convenience Expo] 2014 show in Las Vegas.

In a press note issued yesterday through PRNewswire, Freedom, which is an e-cigarette manufacturer based in southern California, said that it was the first U.S.-based company to offer automatic machinery that could provide for affordable cartridge filling, e-cigarette assembly and packaging.

The machinery was designed “to bridge the gap from China to America,” it said.

The first of six machines had been installed in Freedom’s FDA-registered, ISO- and GMP-compliant facilities, the press note said.

By May, all six automated lines would be up and running with the capacity of producing more than 4 million units a week.

“The response at the recent TPC show was overwhelming,” said Glenn Kassel, Freedom’s president and co-founder.

“When watching the video of our automated production, people were amazed that we had developed such sophisticated technology, especially our built-in quality assurance features.”

New research has indicated that smokers of tobacco cigarettes who use e-cigarettes to try to quit their tobacco habit have better outcomes than those who use no aids or those who used an over-the-counter (OTC) nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), according to a blog by Grzegorz Krol on the Nicotine Policy website.

The research was presented by Dr. Jamie Brown, of University College London, and colleagues at the 20th annual meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in Seattle on Feb. 8.

The study was conducted on a large representative sample of the English population, and was based on people who had smoked during the past 12 months. It looked at those who had made at least one quit attempt using only an e-cigarette, using only an OTC NRT, or using no aid in their most recent quit attempt. The outcome assessed was abstinence from cigarettes up to the time of the survey.

Users of e-cigarettes performed best, with 19.9 percent having stopped smoking. Of those who used no aids, 15.1 percent were successful, while only 10 percent were successful using OTC NRT.

Krol cautioned that care was needed in looking at these results, which were taken from an abstract of the research paper.

Krol’s blog and the abstract are at http://nicotinepolicy.net/commentary/86-g-krol/861-new-research-shows-electronic-cigarettes-better-for-quitting-than-no-aid-over-the-counter-nrt-worse-than-no-aid.

India’s national carrier, Air India, has been reprimanded by the health ministry for advertising and selling e-cigarettes on-board its aircraft, according to a story in the Times of India.

In a letter written to the civil aviation ministry, the health ministry said Air India had been selling through its discount booklets “Air Bazaar” a tobacco-free e-cigarette using a picture of a model vaping.

The advertisement was said to be in contravention of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (prohibition of advertisement and regulation of trade and commerce, production, supply and distribution) Act, 2003.

The ministry’s letter claimed the advertisement had put the government in an embarrassing situation.

And it said it had been contrary to the government’s policy of using public transport for the display of health-promotion messages.

US-based Ploom has warned that counterfeit versions of its Pax vaporizers can raise safety issues, according to a ChinaCSR.com story.

Ploom’s vaporizers are smoking alternative devices that heat tobacco contained in pods to a constant temperature, vaporizing nicotine and flavors without burning the materials or producing smoke.

But Ploom says that certain counterfeit Pax products contain plastic materials that are not stable at operating temperatures.

It has advised consumers who have bought counterfeit Pax products to stop using them immediately.

Ploom says it has located manufacturers of counterfeit Pax products and initiated legal actions in China to stop the manufacture and sale of these products.

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has said that it is partnering with Big Green Box to offer a US recycling service for its products, including its batteries, according to a PRNewswire story.

Big Green Box is a federally-approved recycling company based in Anaheim, California.

The service will ensure that White Cloud meets the standards of electronic-waste disposal set by the US Department of Transportation and the United Nations.

It will provide customers with the opportunity to recycle their rechargeable electronic cigarette batteries and Fling disposable electronic cigarettes.

“Try to think about this for a moment: there are 20 to 50 million metric tons of electronic waste disposed off every year, worldwide,” said White Cloud’s managing director, Danielle Steingraber. “Right now, only 12.5 per cent of e-waste is currently recycled, but we can do our part to help change that.”

The PRNewswire story went on to say that while it might seem that a few electronic cigarette batteries in the trash could make any real environmental difference, as the number of electronic cigarette users continued to rise worldwide, it would quickly become critical that electronic cigarette users recycle.

The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) has called for the regulation of e-cigarettes as a matter of urgency, but insists that regulation should be framed so as to ensure these products remain available to smokers, according to an Agence Europe story.

The agency report said that, in the absence of health impact studies on e-cigarettes, the EPHA had called for the adoption of the precautionary principle in respect of all devices containing nicotine.

The EPHA’s intervention has come at a time when inter-institutional dialogue on the European Commission’s proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive has essentially stalled in respect of e-cigarettes.

The EPHA has published a document in which it recommends the adoption of watertight European legislation for protecting public health.

Monika Kosinska, EPHA secretary general, said that without a robust regulatory framework in place in the EU, e-cigarettes were hanging in a legal limbo.

It was essential that this emerging range of products was urgently regulated to safeguard people’s health.

“To achieve this, Brussels has to make sure that strict rules on advertising and sponsorship as well as market surveillance and monitoring are the corner stones of new legislation, whilst ensuring that the products are accessible to existing smokers,” she was quoted as saying.

European Commission proposals could leave tobacco smokers within the EU with easy access to tobacco cigarettes but little access to less risky alternatives to these products.

According to a story in the European Voice, the commission, whose proposal to regulate e-cigarettes as medicines was turned down by MEPs in October, is now putting forward other measures seen by some as being medicines regulation by the back door.

If the commission has its way, smokers might be left with no access to electronic cigarettes and—with the exception of tobacco users in Sweden—no access to snus.

The question of how to regulate e-cigarettes is said to be the biggest remaining obstacle to an agreement between MEPs and the member states on revising the European Union’s Tobacco Products Directive.

As negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers prepare to meet in Brussels to finalise the text of a revision to the directive, lobbying about e-cigarettes is intensifying.

At issue are differences about whether e-cigarettes should be regulated lightly because they might prove useful to wean smokers off more harmful cigarettes, or whether e-cigarettes should be heavily regulated because they pose a health risk.

The European Voice says that, ahead of the negotiations, the commission has circulated a text that proposes introducing a series of restrictions on e-cigarettes, including banning those that produce levels of nicotine above 20 mg per ml of vapor or 10 mg/unit, and those with refillable cartridges or tanks. They would also ban e-cigarettes designed to taste like tobacco.

Thirteen health experts from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Poland and the U.K. have written a letter warning that the latest commission proposals could bring to an end the positive effect that safer electronic cigarettes have had in weaning smokers from tobacco cigarettes, which, they said, caused 700,000 premature deaths a year in the EU.