Page 10 - TOB Magazine Jan/Feb 2013

24
TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
TMA REPORT
the evidence, and yet maintaining a commitment to a
dogma driven by prejudice against a choice they do not
understand or agree with, is simply not good enough
from an EU legislative perspective.”
…Responding to comments made by Danny
McGoldrick, vice president for research at the
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, against the proposal
discussed during a recent Oklahoma Senate hearing to
promote tobacco harm reduction, Dr. Brad Rodu of the
University of Louisville said that “these unsubstantiated,
demonstrably false claims ” made by McGoldrick
are “appalling,” adding that CTFK offers “conjecture,
unfounded assertions and ad hominem attacks” and
“routinely ignores scientific evidence that doesn’t
support their objective.”
…Sentiens LLC, a North Carolina research and
development company, launched Novus Twigs, a
“botanically based, cigarette-alternative” which the
company said looks like a cigarette and offers “a lifestyle
solution for smokers and non-smokers.”
…The newly launched American E-liquid
Manufacturers’ Standards Association (AEMSA) said
that it is the first and only trade association dedicated
to establishing self-regulating manufacturing standards
for its members’ e-liquid products used in electronic
cigarettes, and that it offers to “contribute to and
facilitate governmental legislative process to create
responsible, realistic and sustainable regulations for
commercial manufacturing of e-liquids.”
…Prof. Michael Siegel of Boston University’s School
of Public Health said that two articles published this
week say that e-cigarettes should be considered a
smoking cessation/reduction strategy: 1) A study by
Brent Caldwell, Walt Sumner and Julian Crane published
in Nicotine & Tobacco Research noted the poor long-
term success rates for traditional nicotine replacement
therapy products and concluded that investment in
“therapeutic pulmonary nicotine devices” like nicotine
inhalers and e-cigarettes “is likely to result in a major
advance in smoking cessation treatment and prevent
considerable mortality and morbidity,” and 2) Pasquale
Caponnetto, Elaine Keller, Cosimo Bruno and Riccardo
Polosa report in Internal and Emergency Medicine that
recent research on e-cigarettes “has found them to be
safe and effective in helping smokers remain abstinent
[and] advising smokers who cannot (or do not want
to) quit to switch to either low-nitrosamine snuff or
electronic cigarettes could be an equally effective way
to help smokers to become abstinent.”
…A survey of 1,000 British smokers, conducted for
electronic cigarette company E-Lites by OnePoll, found
that only 54 percent of the respondents were aware of
the UK Department of Health’s “Stoptober” campaign
taking place in October to encourage smokers to quit,
while 47.3 percent said they do not expect to give up
smoking in the next 12 months, 45 percent described
the process of trying to quit as “hard” or “very hard,”
and over 50 percent expressed interest in using
electronic cigarettes as an alternative to conventional
cigarettes.
…Filtrona Plc’s Filtrona Scientific Services unit said
October 9 that at the CORESTA congress earlier this
month in Sapporo, Japan, its director of scientific
development Dr. Mike Taylor presented findings from its
second “installment” of research into e-cigarette yields,
reporting that “puff duration can be a significant factor
in determining nicotine yields for some e-cigarettes,”
but that “while puff duration can have a major effect for
some products, the effect of puff volume on yields was
less than that seen in standard cigarettes.”
…At a recent Oklahoma Senate hearing on tobacco
harm reduction, originally requested by State Sen. Rob
Johnson (R-Kingfisher), lobbyist and former Republican
US Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, Dr. Joel Nitzkin of the
Washington, DC-based libertarian R Street Institute, and
Dr. Brad Rodu of the University of Louisville encouraged
lawmakers to use government resources to promote
less harmful forms of tobacco use to improve public
health.
…A study conducted by researchers at Clarkson
University’s Center for Air Resources Engineering and
Science in Potsdam, New York and sponsored by U.S.-
based e-cigarette organization National Vapers Club,
compared levels of byproducts commonly found in
cigarette smoke to the levels of the same compounds
in vaporized e-cigarette liquid, and found that most of
the compounds were not present in e-cigarette vapor,
while the few compounds that were found in the vapor
were at such small levels that toxicology analysis
detected no risk to public health.
…Apollo Electronic Cigarettes of Lafayette,
California, said October 3 that it is giving away one
million e-cigarettes as its “commitment to growing the
community of former cigarette smokers and helping
people lead healthier lives.”
…Former U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Indiana), who
fought tobacco product regulation while he was in
office from 1993 to 2011, said recently in testimony
before the Indiana General Assembly’s Health Finance
Commission that he is now working as “an advocate of
harm reduction strategies” for Reynolds American Inc.
…Commenting on the September 26 statement by
Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights that there is “a
lack of independent peer-reviewed scientific evidence