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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
MAY/JUNE 2015
TMA REPORT
Rana Tayyarah and Gerald Long that
examined the vapor from blu eCigs
and SKYCIG’s e-cigs in comparison
to smoke from Philip Morris USA’s
Marlboro Gold and Imperial Tobacco’s
Lambert & Butler cigarettes found that
the e-vapor contained mostly glycerin
and/or propylene glycol, that the aerosol
nicotine content was 85 percent lower
than the nicotine in cigarette smoke,
and that
harmful and potentially
harmful constituents
(HPHCs) in
mainstream cigarette smoke were 1,500
times higher than levels in e-cig HPHCs.
Commenting on the findings, Professor
Michael Siegel noted that they add to
the growing body of evidence that
e-cigs are “orders of magnitude safer
than tobacco cigarettes” and should put
an end to e-cig opponents’ assertions
that vaping is no safer than cigarette
smoking. Also commenting on the
same study, Jacob Sullum of
Reason
magazine said given the data, “Anyone
who implies that e-cigarette vapor is
about as dangerous as tobacco smoke
cannot be taken seriously.”
…A study by BAT scientists and
University of Louisville Professor Brad
Rodu analyzed levels of
hydrazine in
various smokeless tobacco products
(STP) including snus, chewing tobacco,
moist snuff and dry snuff, sold in the
U.S. and Sweden. Findings showed
that the compound, which is on FDA’s
list of HPHCs, is not prevalent in the
STPs on the market today, and “in the
minority of cases where hydrazine
might possibly be present, the levels
are substantially lower…than those
reported previously.”
…A newly released 20-page
document by
Clive Bates of The
Counterfactual
blog provides an
overview of e-cigs and the types of
e-liquids that consumers use. The
document offers evidence countering
“half-truths” disseminated by vaping
opponents, and sets out four tenets: 1)
E-cigs provide a satisfactory alternative
to smoking and will displace cigarette
use in the consumer market for
recreational nicotine; 2) E-cigs reduce
risks to health by 95-100 percent
among those who switch and pose
negligible impacts on bystanders; 3)
E-cigs are a market-based public health
phenomenon that does not rely on
public spending, coercion, prohibition,
taxation, fear or stigma; and 4) The risks
of harmful unintended consequences
like gateways to smoking are low and
unsupported by evidence thus far.
…In an opinion piece on CNN,
Marc Scribner of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute writes that the
U.S. Department of Transportation,
which plans to issue a rule by the
end of April to
ban e-cig use aboard
aircraft
, does not have the authority to
regulate vaping even if it argues that
it is interpreting “smoking” to cover
e-cig use. He cited a statement by the
U.S. Supreme Court that an “agency
may not bootstrap itself into an area
in which it has no jurisdiction” by
stretching the language of a statute.
TBI