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New European Commission proposals, if adopted, would ban every e-cigarette on the EU market and would severely limit or make unviable the development of new products, according to Clive Bates, the director of Counterfactual, a public interest consulting and advocacy group.

“Late last week the European Commission circulated a confidential new proposal for regulating e-cigarettes,” Bates wrote on The Counterfactual website.

“The document was sent only to those negotiating the future of e-cigarettes behind closed doors in Brussels—representatives of the European Parliament and European Council.

“This isn’t a final proposal, but it provides the negotiators with something to discuss.”

Bates said that a copy of the document had been obtained by the Nicotine Science and Policy website and was at http://nicotinepolicy.net/documents/policy/Article%2018%20-%20Electronic%20cigarettes%20-%20Commission%20proposal%2022%20Nov%202013.pdf.

“It is quite frankly appalling—lacking any legitimacy in public health or internal market policy-making …,” Bates continued. “Make no mistake, if implemented this proposal bans every product on the market today and would severely limit options for future products—and may make it commercially unviable to develop in future.”

In a long piece, Bates goes on to list the main troubling features of the document; how the proposals should be scrutinized; and how to respond to the proposals.

His piece is at http://www.clivebates.com/?p=1655.

JTI Korea said yesterday that it would introduce Ploom, a tobacco vaporizer, on the domestic market on Nov. 18, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

The Ploom vaporizer is a pocket-sized smoking alternative device that heats tobacco contained in pods to a constant temperature, vaporizing nicotine and flavors without burning the materials or producing smoke.

In December 2011, Japan Tobacco International and the San Francisco-based Ploom announced that they had entered into an exclusive, long-term cooperation agreement under which JTI would commercialize Ploom’s new generation of “smoking alternative products” outside the U.S.

Ploom capsules will be available in Korea in six variants: Mevius, Camel, Cooler, Gold, Orchard and Alert. A multipack containing all six variants also will be available.

A pack, comprising 12 capsules, will retail at WON4,500: about twice the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes.

The use of e-cigarettes on Switzerland’s public transport system will be banned as of next month, according to a Medical Xpress story quoting the national association of mass-transit operators.

From Dec. 15, those caught using e-cigarettes on public transport will face a fine of CHF25, a spokesman for the Public Transportation Union told the Swiss news agency ATS.

The regulation against smoking tobacco on public transport was extended to take in e-cigarettes because, it was said, inspectors had difficulty distinguishing between traditional and e-cigarettes

Swiss regulations do not allow the sale of e-cigarettes, but their use in the country is allowed and the federal public health agency has noted an increase in their use.

There are currently no regulations in Switzerland governing the use of e-cigarettes in restaurants.

Tobacconists in France are claiming that e-cigarettes fall under the tobacco sale monopoly law and should therefore be sold exclusively by them, according to a EurActiv story.

“We want that the sale of the electronic cigarette is done exclusively within the framework of the network of tobacconists,” said Jean-Luc Renaud, secretary general of the confederation of tobacconists.

At present, e-cigarettes are sold in a variety of shops, but a tobacconist is said to have lodged an “unfair competition” complaint against a supplier on the grounds that the product can be considered to be a derivative of tobacco.

The EurActiv story said there was a legal vacuum on the matter in France, even though a law of 1983 stated that cigarettes and smoking products “fall under the monopoly distribution of tobacconists,” “even if they do not contain tobacco.”

Meanwhile, another legal controversy is enveloping e-cigarettes, and that has to do with advertising. Tobacco advertising is prohibited in France under the Evin law, but this does not seem to cover e-cigarettes.

French Health Minister Marisol Touraine has said several times that advertising for e-cigarettes would be prohibited, but she has not tabled legislation.

Medical leaders have urged Scotland’s Celtic and Rangers football clubs to reconsider their links with an e-cigarette company amid concerns that such links will damage efforts to reduce smoking, according to a story by Lyndsay Buckland for The Scotsman.

Last month the E-lites brand said it had become partners with Celtic, allowing its products to be sold at the stadium and smoked in designated areas. A similar link-up with Rangers was revealed shortly afterward.

But the British Medical Association’s board of science has written to the clubs, raising its fears over the impact of allowing the products to be sold and used on their grounds.

In the BMA’s letter, general practitioner Dr. Andrew Thomson said sport was a health activity and clubs such as Celtic and Rangers “should be leading by example to encourage healthy living rather than advertising a smoking product, which contains the addictive substance nicotine.”

The doctor said the BMA wanted e-cigarettes to be included in the ban on smoking in public places, and encouraged organizations to prohibit their use.

Companies including ScotRail, Starbucks and the Wetherspoons pub chain were said by Buckland to be among those that had already announced bans on e-cigarettes.

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has signed a research partnership agreement with the University of South Florida’s (USF) marketing department under which researchers will look at the reasons why some consumers are opting for e-cigarettes rather than tobacco cigarettes.

