22
TOBACCO BUSINESS
MARCH/APRIL 2014
tobacco control programs would save an
estimated 1.5 to 4.8 million American
lives, said Nitzkin, who noted that the
tobacco control movement is opposed to
THR because it has a goal of a tobacco-
free society and because it receives
support from major drug companies.
Nitzkin asserted that e-cig companies do
not recruit teens,and e-cigs do not lead to
cigarette use or produce vapor containing
high levels of organic chemical toxins
measurably above background levels.
…Commenting on
New York Times’
health reporter Jane Brody’s article
on health officials’ efforts to reduce
smoking and the
existing cessation
methods
available, the American
Council on Science and Health said
that although Brody “acknowledges that
current aids for quitting, such as nicotine
substitutes, low-dose antidepressants,
hypnosis, and acupuncture, are not very
effective,” she “stops short of endorsing
the newest and likely most effective aid:
e-cigarettes,” a position that ACSH’s
Gilbert Ross said “parrot[s] the party
line of the CDC, the FDA, the ACS
etc. etc. and Stan Glantz, thereby doing
a terrible disservice to her smoking
readers who are desperate to quit.”
…During a recent discussion on e-cigs
with host John Hockenberry on the
morning news program “The Takeaway,”
Dr. Michael Eriksen, founding dean of
the School of Public Health at Georgia
State University and former director
of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and
Health, said among other things that:
smoking kills because of smoke; nicotine,
though not benign, is better than smoke;
almost without exception,
e-cigs are
generally safer to use
than smoking;
and that e-cig concerns include dual
use,
re-normalization/glamorization
of smoking, and the possibility of
non-smokers and teens using e-cigs
and developing a nicotine addiction.
…The
Electronic Cigarette Industry
Group
(ECIG)
in Tallahassee,
Florida announced the opening of
its Washington, D.C. office and the
addition of J.P. Moery and his firm,
The Moery Company, to the ECIG
team, with Moery to serve as the
managing director of the D.C. office.
…During a joint legislative panel
hearing in Oklahoma on January 22 on
the
pros and cons of promoting e-cigs
as a means to reduce smoking, e-cig
supporters including Oklahoma Vapor
Advocacy League Chairman Sean Gore
focused on taxation and regulation by
arguing that taxing e-cigs at the same
rate as cigarettes would reduce an
incentive for smokers to switch to the
devices, which they say are much less
harmful, while critics like State Health
and Human Services Secretary Terry
Cline and the American Cancer Society’s
deputy medical officer Dr. Leonard
Lichtenfeld said existing evidence on
e-cigs is not enough to recommend
the devices as a safer alternative
to cigarettes or as a cessation aid.
…
Philip Morris International
said
that it will invest up to $683.8 million
“into its first manufacturing facility in
the European Union and an associated
pilot plant” near Bologna, Italy,
which would produce its “potentially
reduced-risk tobacco products,” and
when fully operational would have
combined annual production capacity
of up to 30 billion units by 2016.
…In a commentary in the January 8
issue of the
Journal of theAmericanMedical
Association
,
Dr. David B. Abrams,
executive director of the Schroeder
Institute for Tobacco Research and
Policy Studies at Legacy Foundation,
examines the “promise, from a harm
reduction perspective, and the peril, from
an abstinence perspective,” of e-cigs. He
TMA REPORT
An addition of a modestly successful THR initiative to
current tobacco control programs would save an estimated
1.5 to 4.8 million American lives, said Nitzkin, who noted
that the tobacco control movement is opposed to THR
because it has a goal of a tobacco-free society and because
it receives support from major drug companies.