The research will be conducted by USF’s College of Business and will encompass both qualitative and quantitative consumer studies via focus groups, interviews and surveys of adult smokers.

The project team at USF includes professor Paul Solomon, Carol Osborne and Dr. Anand Kumar, associate professor and chair of the marketing department. The faculty team’s research interests cover areas such as brand strategies, marketing communications’ effectiveness and consumer reactions to new technology products and services.

“From a marketing researcher’s perspective, this is an interesting time in the life of a product,” said Kumar.

“The e-cigarette product category is seeing an explosive growth right now.

“It is not clear whether this growth is the result of rapid adoption by innovators and early adopters that might soon level off or whether there is more widespread adoption by smokers.

“There is a lot of interest in understanding consumer motivations underlying adoption of this product and limited research that has been carried out on this aspect of the e-cigarette marketplace.”

The American Thoracic Society (ATS) has accused the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of failing to take action on certain “dangerous tobacco products” such as “e-cigarettes and cigars.”

“The American Thoracic Society demands [the] FDA move forward to proposed rules to bring cigars, e-cigarettes and other tobacco products under FDA federal regulation,” the ATS said in a piece posted on its website’s newsroom.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released data showing that 1.78 million children have tried e-cigarettes. Like their traditional cigarette predecessors, e-cigarettes are addictive and have known adverse health effects. Also like their traditional cigarette predecessors, many e-cigarettes are being made with flavorings—such as grape, cherry and menthol—that are designed to appeal to children.

“Many cigar manufacturers are also making products intentionally designed to appeal to children. Candy-flavored cigars come in a wide range of flavors—chocolate, grape, apple, blueberry—and, priced at 99 cents per cigar or $1.99 for a pack of 3, are clearly within the price range of most kids.”

The ATS went on to say that “Big Tobacco” had escaped the candy-flavored cigarette ban by offering candy-flavored cigars.

“Big Tobacco has sought to escape smoking bans by creating smokeless e-cigarettes,” said the ATS.

“It is time for the FDA to use its authority.

“The ATS calls on the FDA to move quickly to issue public health-based regulations on cigars, e-cigarettes and other tobacco products.

“Further delay will mean more children getting hooked on these products and more tobacco-related death and disease.”

The full text is at http://www.newswise.com/articles/american-thoracic-society-urges-quick-fda-action-on-regulation-of-all-tobacco-products.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been urged to act quickly to regulate electronic cigarettes.

Four Democratic representatives wrote to the FDA commissioner, Margaret A. Hamburg, quoting a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that had found the percentage of adolescents using electronic cigarettes was growing rapidly.

CDC data was said to have suggested also that electronic cigarettes could serve as a gateway product to nicotine addiction.

Research into electronic cigarettes initiated by Australia’s previous Labor government seems not to have had such a progressive aim as was reported earlier this week.

Writing for the Sun-Herald group of newspapers, Eamonn Duff reported that, with a federal government-funded trial about to test the viability of electronic cigarettes as a safer, permanent replacement for tobacco, Australia could become the first major nation to outlaw smoking completely. His story was reported here on Sept. 17.

Duff said that Dr. Coral Gartner was due shortly to lead a trial of 1,600 smokers at the University of Queensland’s (UoQ) center for clinical research.

Gartner was quoted as saying that electronic cigarettes had the potential to be beneficial to public health if they were used to replace completely traditional cigarettes.

But Gartner said in a note published on the UoQ’s website (http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=26709) that the previous government had commissioned a regulatory impact statement, unconnected to the university’s research, to consider whether further regulation, such as bans on the sale and promotion of electronic cigarettes were necessary.

The UoQ research study was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant. It was being conducted independently of government.

The purpose of the UoQ trial was to test the safety and effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation by comparing their effectiveness in helping smokers to quit with that of traditional cessation aids, such as nicotine gum and inhalators.

The medical journal The Lancet is undecided on electronic cigarettes.

On Sept. 14, it wrote that as a result of “safety fears,” the EU and the U.K. were planning to regulate electronic cigarettes as they would a medicine. “On the one hand, excessive regulation could marginalise e-cigarettes in favour of conventional cigarettes,” the Lancet piece said. “On the other hand, deficient regulation might contribute to the expansion of the e-cigarette market—in which tobacco companies have a substantial stake—potentially re-normalizing smoking habits and negating years of intense anti-tobacco campaigning.

“Amid disagreements between public health experts and uncertainty about the long-term efficacy and safety of e-cigarettes, should we stand back and wait for robust results before adopting a formal public health stance? Harm reduction should be our guiding principle, but the prospect of colluding with one of the industries most devastating to health presents a moral quandary that needs to be addressed through strong public and professional engagement.”

According to generally accepted figures, on Sept. 14, 16,438 would have died prematurely as the result of using tobacco, almost all of them because they smoked cigarettes.